3 ms·
Carbon atoms being conscious seems pretty alien to what is known, too. Yet here we are. Maybe what's important isn't the individual thing that makes up a consci
by thepasch 17d ago
Carbon atoms being conscious seems pretty alien to what is known, too. Yet here we are. Maybe what's important isn't the individual thing that makes up a conscious actor, but the holistic whole?
- nozzlegear 17d ago> Carbon atoms being conscious seems pretty alien to what is known, too. Not if you're human, who typically don't define themselves as conscious carbon atoms unless they're being deeply pedantic.
- cwillu 17d agoSuch pedantry is called for when the debate includes appeals to intuition about how silicon processing floating point numbers cannot possibly be conscious.
- mitxela 17d agoIt's the same level of pedantry as calling an LLM "floating point operations" though
- jatora 16d agoexactly. such over-reduction is just intellectually dishonest and generally a sign of some coping imo.
- nozzlegear 14d agoIMO using sophistry to reduce yourself to "conscious carbon atoms" just so you can equivocate on whether your software is maybe conscious too is the cope.
- amdivia 17d agoBut here you are assuming Carbon atoms are conscious, we do not know if humans are only carbon atoms. Whereas, we know that LLM's are only computations (you can run them on silicon, a white board, mechanical computer, etc)