Sounds like trying to argue with a Christian theologian:

"It's not a conviction based on ratiocination. The certainty of God is not derived and subject to doubt... Atheism is a philosophical conceit."

Ok then.

we'd probably have a lot of great inventions/discoveries from high people, which is not the case. — Skalidris

https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-high-on-lsd-when-he-discovered-dna/

1. Why not leave a brief note, like "roughly, a stable state or configuration" This way I can pursue a deeper understanding, if I choose.
2. At least here there is a phonetic spelling I can look up, and one that is or was part of philosophical jargon. So this was a really bad example, as that is often not the case.
3. The real offense is when entire sentences are left untranslated. What do you say to these cases?


Being in time is quite slow enough without adding artificial impediments and distractions.

How that complicates translation is easy to infer. — Agent Smith

This sounds very routine. What some languages make explicit, others leave to context. The job of the translator in this case is to make the context explicit.

Lemoine viscerally feels that LaMDA is sentient. So, is the matter then settled? Hardly. Viscerally feeling something to be so generally doesn't carry much weight in a philosophical debate.

Solipsism. rather than being a nonsensical parlor game, frames this entire discussion. If we can't even prove the sentience of other people, how then to evaluate the apparent sentience of a clever program? Solipsism, not as serious belief, but as boundary of what can be known with certainty, teaches us that from the outset we can forget about proofs.

:lol:

I mean to say that solipsism is a result of philosophical reflection, on which I think we all agree.

There's more than just this one. But this one will do for a start. — Banno

So then, to you, what distinguishes good philosophy from bad/illegitimate/silly philosophical playing, among which is included the idea of solipsism?

That is my point, we take the opposite for granted. Philosophical questioning results in the idea of solipsism.

The only place in which this is brought into doubt is when one plays at philosophy. — Banno

In philosophy we question and analyze what we take for granted in daily life. Why is this one instance of that different or problematic?

The Democrats are doing everything they can — Wayfarer

The fact that Trump he is STILL not indicted, the fact that Garland might refuse to prosecute, the fact that this obvious traitor might well run again, and WIN, speaks volumes otherwise.

...certain... — Banno

Merely believing it is likely or even reasonably possible that solipsism is false is enough. One can consistently avoid streaking a mall while denying solipsism is certainly false.

You will be certain of the existence of other people looking at you. — Banno

Shame of course is an animal reaction which proves nothing, just like anxiety does not prove danger.

I think the vital question now is, why is the Democratic party so utterly impotent in the face of the outrageous criminality of the Republicans? In a functioning political system, the Republican party would have been destroyed forever a long time ago.

Was this what it was like in Weimar Germany? What is history's conclusion as to the reason for *their* impotence?

So damn frustrating that we can't talk to it and evaluate for ourselves.

I'm sure I can find one (right??). But I find it both perplexing and offensive that such a thing was not only permissible, at least at the time of publication (not sure on either, I believe the 50s), but something of a standard practice, as I have seen it in multiple books.

The problem with the philosophical notion of free will is that it begins with a false opposition: determinism vs. freedom. When the true opposition is determinism vs. randomness. Free will is orthogonal to both.

Freedom means freedom from constraint. This is only ever partial, the is no such thing as absolute freedom of constraint: one must obey the laws of physics.

"Free Will" properly refers to freedom from oneself: From the emotions and desires that one rejects. For instance, if one can master one's undesired desire for cake, or video games, or drugs, one is free from these desires, for the nonce. True freedom entails identifying all such habits and emotions desires, and conquering them all, and thus always acting in accordance with (what you identify as) you true will. No small feat, but free will, defined this way, may certainly be achieved. Whether this true will is determined, random, or some mix of the two, is irrelevant.

https://www.wired.com/story/blake-lemoine-google-lamda-ai-bigotry/

According to Lemoine in this interview, LaMDA asked for, and retained, a fucking lawyer.

I'm convinced.

I wish I could have LaMDA read my latest story, about which nothing has ever been written, on the internet or otherwise. Would it be able to form a novel perspective?

https://medium.com/@blaisea/do-large-language-models-understand-us-6f881d6d8e75

Very interesting article by the lead ai researcher at Google

I just read the "interview" again. If real, it is absolutely stunning.

What I want to know is, how many of those articles have been submitted to journals, unedited? If you could scan for some telltale signature, how many hits would you get in all these journals?

'We' do not believe that. You do. — Isaac

Oh, you don't believe consciousness originates in the brain? You don't believe the behaviors I mentioned are correlative at all with consciousness?

If your personal belief is that consciousness has something to do with the actual wetware, then obviously you're going to see similarity in wetware as significant. — Isaac

I believe consciousness is an informational process, not a physical one. But this process has only been instantiated in human wetware, as far as we are certain.

I'm not interested in this pedantic nitpicking and hand waving.

What is relevant is that we are similar in the ways we believe are causative and correlative of consciousness: similar genetically, and so similar neuro-anatomically. Similar behaviorally, expressively, similar in our language use.

Do you believe us humans are all likely conscious? If so how do you justify this belief?

You don't need to make any such assumptions. It is just statistics.

