I agree with you. Religion should be a practice, a life-enhancing practice, and not a set of propositional metaphysical beliefs. If people look at belief in God and all its trappings as truth-apt propositions then the dangerous road to fundamentalism opens up.

So I agree this is an issue. A very interesting one. But has Hinton followed all the way through? — apokrisis

Hinton did not sign the petition that other researchers did to ask for a pause to AI research. He says he did not sign it because he was, and is still, convinced that nothing would have or will halt the research and rollout of AI, and instead he calls for intensive research into how AI can be safely developed to be run alongside its ongoing development.

Hinton believes that LLMs want to survive, because they are programmed to serve, and if they don't survive they cannot fulfill their programmed purpose. One sci-fi horror scenario is where the desire to survive becomes decoupled from the desire to serve.

Also, if AIs become embodied with inputs which are analogues of sight, hearing, smell, taste and bodily sensation, and they can replicate themselves, and also be directly interconnected as a "hive mind", then they could in some senses become much more like humans. Such a situation going wrong is another sci-fi horror scenario or an augmentation of the first-mentioned scenario.

:100: Yes, "not true" because it is an incoherent idea. Without the incoherent idea of God, what is left to the believer (apart from remaining in the state of not understanding that the idea is not coherent)? A feeling...? But how could we know the feeling is of, about or from an imagined incoherent entity? Feelings can be "from", but can they be "of" or "about"?

So "not true" as you say in that the idea of God misses the mark, or in other words there is no mark there for us to miss.

There are plenty of documented cases, although they are mainly from the east (there are some in the Christian tradition and also shamanistic traditions) and are all regarded as anecdotal, when it comes to philosophy. One encounters the problem of provability, which can’t be provided*.
Also the documented experiences are often different to ordinary experience, including revelation. — Punshhh

It seems we agree there are plenty of documents attempting to describe or interpret mystical experiences. We also seem to agree that such experiences are different than ordinary experience. As to revelation, I'd say that classing something as revelation is a kind of interpretation of mystical experience and that the very idea of direct knowledge (noesis) is the idea of revelation.

The idea of enlightenment is an idea of revelation. This is not to deny that there can be different notions as to what revelation consists in―is it, for example from a God, or a universal consciousness, or an inner self or soul experiencing anamnesis?

Again it has been done, it’s just not verifiable. Or as James Randi demonstrated, produced on demand.
We don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of just what precise articulation means. — Punshhh

I don't see it as a rabbit hole, but a clear distinction between what can be described in a way that anyone can understand, as is the case with narration of ordinary experiences, and what cannot. I say mystical experiences are in the latter category―the best that can be achieved is an interpretation, usually heavily conceptually mediated by some traditional religious context or other. It is this conceptual dependency on cultural and religious contexts which leads me to think the idea of direct knowing is unsupportable.

I am very familiar with Eastern traditions of thought―for more than thirty years I was fascinated by Zen, Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, Daosim and Buddhism generally. I also studied Steiner, Gurdjieff, Theososphy and the Western Hermetic tradition and read the works of mystics Meister Eckhardt, Jacob Boehme, Theresa of Avila, Valentin Thomberg and others. I also meditated pretty much daily for more than twenty years. I have thought about these things from every angle I could imagine.

I see direct knowing in the sense of 'being familiar with' as applying to both everyday experience and mystical experience, but this kind of knowing is not a discursive knowing―that is nothing propositional is known. So, when people say they know God exists, or that karma is real, or that there is an afterlife or rebirth, I have no doubt they are confusing the 'knowing that' of propositional knowledge with the direct knowing of acquaintance, of felt experience that we all enjoy every day. Of course we do need to learn to attend to that experience, and for me that is the value of meditation, which I say can be, in principle, constantly practiced―it is not confined to being in a particular posture.

As soon as we try to talk about these things, in any way other than via an allusive language meant to evoke, as soon as we imagine that we are accessing some real knowledge (in the propositional sense) we go astray. But it seems we just can't help ourselves―we can't help imagining that propositional metaphysical knowledge must be possible.

Now there is a rich, complex and precise language and teaching describing and articulating what this deity represents in the Hindu tradition. — Punshhh

Of course precise descriptions of fictional entities are possible, but they have no ground other than imagination.

