4 ms·

In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps. You can not sit down with pen and paper, and reproduce by hand exactly

In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps. You can not sit down with pen and paper, and reproduce by hand exactly what is going on inside someone’s brain. But you could replicate exactly the calculations happening as a LLM computes the next token. Would that be conscious? Where would that consciousness reside? My view is that LLMs are designed and trained to autocomplete narratives, and that as part of that process they develop an emergent narrative about themselves. Whatever personality traits they exhibit is part of that narrative. Perhaps this is not that different from how humans learn to move in social contexts, but it is not consciousness as it happens in living beings.

nonfamous 1mo ago
>> In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps. Why not, at least in principle? Wouldn’t an exact map of a brain’s neural structure and its electromagnetic and chemical state, combined with inputs mirroring the senses, be able to be automated to produce a digital analog of human thought. The model is impractical and couldn’t be reproduced today, yes. But what, exactly, is missing?
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Our models of reality are incomplete. See this very nice Stephen Hawking lecture where he says as such https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/godel-and-the-end-of-physics https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/godel-and-the-e... People have thought they were nearly complete at least for 500 years, probably longer. When you choose a specific model to represent the brain you are asserting you’ve accounted for everything that generates consciousness (=the lights are on, experiences qualia). This means you’ve solved the hard problem. The hard problem is debated constantly though. In my view there is absolutely no reason to think a description of reality can be equal to reality. There are probably (in my view that is) aspects of reality, like first person internal experience, that fundamentally can not be described with third party linguistic / symbolic / representational devices.

nonfamous 1mo ago

>> In living beings, consciousness is embodied and can not be reproduced by discrete steps. Why not, at least in principle? Wouldn’t an exact map of a brain’s neural structure and its electromagnetic and chemical state, combined with inputs mirroring the senses, be able to be automated to produce a digital analog of human thought. The model is impractical and couldn’t be reproduced today, yes. But what, exactly, is missing?

GPerson 1mo ago
Our models of reality are incomplete. See this very nice Stephen Hawking lecture where he says as such https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/godel-and-the-end-of-physics https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/godel-and-the-e... People have thought they were nearly complete at least for 500 years, probably longer. When you choose a specific model to represent the brain you are asserting you’ve accounted for everything that generates consciousness (=the lights are on, experiences qualia). This means you’ve solved the hard problem. The hard problem is debated constantly though. In my view there is absolutely no reason to think a description of reality can be equal to reality. There are probably (in my view that is) aspects of reality, like first person internal experience, that fundamentally can not be described with third party linguistic / symbolic / representational devices.