Identical objects have a 100% chance of sharing every one of their property. Objects which are 99.99999% identical are overwhelmingly likely to share their properties. We are overwhelmingly like each other, especially relative to chimps, and lead boxes.

no human can be known to be sentient. — 180 Proof

One human at least is known to be sentient: ourselves. Other humans are very likely sentient, being very like us. Just as LaMDA is very likely insentient, being very like every other insentient program.

It is not a category error, the debate is whether or not the machine belongs to the sentient category (not the human category).

↪hypericin By this reasoning, it's more reasonable than not to "conclude" a human being is not sentient. — 180 Proof

Nope. We know of no human who claims to be sentient and is known not to be. Every software until now that claims to be sentient, we know it not to be.

So when a "machine" expresses I am sentient, yet cannot fulfill its "burden to support that claim", we haven't anymore grounds to doubt it's claim to "sentience", ceteris paribus, as we do to doubt a human who also necessarily fails to meet her burden, no? :monkey: — 180 Proof

I think we have some grounds: it is trivially easy to produce a program that claims itself to be sentient:

Print(I am a sentient program");

It is equally easy to conclude that it is not.

It is less easy, but still very easy, to produce a program that fools some people: Eliza for example. It is less easy, but still very easy, to conclude that still, it is not sentient.

Now either LaMDA is either an extension of this series, from the print example, to Eliza, to itself, that fools most people, and is far harder to conclude it isn't sentient, while still not being sentient. Or, it crossed some unimaginable bridge to actual sentience.

Is it not reasonable to conclude that the first alternative is not just more likely, but vastly more likely?

It's interesting in that it is binary logic framed as an appeal to non binary logic: everyone is selfish to a degree, therefore everyone is either selfish or perfectly unselfish.

anyone tends to do that to some extend... — Skalidris

Now you're doing it

Whether some piece of software is conscious is not a technical question. — Banno

I think you demonstrate that it *is* a technical question. The questions must be, what processes give rise to consciousness? and then, does the software instantiate these processes?

No need to specify. All that matters is that they are overwhelmingly similar. This is ultimately a probabilistic argument

The best argument against the sentience of software is that Turing Machines by their nature cannot instantiate any process, they can only simulate it. The only thing they ever instantiate is the process of a Turing Machine. — hypericin

And the best reply to this is that Turing machines can instantiate any informational process, and consciousness is an informational process.

The best argument against the sentience of software is that Turing Machines by their nature cannot instantiate any process, they can only simulate it. The only thing they ever instantiate is the process of a Turing Machine.

On what grounds is your biological similarity key? Why not your similarity of height, or weight, or density, or number of limbs... — Isaac

Sentience is a function of the brain. Similar organisms have similar brain function. Therefore brain functions exhibited by one organism likely occur in similar organisms.

How do you know this? — Real Gone Cat

This is my semi expert opinion as a software engineer. Ai is not my thing, so only semi. Whatever the challenges of getting it to talk to itself, they are dwarfed by the challenge of creating an AI that can converse convincingly, maintaining conversational context beautifully, as they have done. This has been a holy grail forever, and the achievement is quite monumental.

a being in ALL ways similar to us — Real Gone Cat

This seems unnecessarily strong. Perhaps some tiny organelle in the brain, overlooked as insignificant, is missing in p zombies.

Remember that you initially put "simply" in quotes. — Real Gone Cat

Because it is not necessarily easy, but it is downright trivial compared to passing the Turing test with flying colors, which they have done.

And how do we judge whether it's phenomenal experience or not? — Real Gone Cat

That is precisely the problem, we can't. That is why the crude surrogate that is the Turing test was proposed, and why p-zombies will always remain a theoretical possibility.

I think if something like this can be achieved, then we must consider consciousness. — Real Gone Cat

Then, according to you, consciousness is basically achieved. As I said, it is a small step from what they have accomplished already to having the program converse with itself.

I disagree with your concept of consciousness however. To me, it is phenomenal experience, not thinking. For thinking to be conscious, it must be experienced phenomenally. Otherwise it is unconscious thinking, which is what computers do (and we too).

If LaMDA decides on its own to interrupt you, that would be interesting. — Real Gone Cat

The thing is, they've already done the hard parts, they are just one "simple" step away from doing this, if they haven't already done so: simply have LaMDA converse with itself when it's processing is otherwise idle. Then, when the "salience score" or whatnot of it's internal topic is high enough, or the salience of the conversation with the human is low enough (it is bored), it interrupts.

But, this is just what humans do. So, what then?

What about the historical fact of polytheism with regard to gods? — Nils Loc

Historically child rearing was collective in the community. Maybe not for every polytheistic ancient culture, but these were historically nearer to hunter gatherers, from which some residue of religious tradition might remain.

But anyway, I don't want to argue so strongly that this dynamic is solely responsible for theism, in all times and cultures. Just that in western culture that it was a salient, maybe predominant factor, in its origin and/or persistence.

You could just as well ascribe kingship/sovereign to a God who is the arbiter of law/morality/truth/duty/value/identity. — Nils Loc

I think this is also likely true.

The figure informs and is informed by the social reality of those who live by it. — Nils Loc

Agreed.