3 ms·

LLMs don't experience because they are word generators. They don't have senses. Some things are allowed to be obvious. It's a series of bits and bytes.

esikich 2mo ago
And our nerves are a series of electrochemical impulses. There are nerves that do optical processing before it hits the brain. It's not obvious, and that's what's frustrating around here. "Computers can't possibly experience things". I'd argue it's just as unlikely for meat to do it. Again, philosophy 101 stuff.
- drekipus 2mo ago
  I think you're trying to degrade the entire school of philosophy down to your "philosophy 101" understanding and then shoving it where it doesn't fit in order to feel like this is all complicated. Philosophy is a intrinsically human thing. It has to be. That is the whole point. There really is nothing else. Plants feel and experience things too. But there's no philosophy of the plant experience from the point of view of the plant, because why would there be? The fact that we have a pattern recognizing word generator print out the words "I am alive" does not lead to some broader philosophical point, except for hysteria and delusions, which probably fit more along sociology instead.
  - esikich 2mo ago
    "Philosophy is an intrinsically human thing. It has to be." What is philosophy? Thinking? Reasoning? Thinking about thinking? You're asserting that only a human brain can think and reason? Surely other animals can as well. Couldn't aliens as well? Why can't this crazy electronic box? Where do we draw the line? Do dolphins not have internal experiences? Dogs? Cats? Mice? Fish? Worms? Bugs? Amoebas? We don't even really know what thinking or experience is. You can train a caterpillar to do tricks. That's pattern recognition. You can train a human to spike their heart rate when you get a Teams notification. I mean, I'm watching an LLM run benchmarks on my caching strategy for a webpage right now. It's certainly doing something.
    - drekipus 2mo ago
      I suggest you print out this exchange and spend a week away from the computer, then re-read what was printed. I'm not trying to be rude but I gave you the answers. Alien philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not aliens. Tree philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not trees. Dolphin philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not dolphins, etc. Everything else you mentioned is "hallucinatory" and you need to probably have a break from screens for a while. As a legitimate exercise, go ponder the philosophy of a bash script. Think about philosophy of trees in a forest vs trees in a plantation. You'll find it and see how silly you're being
      - crent 2mo ago
        I’d respectfully disagree here. All phenomena are defined not just by what they are but also by what they are not. I can tell something is relatively tall because I can compare its size to something small. In a fully isolated environment with no reference points, the concept of a given object being small or tall is meaningless. If we apply that same thought process to philosophy and reason, how can you define it without creating boundaries of what it is not?
        drekipus 2mo ago
        I think that's kind of what I'm trying to say. "A philosophy of LLMs" - has no reference point without being grounded in human experience. It is only meaningful when we apply what it means to humans. "a philosophy of a bash script." does not make sense. Only "philosophy of the action of writing the bash script, of which this is an artifact of" - the human who wrote it intentionally. LLMs apply statistics to mash inputs and produce outputs, almost like `cat` with extra steps: We can't ask for "what was the philosophy behind the action `cat` applied" - why would we bother asking about the philosophy of an LLM? Better questions would be the philosophy of those who prompt it, built it, the material that went into it, the people who write the safeguards, the people who architected it. Etc. It is not an isolated environment without reference points.
      - gf000 2mo ago
        > irrelevant to us because we're not What an unnecessarily dismissive "argument". I'm certainly not a CPU, nor a painting, nor a bird, yet plenty of people find these topics and many others interesting.
- crent 2mo ago
  I’m with you in this thread. I’m by no means well studied in philosophy but I enjoy the domain so I’ve learned enough to know how difficult nailing down some of these topics can be. I often find the egotistical viewpoint to be banal. I don’t mean egotistical in a demeaning way - I mean it just to frame the types of thinking that revolve around the self, inner world or “my individual experience”. It’s an obvious, but not provably correct, conclusion that the human experience, consciousness and reasoning are special because I’m experiencing it in the same way that the earth is the center of the universe because look around you. It frustrates me in these conversations to hear things like “it’s a text generator, it has no senses”. What even is a sense? For those of us who are software engineers, who live in the abstract, I do not understand why it’s so hard to take the leap to abstract over our own senses as inputs/outputs. Hell, we commonly understand that we have 5 senses but what do I make of the apple I’m visualizing in my brain or the full orchestra I can summon in my “minds eye”? Isn’t that an input just as much as an apple I see with my eyes?
  - esikich 2mo ago
    Even the 5 senses are arbitrary. Sensing where your body is positioned, where it's boundaries are, whatever tickling is, whatever itchy is, whatever sour is, whatever salty is, green, blue, etc. When we say 5, we are just saying where on the body they happen. Even though there are more axis on each and use different sensors. Warmth, cold, orgasm - is that really "touch" etc. Bunch of syscall enums maybe.
- randomImmigrant 2mo ago
  It's very obvious actually, because it isn't just nerves in the brain. There's an equal number of glial cells, which form a continuous network, or syncitium. Their activity is in the form of calcium waves, which are both responsive to and shape neuronal oscillations. What biologists find frustrating is folks looking at one kind of dancer in the field and ignoring the rest of the spectacle, and calling it done.
  - svachalek 2mo ago
    And how do glial cells and calcium waves "obviously" create a fully conscious mind while tensor operations do not?
    - randomImmigrant 2mo ago
      You mean apart from all the biological evidence? I explained some of that in another thread in this topic.
poetaster 2mo ago
If by 101 you mean the decades long debate between Dennet and everyone else, I think you'll find the 101 gloss throws up more questions than answers. Presuming that language is necessary for consciousness is not a settled question, for instance. As you complain, it is a more complicated field of study than cs, philosophy, biology and chemistry combined.

