4 ms·

>I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. It is special in the universe unl

by coldtea 5mo ago

>I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. Aside from the animal world (also on Earth too, anyway) which is a cruder version of humanity, much more violent as well, the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases. >It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special as they thought they were And make room for yet another conscious intelligence. A "really long time" is the few years we've built LLMs? Which we have to take for granted (on your word?) they're already "conscious", and chastice ourselves for not already "accepting it"? >So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? "If we had a parrot demonstrating symptoms of discussing with us, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?"

dTal 5mo ago
Describing life on Earth as "a cruder version of humanity" is uh a choice. Your parrot snark is hilarious because that actually happened with Alex the African Gray - and indeed it took people a long time to accept. Your comment amounts to an anthropocentrism practically biblical in its hubris.
- mcswell 5mo ago
  Many linguists (who know more about language than most other people) still don't accept the story of Alex.
dandanua 5mo ago
> the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases This is probably what ants think about humans when they run through their feet.
- coldtea 5mo ago
  And they're wrong. Whereas, unless your claim is that rock and gasses are sentient, we're right.
- mihaic 5mo ago
  Yes, but we have a system to understand the universe and ants don't. Using relativism, to simply destroy point of view without putting anything in their place, is simply destructive without any purpose.
  - dandanua 5mo ago
    My purpose was to say that humans might not be capable enough to see what's there beyond just rocks and gases. Actually, this should be a popular view, because, according to modern theory, the observable universe accounts for only 5% of its mass, with the rest consisting of dark matter and dark energy. It is hard to estimate how much human egocentrism takes in the space, though. And BTW, ants are quite capable of understanding their environment in order to survive and thrive.
    - mihaic 5mo ago
      You're just repeating that your purpose is your message. Do you honestly not see a qualitative difference between the understanding of ants and of humans of the world around them? Heck, even ants and dogs or cats?
tauwauwau 5mo ago
Its not special even in earth let alone in universe. You are measuring humans by our achievements and not by what we actually are. We are not fittest in our environment, we are not even 10th fastest, we cant fly, we cant breathe underwater, forget about bacteria we don't have protection against even bugs and mosquitoes. We are not the most efficient societies, ants and bees would beat us there. Statistically we we are selfish and will sacrifice all for one which is against the basic tenants of evolution and survival of a species. When given a chance at a prosperous life we choose to become lazy, obese and degrade our most prominent feature, that is our brain and mind. Elephants and chimpanzees have better memory, octopi have 8-9 light cones in eyes. We are not special or superior, we just won a lottery of mutation giving us efficient brain. Any species on Earth can replace us given same lottery.
- arwineap 5mo ago
  > We are not special or superior, we just won a lottery of mutation giving us efficient brain. Isn't this exactly what makes us special? That, opposable thumbs, magic wireless communication, and space travel
  - ang_cire 5mo ago
    Those are your own standards of achievement you are applying. Other species may look at us and think we're wasting our lives and potential making a bunch of people rich at our collective expense, and ruining the environment as we do it. We are only "special" in the sense of "different" (and we may not be that on any universal scale), not necessarily in the sense of "better", and very possibly we're not better, and may very well Great Filter ourselves out of existence in short order. Other animals aren't so "special" as to have a Doomsday Clock sitting at 11:58:45.
- lukan 5mo ago
  "Its not special even in earth let alone in universe. " What alien species you have in mind, that is more capable/consciouss about the universe and how to shape it? "Any species on Earth can replace us given same lottery." But they did not. We "won" so we are special. We don't just build tools, we build tools that build tools, that build tools, .. My issue with debasing humanity is, it gives argument to devalueing human life to artificial life. Meaning people with feelings and emotions might suffer, in favour of GPU's with electricity. On the other hand a good point to reevaluate how we treat other sentient life.
inglor_cz 5mo ago
That is a spectacular miss if I saw one ... both parrots and corvids exhibit very high intelligence and self-awareness, I have no problem accepting that they are conscious.
- graemep 5mo ago
  I doubt anyone would debate some of the implications of that. For example, it would be immoral to be deliberately or negligently cruel to them, for example.
  - inglor_cz 5mo ago
    I agree that people aren't ready to discuss this. BTW I just saw this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1twl7oj/raven_solves_a_puzzle_to_get_cashews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1twl7oj/r... Yeah, that's corvids. Very obviously working towards goals and thinking quickly. Doesn't surprise me. Where I live, we have both magpies and jackdaws and I cannot describe them better than "harmless, but very organized gangs". Just a few days ago I saw them raiding an open trash can and two strongest(?) birds were fishing out edible stuff from the inside and throwing it to their waiting friends outside. I mean, beak to beak: the raider just looked back, measured the throw, and the other bird perfectly caught the morsel and ate it.
igleria 5mo ago
> much more violent as well I'm not sure about that. What non-human living entity does things on a scale and violence akin to "I'll fill this ant nest with liquid burning metal for artistic purposes" ? A blue whale eats a lot of krill individuals for sustenance, a dolphin can only rape/kill one thing at a time, etc etc.
- sethammons 5mo ago
  A fox in the hen house comes to mind. And cats.
- tsimionescu 5mo ago
  Animals generally have no qualms at all about killing or even just mutilating other animals. It often happens almost by accident - two animals might be playing together, one gets spooked, and it instinctively attacks and perhaps even kills the other one - this is commonly seen with people who befriend large predators, such as tigers in the infamous Siegfried and Roy tragedy, but it also happens a lot wherever animals interact with each other. Specifically in regards to your ant example, anteaters and bears often bring similar levels of destruction to ant nests. And cats and other small predators often hunt just for the fun of it, killing but not eating their prey. On the more purely painful evil side, invertebrates often consume their prey alive, inflicting agonizing deaths with no issues on whatever they may be eating. Plenty of vertebrates kill and consume their babies, especially when frightened. They also often abandon old and weak members of their packs, leaving them to die of hunger or cold or similar deaths. This is not meant as some indictment of the animal kingdom - people do all of this too, of course; and have since time immemorial. It's just to show that, if we apply human moral standards to the animal kingdom, it's fair to call them violent, and yes, even much more violent than the average modern human.
  - dan00 5mo ago
    Humans just have the cognitive ability to be violent on a larger scale. Otherwise I also don‘t really see much of a difference to animals.
    - 5mo ago
chadgpt3 5mo ago
> It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. Transformer models proved otherwise. Will you update your priors?
- zaphar 5mo ago
  No they didn't? I use these continuously and it's pretty obvious to me that they do not at the level of a human except in the most surface level ways. Human's as compared to an LLM remain a special category. We have not in fact cracked human level intelligence.
  - unrealhoang 5mo ago
    What if one day they do? Or appears to be, in the way that you couldn't distinguish? Will you update your priors?
    - zaphar 5mo ago
      Sure. But I'm also not going to assume they will just because this they seem to sort of mimic it now.
- coldtea 5mo ago
  Even if we assume transformer models as intelligent (quite a big leap of faith), this just proved that humans are even more special: not only they are intelligent beings, but they can also create intelligent technology.
jjulius 5mo ago
>It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. There's that hubristic ego OP references.
ath3nd 5mo ago
[dead]

