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Why can't people just admit they believe in souls?
by hardbass 27d ago
Why can't people just admit they believe in souls?
- bananaflag 27d agoI frequently say what you say, but there is a more charitable reading: today's AIs are not "minds", as they are not stateful. Maybe continual learning ones (like the mini AGI exhibited today on the HN front page) will be perceived as "soulful".
- hardbass 26d agoI think the working space in a given chat or session still counts as mind enough, but your argument is different, in that it argues about specific architectures rather than simply stating "software therefore cannot be conscious".
- Terr_ 26d ago"You're trying to parse HTML with a linear regex. That algorithmic approach is too limited to do what we want with the problem-space." "Why can't you just admit that you think only tree-parsers have souls!?"
- hardbass 26d agoBelieving a specific architecture is not capable of consciousness is a different matter. I am seeing statements that simply state things like "it is software or a machine and therefore cannot be conscious" without any further clarification. That clearly betrays a belief in souls.
- lolakutty 26d agoSure, if your architecture include hardware that is known to be capable of generation consciousness, the no one will say that. Problem is that we don't know any such hardware..
- hardbass 26d agoWhy? The human brain already exists. Unless you have some well defined criterion for what hardware can support consciousness how can you say that?
- lolakutty 26d agoOh, I thought you were talking about "architectures" not containing a human brain..
- hardbass 26d agoWhy? What's so strange about a human brain? It is a physical system of molecules running electrical and chemical signals. We already have direct proof that physical systems support consciousness. So why do you believe other physical systems can't have consciousness? Give me your definition of what consciousness is.
- lolakutty 26d ago>Give me your definition of what consciousness is. It should have the ability to feel...
- Terr_ 26d agoNah, it "betrays" an awareness of something implicitly obvious: All the software/machines we might discuss are ones from ~2026, rather than ones from ~2226. Similarly, "pets can't do my taxes" is a reasonable statement, because it is implicit that it doesn't include hundreds of years of genetic engineering and cyborg implants.
- hardbass 26d agoPets can't speak human languages or do thinking on logic or natural logic. Current AI's can. Its a very bad example. People saying "current archs are limited" are much less than people outright claiming "software therefore not conscious". And I haven't yet seen any proof why the current AI's already don't have some consciousness or not.
- Terr_ 26d ago> Pets can't speak [...] Current AI's can. It's a very bad example. You've misunderstood the comparison analogy. It's showing two situations where implicit timeframes are important when people talk about what is "true", where the second one makes the importance extra-obvious. "Pets doing taxes" could just as easily be swapped with "cold fusion generator in your garage" or "rocket-ship for personal commutes." If you're trying to figure out how LLM weights are like the weights of a rocket payload, then you're going in the wrong direction.
- hardbass 26d agoI get what you were trying to say, I still disagree, its an open question and I feel existing LLMs already might possess some consciousness. I cannot prove it of course so I am not saying so definitively. You haven't given any disproof of the same either. Those who think future systems could have consciousness would explicitly say so, indeed I have talked with a few who clarified as such. On the other hand I have seen a lot of statements that simply state without further clarification "software therefore not conscious".