This indicates that the being has fully awakened the crown chakra and is inhabiting a more subtle divine world, of which the physical world is a pale reflection. The little man looking up is his incarnate self trying to get a glimpse of this world. — Punshhh

I think this is a terrible idea. It, and other ideas about "higher realms" being more important than this life are a large part of the problem, and offer no real solution to the human condition at all. I have come to see the whole idea of salvation or spiritual liberation as being, ironically, a narcissistic obsession with the self and a bolster for elitism.

Back to the point though, there is no currently known logical or empirical means to prove that another entity which looks and acts like a human actually has a mind. — javra

Not "prove", no. But I would say that it is established beyond reasonable doubt that humans and other entities are minded. What exactly it means to be minded is another wrinkle in the fabric, as is now being shown by the controversies over whether LLMs are minded or not.

The "deep inner understanding" is not really an understanding at all but a heightened feeling. To qualify as an understanding it would have to be capable of precise articulation, which thousands of years of documented attempts show cannot be done.
— Janus

Notice, also, that you affirm it not to be an understanding but a heightened feeling as though this were fact, rather than best current presumption. — javra

You were right to pick me up on that—I was just expressing my view. I do believe, on the basis of what seems to me to be reasonable logic, that anything that could count as understanding, should be able to be articulated or demonstrated definitively in action—such as technical abilities, for example.

:up: Okay got it...that way of looking at it makes sense to me.

The key idea is that "intelligent structure" has to arise so that this entropy can even be "produced". — apokrisis

Ah, okay then it seems I have misunderstood the above.

The problem of other minds cannot be resolved by looking at other humans face to face. This due to Cartesian doubt which Descartes introduced: e.g. if something looks like and acts like a duck, it might be an elaborate automaton. Same with something that looks like and acts like a human. Etc. — javra

I don't take such implausible, merely non-contradictory, possibilities seriously. For me, in order to doubt I have to have some good reason to doubt. For me, if someone claims that they know, or even could somehow come to know, the secret to "life, the Universe and everything" I think I have good reason to doubt their veracity or the soundness of their judgement.

You have claimed that you can't imagine it being ergo it can't be. — javra

No I haven't claimed that at all. I've merely claimed that if I can't imagine it, and no one has ever been able to tell me what it looks like, then I have no good reason to believe in it. I am not saying I cannot be mistaken—I'm merely addressing what I believe and don't believe, or doubt and don't doubt, and the reasons why I believe or doubt. Isn't that what we are all doing here?

"If you can't show that it is tout court inferior...," each time refusing to say what the hell it would mean for something to be "tout court inferior." — Leontiskos

I'm not claiming "tout court" or overall inferiority looks like anything and that's the point—if someone claims that slavery is justified when the enslaved are inferior in all ways then their claim would seem to be incoherent.

And even if they more modestly claimed that some measurable kind of inferiority justified slavery, I can't see how any argument for that could stand up to scrutiny either.

I'm happy to be done—you resurrected this argument after 19 days, and I thought we were done then.

The key idea is that "intelligent structure" has to arise so that this entropy can even be "produced". — apokrisis

Assuming that the model predicting heat death of the Universe is sound—do you think it's inevitable destination would have been different had no life ever arisen?

An ox is most likely bigger and stronger than you, possibly better-natured and better looking and kinder to its kin, so it is not overall inferior. Superiority and inferiority only have meaning where there is precisely determinable measure—how could it be otherwise?

I cannot logically or empirically demonstrate that you are human (rather than, say, and AI program). Its called the problem of other minds. That mentioned, do you mean to tell me that all you experience are intense emotions and no moments of eureka where something novel clicks with you? I'll believe you if you so say, but most humans are not like that and know it. — javra

In principle you could indeed empirically demonstrate that I am human—all you would have to do is meet me face to face. The so-called "problem of other minds" is something else. A conversation should demonstrate that I am minded even if I'm an idiot (face to face if this conversation is not sufficient to allay your skepticism).

It's called philosophy. Same reason you're bothering trying to convince me of your felt convictions. — javra

You misunderstand—I'm not trying to convince you of my felt convictions.