by coldtea 5mo ago

dTal 5mo ago

Describing life on Earth as "a cruder version of humanity" is uh a choice. Your parrot snark is hilarious because that actually happened with Alex the African Gray - and indeed it took people a long time to accept. Your comment amounts to an anthropocentrism practically biblical in its hubris.

mcswell 5mo ago
Many linguists (who know more about language than most other people) still don't accept the story of Alex.

dandanua 5mo ago

> the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases This is probably what ants think about humans when they run through their feet.

coldtea 5mo ago
And they're wrong. Whereas, unless your claim is that rock and gasses are sentient, we're right.
mihaic 5mo ago
Yes, but we have a system to understand the universe and ants don't. Using relativism, to simply destroy point of view without putting anything in their place, is simply destructive without any purpose.
- dandanua 5mo ago
  My purpose was to say that humans might not be capable enough to see what's there beyond just rocks and gases. Actually, this should be a popular view, because, according to modern theory, the observable universe accounts for only 5% of its mass, with the rest consisting of dark matter and dark energy. It is hard to estimate how much human egocentrism takes in the space, though. And BTW, ants are quite capable of understanding their environment in order to survive and thrive.
  - mihaic 5mo ago
    You're just repeating that your purpose is your message. Do you honestly not see a qualitative difference between the understanding of ants and of humans of the world around them? Heck, even ants and dogs or cats?

tauwauwau 5mo ago

Its not special even in earth let alone in universe. You are measuring humans by our achievements and not by what we actually are. We are not fittest in our environment, we are not even 10th fastest, we cant fly, we cant breathe underwater, forget about bacteria we don't have protection against even bugs and mosquitoes. We are not the most efficient societies, ants and bees would beat us there. Statistically we we are selfish and will sacrifice all for one which is against the basic tenants of evolution and survival of a species. When given a chance at a prosperous life we choose to become lazy, obese and degrade our most prominent feature, that is our brain and mind. Elephants and chimpanzees have better memory, octopi have 8-9 light cones in eyes. We are not special or superior, we just won a lottery of mutation giving us efficient brain. Any species on Earth can replace us given same lottery.

