4 ms·

If you don't know what a soul is, and you think it's something people just make up, then you are missing out on the experience of being human and you have a big

If you don't know what a soul is, and you think it's something people just make up, then you are missing out on the experience of being human and you have a bigger problem than not being able to understand what art is.

red75prime 1mo ago
Is it this fuzzy blob of ineffable experiences, aesthetics, qualia, self-reference, dualism, spirituality and other things? I don't need to reject all this to notice that its fuzziness makes it impossible to operationalize.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
  It's supposed to be experienced, not 'operationalized.'
  - red75prime 1mo ago
    You need to operationalize it to decide whether non-human systems can have it.
    - red75prime 1mo ago
      At least, to discuss it, rather than having other people wisely nodding along: "I feel that too."
- qlm 1mo ago
  I think your response demonstrates rather than refutes their point.
- noduerme 1mo ago
  No... again a misunderstanding of the word, and a major one! A soul - and I mean this in the most atheistic, nonreligious sense you can imagine - is what you operationalize every single day when you're faced with hardship or any situation where you'd prefer not to be. It's also the dynamic that makes you feel joy in doing something beyond simple pleasure or happiness. You know SQL? Think of "soul" as a view of the tables describing your intellectual and physical properties, left joined with your actions, which filters those actions that would otherwise not be simply mechanical or deterministic. Does that help?
  - red75prime 1mo ago
    Is it that complex? Whatever you feel stays inside you. From the outside you make noises, gestures, facial expressions. We can obtain fMRI data an so on. Operationalization is how to connect observables with the presence of soul in a subject. What can you say besides "I don't feel a soul inside an LLM"? You don't feel it? OK, good for you, whatever.
xeyownt 1mo ago
So whales do not have a soul? Only humans do have one? What about our ancestors? Did the homo erectus have a soul? What about big apes, did they? I don't need "soul" concept to describe the human experience, and if you use it to describe technology, it only makes things more confusing. It only ends up as an attempt to state that some things are not "good" because they don't match your own vague concept of what is good or bad, without explaining why nor what this is.
- noduerme 1mo ago
  I believe whales have a soul. And dogs have a soul. Perhaps even squirrels and rats have a soul. What's your point, other than that you are misunderstanding the word? It needs no mystical or religious basis. If you have ever played music with someone or shared a difficult experience with a random human/whale/dog/squirrel which transcended transactional or intellectual communication and which caused you to view their interior world as something more than a clockwork sum of parts and neurons, then this is what is meant by "soul". If you want to be purely technological and psychological about it, it's that which emerges from a layer of intelligence that exhibits what Freud would describe as superego. Something that AI does not yet have. It's only a vague concept if you haven't experienced it.
CrimsonRain 1mo ago
So you know what a soul is? Please enlighten
CapsAdmin 1mo ago
This feels very condescending and reminds me of how theists "feel sorry" for atheists because they don't believe in god.
- noduerme 1mo ago
  Sure, but I'm an atheist. I got to being an atheist by growing up in a religious community that I ultimately rejected. But I understand the experience of that which people crave and I understand why they feel sorry for atheists. I'm not saying a soul is given by God or that one needs to believe anything in order to find a soul in oneself. What I'm saying is that the poster's comment is darkness and hopelessness and a hatred for his own species rolled up into one, and that such a perspective is both painfully inexperienced and profoundly awful for the person and for whoever they are convincing or it, because life contains much more richness (religious or secular) than what is disdained by this person. What you find condescending in my statement isn't that it's religious, it's that I'm willing to tell them that they're missing out on life. In that respect, I don't mind being condescending, because not all philosophies or ways of living lead to equally happy results.
fenomas 1mo ago
When you find yourself with a choice between "either this person doesn't understand the experience of being human or I'm not following what they mean" the latter is probably a sound choice.
- noduerme 1mo ago
  Not really. I'll warrant I've clocked a lot more time on the planet, done a lot more jobs, lived in a lot more countries, studied a lot more philosophies, religions and languages, and learned the hard way through many more relationships and difficult teachers than most people who've passed through this life. It's my prerogative to determine, and it's fairly trivial to identify, the difference between someone who has trouble forming their thoughts into words, and someone who like this poster is clearly stating an antagonistic and divorced relationship with life itself. I'm capable and free to judge. Your knee jerk reaction itself is highly suspicious and redolent of someone else who's going through a divorce with living. You should always question your own interpretation. Yes. When you find some evidence that you may be misunderstanding someone, then yes, you should certainly default to giving them the benefit of the doubt and ask yourself whether you've misunderstood something. This is pretty basic ethics and rhetoric. But the meaning of the poster was quite clear. It was absolutist, in fact, and it was nihilistic, derogatory and dismissive toward any notion of intrinsic human value. Wouldn't you agree? My advice to you would be: When you find yourself intervening in a conversation to support something transparently antihumanistic and evil, by claiming without any basis or merit that the other party in the conversation is misunderstanding it, maybe you should assume that you're failing to understand something.
someguynamedq 1mo ago
You have no more authority than the person you're responding to.
- noduerme 1mo ago
  Prove it.
bananaflag 1mo ago
A lot of serious philosophers don't believe in souls.