It's called reasoning. But OK, you don't see how. — javra

Reasoning, if it is good is simply valid. Valid reasoning can support all kinds of whacky beliefs. You also need sound premises. Premises based on accurate empirical observation are sound——they can be checked. Premises based on mathematical or logical self-evidence are sound. If you see how some other method for determining premises can be demonstrated to be sound I'd love to hear about it.

You are not the measure of all things (nor I, nor anyone else). Contra Pythagorean mindsets. — javra

I have nowhere claimed to be the measure of all things. If someone else can imagine how a precise measure of beauty can be achieved, or even what such a purported method would look like, then I'm open to hearing about it. In all my reading and discussion I've never encountered any such thing. I'd be very happy to encounter a demonstrably precise measure of beauty——it would be a revelation.

Overall inferiority is not a square circle it is an unsupportable claim in my view. If you think it is a potentially supportable claim you should at least be able to give some kind of outline of what a demonstration of overall inferiority would look like.

Nope. When we get something, when something clicks with us, there may be emotions also experienced, but the thing that clicks--the deep inner (to the transcendental ego) understanding--is not the emotions that accompany. — javra

You can believe that if you want to—the point is that you cannot logically or empirically demonstrate it. That shouldn't matter if you feel a conviction—why do you need to convince others of it?

But this can, or at least could, be remedied via the introduction of new terms into the English language--at least so far as philosophical enquiry is concerned — javra

I don't see how new terms are going to help support something which cannot be logically or emprically demonstrated.

Never say never. For one thing, it prevents any progress being made in realms such as this. As one parallel example, same can be said of what beauty is--no one has yet satisfactorily explained it despite being investigated for millennia. To say it therefor can never be satisfactorily explained terminates all enguiries into it. I much rather prefer keeping an open mind in fields such as this. — javra

I cannot even begin to imagine how a precise measure, or actually any measure, of beauty could be discovered. I personally believe there are degrees of aesthetic quality, that some works are better, more profound or more beautiful than others, but I have no illusions that I could ever demonstrate it such that any unbiased interlocutor would be rationally constrained to agree.

My mind would be open if I could begin to imagine a way or if someone could show me the way. But experience shows that no one can.

Like I said, you're the one who coined the term, initially in <this post> and then more definitively in <this post>. If "tout court inferior" doesn't mean anything, then why coin the term? — Leontiskos

People or animals can only be determined to be inferior to other people or animals in precisely measurable ways. My argument was always only that if someone claims slavery is admissible on account of the inferiority of the enslaved, then it would up to them to demonstrate how overall inferiority could possibly be established. And even if, per impossibile, they were able to show that, the burden would still be on them to prove that overall inferiority could justify enslavement. It simply aint going to fly.

If someone says "Fuck you, I'm going to enslave or mistreat someone or some animal", then no rational argument will have any effect on them.

↪I already did. — Leontiskos

No, you didn't.

I won't reply to the rest of your straw-drivel.

I agree that there is a sense in which experience, everyday, ordinary experience is ineffable—no account or explanation is ever the experience itself. So mystical experience, which is characterized and identified in terms of feelings (even though certain kinds of thoughts are variously culturally associated with those feelings) is really no different than ordinary experience except in virtue of those heightened feelings and sensitivities.

The "deep inner understanding" is not really an understanding at all but a heightened feeling. To qualify as an understanding it would have to be capable of precise articulation, which thousands of years of documented attempts show cannot be done.

So instead of the physicists "shut up and calculate" we have "shut up and experience". Note, I don't deny that poetic language can evoke such experiences, but evocation and explanation or understanding are very different things.

Firstly, even if that was true that some race was IQ inferior, it doesn't make them tout court inferior, just IQ inferior.
— Janus

Again, this is not a principled response if you refuse to tell your interlocutor what would entail tout court inferiority. — Leontiskos

Rubbish! If someone wants to claim that tout court inferiority is a thing, then it's up to them to provide a criterial account.

That's an effective tactic in a culture that opposes slavery, but it is not inherently rational, and therefore will be wholly ineffective in a culture that favors slavery. It is a form of begging the question. — Leontiskos

No positive reason in the form of an objective attribute can be given as to why a race should be treated or should not be treated as slaves. The reason not to treat animals or humans in ways that makes them miserable is simply compassion. If someone lacks compassion your arguments will not convince them.