arwineap 5mo ago
> We are not special or superior, we just won a lottery of mutation giving us efficient brain. Isn't this exactly what makes us special? That, opposable thumbs, magic wireless communication, and space travel
- ang_cire 5mo ago
  Those are your own standards of achievement you are applying. Other species may look at us and think we're wasting our lives and potential making a bunch of people rich at our collective expense, and ruining the environment as we do it. We are only "special" in the sense of "different" (and we may not be that on any universal scale), not necessarily in the sense of "better", and very possibly we're not better, and may very well Great Filter ourselves out of existence in short order. Other animals aren't so "special" as to have a Doomsday Clock sitting at 11:58:45.
lukan 5mo ago
"Its not special even in earth let alone in universe. " What alien species you have in mind, that is more capable/consciouss about the universe and how to shape it? "Any species on Earth can replace us given same lottery." But they did not. We "won" so we are special. We don't just build tools, we build tools that build tools, that build tools, .. My issue with debasing humanity is, it gives argument to devalueing human life to artificial life. Meaning people with feelings and emotions might suffer, in favour of GPU's with electricity. On the other hand a good point to reevaluate how we treat other sentient life.

inglor_cz 5mo ago

That is a spectacular miss if I saw one ... both parrots and corvids exhibit very high intelligence and self-awareness, I have no problem accepting that they are conscious.

graemep 5mo ago
I doubt anyone would debate some of the implications of that. For example, it would be immoral to be deliberately or negligently cruel to them, for example.
- inglor_cz 5mo ago
  I agree that people aren't ready to discuss this. BTW I just saw this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1twl7oj/raven_solves_a_puzzle_to_get_cashews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1twl7oj/r... Yeah, that's corvids. Very obviously working towards goals and thinking quickly. Doesn't surprise me. Where I live, we have both magpies and jackdaws and I cannot describe them better than "harmless, but very organized gangs". Just a few days ago I saw them raiding an open trash can and two strongest(?) birds were fishing out edible stuff from the inside and throwing it to their waiting friends outside. I mean, beak to beak: the raider just looked back, measured the throw, and the other bird perfectly caught the morsel and ate it.

igleria 5mo ago

> much more violent as well I'm not sure about that. What non-human living entity does things on a scale and violence akin to "I'll fill this ant nest with liquid burning metal for artistic purposes" ? A blue whale eats a lot of krill individuals for sustenance, a dolphin can only rape/kill one thing at a time, etc etc.

sethammons 5mo ago
A fox in the hen house comes to mind. And cats.
tsimionescu 5mo ago
Animals generally have no qualms at all about killing or even just mutilating other animals. It often happens almost by accident - two animals might be playing together, one gets spooked, and it instinctively attacks and perhaps even kills the other one - this is commonly seen with people who befriend large predators, such as tigers in the infamous Siegfried and Roy tragedy, but it also happens a lot wherever animals interact with each other. Specifically in regards to your ant example, anteaters and bears often bring similar levels of destruction to ant nests. And cats and other small predators often hunt just for the fun of it, killing but not eating their prey. On the more purely painful evil side, invertebrates often consume their prey alive, inflicting agonizing deaths with no issues on whatever they may be eating. Plenty of vertebrates kill and consume their babies, especially when frightened. They also often abandon old and weak members of their packs, leaving them to die of hunger or cold or similar deaths. This is not meant as some indictment of the animal kingdom - people do all of this too, of course; and have since time immemorial. It's just to show that, if we apply human moral standards to the animal kingdom, it's fair to call them violent, and yes, even much more violent than the average modern human.
- dan00 5mo ago
  Humans just have the cognitive ability to be violent on a larger scale. Otherwise I also don‘t really see much of a difference to animals.
  - 5mo ago

chadgpt3 5mo ago

> It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. Transformer models proved otherwise. Will you update your priors?

zaphar 5mo ago
No they didn't? I use these continuously and it's pretty obvious to me that they do not at the level of a human except in the most surface level ways. Human's as compared to an LLM remain a special category. We have not in fact cracked human level intelligence.
- unrealhoang 5mo ago
  What if one day they do? Or appears to be, in the way that you couldn't distinguish? Will you update your priors?
  - zaphar 5mo ago
    Sure. But I'm also not going to assume they will just because this they seem to sort of mimic it now.
coldtea 5mo ago
Even if we assume transformer models as intelligent (quite a big leap of faith), this just proved that humans are even more special: not only they are intelligent beings, but they can also create intelligent technology.

jjulius 5mo ago

>It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. There's that hubristic ego OP references.

ath3nd 5mo ago

[dead]