red75prime 1mo ago

Is it this fuzzy blob of ineffable experiences, aesthetics, qualia, self-reference, dualism, spirituality and other things? I don't need to reject all this to notice that its fuzziness makes it impossible to operationalize.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
It's supposed to be experienced, not 'operationalized.'
- red75prime 1mo ago
  You need to operationalize it to decide whether non-human systems can have it.
  - red75prime 1mo ago
    At least, to discuss it, rather than having other people wisely nodding along: "I feel that too."
qlm 1mo ago
I think your response demonstrates rather than refutes their point.
noduerme 1mo ago
No... again a misunderstanding of the word, and a major one! A soul - and I mean this in the most atheistic, nonreligious sense you can imagine - is what you operationalize every single day when you're faced with hardship or any situation where you'd prefer not to be. It's also the dynamic that makes you feel joy in doing something beyond simple pleasure or happiness. You know SQL? Think of "soul" as a view of the tables describing your intellectual and physical properties, left joined with your actions, which filters those actions that would otherwise not be simply mechanical or deterministic. Does that help?
- red75prime 1mo ago
  Is it that complex? Whatever you feel stays inside you. From the outside you make noises, gestures, facial expressions. We can obtain fMRI data an so on. Operationalization is how to connect observables with the presence of soul in a subject. What can you say besides "I don't feel a soul inside an LLM"? You don't feel it? OK, good for you, whatever.

xeyownt 1mo ago

So whales do not have a soul? Only humans do have one? What about our ancestors? Did the homo erectus have a soul? What about big apes, did they? I don't need "soul" concept to describe the human experience, and if you use it to describe technology, it only makes things more confusing. It only ends up as an attempt to state that some things are not "good" because they don't match your own vague concept of what is good or bad, without explaining why nor what this is.

noduerme 1mo ago
I believe whales have a soul. And dogs have a soul. Perhaps even squirrels and rats have a soul. What's your point, other than that you are misunderstanding the word? It needs no mystical or religious basis. If you have ever played music with someone or shared a difficult experience with a random human/whale/dog/squirrel which transcended transactional or intellectual communication and which caused you to view their interior world as something more than a clockwork sum of parts and neurons, then this is what is meant by "soul". If you want to be purely technological and psychological about it, it's that which emerges from a layer of intelligence that exhibits what Freud would describe as superego. Something that AI does not yet have. It's only a vague concept if you haven't experienced it.

CrimsonRain 1mo ago

So you know what a soul is? Please enlighten

CapsAdmin 1mo ago

This feels very condescending and reminds me of how theists "feel sorry" for atheists because they don't believe in god.

noduerme 1mo ago
Sure, but I'm an atheist. I got to being an atheist by growing up in a religious community that I ultimately rejected. But I understand the experience of that which people crave and I understand why they feel sorry for atheists. I'm not saying a soul is given by God or that one needs to believe anything in order to find a soul in oneself. What I'm saying is that the poster's comment is darkness and hopelessness and a hatred for his own species rolled up into one, and that such a perspective is both painfully inexperienced and profoundly awful for the person and for whoever they are convincing or it, because life contains much more richness (religious or secular) than what is disdained by this person. What you find condescending in my statement isn't that it's religious, it's that I'm willing to tell them that they're missing out on life. In that respect, I don't mind being condescending, because not all philosophies or ways of living lead to equally happy results.

fenomas 1mo ago

When you find yourself with a choice between "either this person doesn't understand the experience of being human or I'm not following what they mean" the latter is probably a sound choice.

noduerme 1mo ago
Not really. I'll warrant I've clocked a lot more time on the planet, done a lot more jobs, lived in a lot more countries, studied a lot more philosophies, religions and languages, and learned the hard way through many more relationships and difficult teachers than most people who've passed through this life. It's my prerogative to determine, and it's fairly trivial to identify, the difference between someone who has trouble forming their thoughts into words, and someone who like this poster is clearly stating an antagonistic and divorced relationship with life itself. I'm capable and free to judge. Your knee jerk reaction itself is highly suspicious and redolent of someone else who's going through a divorce with living. You should always question your own interpretation. Yes. When you find some evidence that you may be misunderstanding someone, then yes, you should certainly default to giving them the benefit of the doubt and ask yourself whether you've misunderstood something. This is pretty basic ethics and rhetoric. But the meaning of the poster was quite clear. It was absolutist, in fact, and it was nihilistic, derogatory and dismissive toward any notion of intrinsic human value. Wouldn't you agree? My advice to you would be: When you find yourself intervening in a conversation to support something transparently antihumanistic and evil, by claiming without any basis or merit that the other party in the conversation is misunderstanding it, maybe you should assume that you're failing to understand something.

someguynamedq 1mo ago

You have no more authority than the person you're responding to.

noduerme 1mo ago
Prove it.

bananaflag 1mo ago

A lot of serious philosophers don't believe in souls.