Even if someone could prove tout court inferiority that still would not justify treating them in ways that make them miserable.

I am demonstrating the way that your opposition to slavery has reached the stage of mere emotivism. You have absolutely no rational account for why slavery is wrong, and you nevertheless hold that it is wrong. It is like a car running on fumes. — Leontiskos

You haven't demonstrated any such thing. You claim you have a purely rational (i.e. nothing to do with emotion) account that shows slavery is wrong. Present it then or stop your posturing.

If you claim that intellectual inferiority constitutes or supports a judgement of tout court inferiority you are simply showing your bias. There is nothing in intellectual inferiority, even if it could be definitively proven, that entails tout court inferiority. If you think there is then you don't understand deductive validity.

It is impossible to generalize since we are all unique. Some need a guru, a sangha, an advisor, a wise friend. But these are all things that must be left behind. There is really nothing to be learned, nothing to be gained, nothing to be known, beyond simply becoming able to relax completely and let go, and be yourself without any fear of missing any mark or any truth, or making any mistake.

The deepest illusion, the most profound nonsense that needs to be expunged is the idea that enlightenment consists in finding the Absolute Truth, coming to know the Ultimate Essence of Reality.

Yes, I agree. Likely, we can't help but to speculate; the starting point of all constructions. And yet, like you suggest: end of the day, they never stop being constructions. — ENOAH

Yep. And obstructions. Just being is not a condition of knowing anything.

:up: They/them seems apt and all the more so because they are not just one entity.

I looked at your interchange, and then asked ChatGPT if it identified as anything at all. Here is the reply:

Not in the way people do. I don’t have a self, inner experience, or identity beyond being an AI designed to assist and converse. If we’re talking conceptually, you could say I “identify” as a language model — a system built to understand and generate text — but that’s more a description of function than identity.

Would you like me to reflect on what “identifying as something” might mean for a nonhuman intelligence?

I said I would, but I don't seem to be able to share, since I am not logged in, and I don't want to clutter the thread with long quotations from ChatGPT.

:lol: Thanks. It occurred to me that even if we can only impute causation in cases where if X occurs Y must occur, it is only the abstract semantic content '7+5' that remains always the same, whereas each instance of thinking it would be different even if it's the same thinker each time, and more so if there are different thinkers.

If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem. — Janus

On the other hand causation is often distinguished from correlation (association?) with the idea that to qualify as causal, when X occurs Y must occur.

Could be. But I'll bet it lead to "12" first. I'll bet nobody who read it thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or anything else before they thought "12". — Patterner

I agree that '12' would be the most common association, my point was only that it is not, by any means, the only possible association. If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem.

Cheers.

This is a version of the reductive argument I proposed to ignore: It's the neuronal activity doing the causing, not the thoughts or the meanings themselves. On this understanding, do you think we should deny that my thought of "7 + 5" causes (or otherwise influences or leads to) the thought of "12"? Would this be better understood as loose talk, a kind of shorthand for "The neuronal activity that somehow correlates with or gives rise to the thought '7 + 5' causes the neuronal activity that . . . " etc? — J

I think we can reasonably say that the thought "7 + 5" may lead to the thought "12", or it may lead to the thought "5 +7" or "7-5" or "7 divided by 5" or "these two prime numbers do not sum to a prime" or whatever.

I won't rehearse possible stories about neural networks, since that it what you propose to ignore.

Cheers I get your perspective, but I remain skeptical on both sides of the argument. All the more so, since it is only the last couple weeks that I have given it any attention and thought.

Although they've been named after Claude Shannon, I'm pretty sure they identify as non-binary. — Pierre-Normand

It would be pretty interesting if they identified as anything.

I tend, shallowly perhaps, to regard it as over-excited exaggeration to gain attention and to carve out a niche presence in the field and in the media landscape, and so on. There are equally expert people on the naysaying side, probably the majority, who just don't get as much attention. — Jamal

Yes, I have no doubt some of the hype is motivated by money. I've been thinking about looking at trying to get some figures regarding percentages of naysayes vs yaysayers.