esikich 2mo ago

And our nerves are a series of electrochemical impulses. There are nerves that do optical processing before it hits the brain. It's not obvious, and that's what's frustrating around here. "Computers can't possibly experience things". I'd argue it's just as unlikely for meat to do it. Again, philosophy 101 stuff.

drekipus 2mo ago
I think you're trying to degrade the entire school of philosophy down to your "philosophy 101" understanding and then shoving it where it doesn't fit in order to feel like this is all complicated. Philosophy is a intrinsically human thing. It has to be. That is the whole point. There really is nothing else. Plants feel and experience things too. But there's no philosophy of the plant experience from the point of view of the plant, because why would there be? The fact that we have a pattern recognizing word generator print out the words "I am alive" does not lead to some broader philosophical point, except for hysteria and delusions, which probably fit more along sociology instead.
- esikich 2mo ago
  "Philosophy is an intrinsically human thing. It has to be." What is philosophy? Thinking? Reasoning? Thinking about thinking? You're asserting that only a human brain can think and reason? Surely other animals can as well. Couldn't aliens as well? Why can't this crazy electronic box? Where do we draw the line? Do dolphins not have internal experiences? Dogs? Cats? Mice? Fish? Worms? Bugs? Amoebas? We don't even really know what thinking or experience is. You can train a caterpillar to do tricks. That's pattern recognition. You can train a human to spike their heart rate when you get a Teams notification. I mean, I'm watching an LLM run benchmarks on my caching strategy for a webpage right now. It's certainly doing something.
  - drekipus 2mo ago
    I suggest you print out this exchange and spend a week away from the computer, then re-read what was printed. I'm not trying to be rude but I gave you the answers. Alien philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not aliens. Tree philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not trees. Dolphin philosophy is irrelevant to us because we're not dolphins, etc. Everything else you mentioned is "hallucinatory" and you need to probably have a break from screens for a while. As a legitimate exercise, go ponder the philosophy of a bash script. Think about philosophy of trees in a forest vs trees in a plantation. You'll find it and see how silly you're being
    - crent 2mo ago
      I’d respectfully disagree here. All phenomena are defined not just by what they are but also by what they are not. I can tell something is relatively tall because I can compare its size to something small. In a fully isolated environment with no reference points, the concept of a given object being small or tall is meaningless. If we apply that same thought process to philosophy and reason, how can you define it without creating boundaries of what it is not?
      - drekipus 2mo ago
        I think that's kind of what I'm trying to say. "A philosophy of LLMs" - has no reference point without being grounded in human experience. It is only meaningful when we apply what it means to humans. "a philosophy of a bash script." does not make sense. Only "philosophy of the action of writing the bash script, of which this is an artifact of" - the human who wrote it intentionally. LLMs apply statistics to mash inputs and produce outputs, almost like `cat` with extra steps: We can't ask for "what was the philosophy behind the action `cat` applied" - why would we bother asking about the philosophy of an LLM? Better questions would be the philosophy of those who prompt it, built it, the material that went into it, the people who write the safeguards, the people who architected it. Etc. It is not an isolated environment without reference points.
    - gf000 2mo ago
      > irrelevant to us because we're not What an unnecessarily dismissive "argument". I'm certainly not a CPU, nor a painting, nor a bird, yet plenty of people find these topics and many others interesting.
crent 2mo ago
I’m with you in this thread. I’m by no means well studied in philosophy but I enjoy the domain so I’ve learned enough to know how difficult nailing down some of these topics can be. I often find the egotistical viewpoint to be banal. I don’t mean egotistical in a demeaning way - I mean it just to frame the types of thinking that revolve around the self, inner world or “my individual experience”. It’s an obvious, but not provably correct, conclusion that the human experience, consciousness and reasoning are special because I’m experiencing it in the same way that the earth is the center of the universe because look around you. It frustrates me in these conversations to hear things like “it’s a text generator, it has no senses”. What even is a sense? For those of us who are software engineers, who live in the abstract, I do not understand why it’s so hard to take the leap to abstract over our own senses as inputs/outputs. Hell, we commonly understand that we have 5 senses but what do I make of the apple I’m visualizing in my brain or the full orchestra I can summon in my “minds eye”? Isn’t that an input just as much as an apple I see with my eyes?
- esikich 2mo ago
  Even the 5 senses are arbitrary. Sensing where your body is positioned, where it's boundaries are, whatever tickling is, whatever itchy is, whatever sour is, whatever salty is, green, blue, etc. When we say 5, we are just saying where on the body they happen. Even though there are more axis on each and use different sensors. Warmth, cold, orgasm - is that really "touch" etc. Bunch of syscall enums maybe.
randomImmigrant 2mo ago
It's very obvious actually, because it isn't just nerves in the brain. There's an equal number of glial cells, which form a continuous network, or syncitium. Their activity is in the form of calcium waves, which are both responsive to and shape neuronal oscillations. What biologists find frustrating is folks looking at one kind of dancer in the field and ignoring the rest of the spectacle, and calling it done.
- svachalek 2mo ago
  And how do glial cells and calcium waves "obviously" create a fully conscious mind while tensor operations do not?
  - randomImmigrant 2mo ago
    You mean apart from all the biological evidence? I explained some of that in another thread in this topic.

poetaster 2mo ago

If by 101 you mean the decades long debate between Dennet and everyone else, I think you'll find the 101 gloss throws up more questions than answers. Presuming that language is necessary for consciousness is not a settled question, for instance. As you complain, it is a more complicated field of study than cs, philosophy, biology and chemistry combined.