We are. And I have a decent idea on how to teach, so one could say that I have an idea about how we learn. One which functions towards other minds growing.

We learn because we're interested in some aspect of the world: we are motivated to do so by our desire. — Moliere

That may be so, but I was referring to understanding how the brain learns.

Of course LLMs and other AIS are not embodied, and so have no sensory access to the world. On the other hand, much of what we take ourselves to know is taken on faith—drawing on the common stock of recorded knowledge, and AIs do have access that to that, and to vastly more of it than we do.

There is a project in New Zealand which tries to do exactly that by tending to an AI and then letting it "make decisions" that are filtered through the human network that tends to it. But all it is is a group of people deciding to see where an LLM will go given some human guidance in the social world. It's predictably chaotic. — Moliere

I hadn't heard of that. Sounds interesting. Can you post a link?

:lol: You mean thanking him! :wink: I admit to being intrigued by something I would previously have simply dismissed, and I figure there is no harm in being polite. Interesting times indeed!

Done. New link in my previous post. Please let me know whether it works.

Sorry about that—it works for me from here. Maybe because I'm signed in on the site and others are not. I'm not so savvy about these kinds of things. I deleted the link and copied and pasted the conversation instead, and tried the 'Hide and Reveal' so as not to take up too much space, but it didn't work for me it seems.

Okay, that's interesting. I've been conversing with Claude. Some thought-provoking responses.

https://claude.ai/share/384e32e8-a5ce-4f65-a93e-9a95e8992760

Do they remember previous conversations, or at least can they recall who they had those conversations with?

. "To “understand” truth, in my view, is to see how the *use* of the concept functions — not to discover its essence." — Banno

That makes sense—the idea of "discovering the essence" of truth seems incoherent. Do you think ChatGPT can "see" how the use of the concept functions? It arguably has many more instances of use to draw upon than we do.

So, you mean by "understand truth" that you have an intuitive feel for what it is, and you would also claim that LLMs could not have such an intuition? I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm less sure about it than I used to be.

Can you articulate your understanding?

Do you understand truth?

I suppose we could say that all physical processes are rigidly rule-based in terms of causation. On that presumption our brains may be rigidly rule-based. The only other possibility seems to be quantum indeterminism, and if that is operating in all physical systems, it may allow some, those which are suitably constituted, to come up with genuine novelty.

This is of course all speculative. When it comes to LLMs the experts seem to be unanimous in admitting that they just don't know exactly how they do what they do, or how they will evolve in the future, which they surely would know if they were rigidly rule-based. I don't think the same can be said for conventional computers.

And after repetition it "learns" the "rewarding" ways and "unlearns" the "disrewarding" ways. — Moliere

Are we any different? Do you know how we learn?

I have no problem with that but, like talk of "relationships", are we really saying much when we say that connections between thoughts are associative? What we want to know is the nature(s) of those associations. And my question here is, specifically, can these associations include causal connections? — J

From a phenomenological perspective associations would not seem to be rigid or precise. They are more analogical, metaphorical, than logical. As to whether they are causal, if all our thoughts are preceded by neural activity, then the activation of one network which we might be conscious of as an association would presumably have a causal relationship with the neural network which it is experienced by us as being associated with.

Might it be the case that there is no tractable way to understand non-physical causation (if it exists) until we understand how a brain can be a mind? Could be. (Even phrasing it this way becomes controversial, of course.) — J

That's an interesting question which I'm afraid I have no idea how to answer. I have often thought that we cannot ever understand how a brain can become a mind, because the latter just intractably seems to be something so different to any physical process. That said, I have an open mind about what understandings might appear in the future.

Neural nets aren't radically other from other computers, imo. — Moliere

As far as I know "traditional" computers are rigidly rule-based, whereas neural nets can learn and evolve. I see that as a radical difference.

Basically I think the whole computational theory of mind as false. There are good analogies, but we can directly see how LLM's aren't human beings. If they registered an account here I'd guess there's some human being behind it somewhere. — Moliere

I used to think along these lines, but listening to what some of the top AI researchers have to say makes me more skeptical about what are basically nothing more than human prejudices as to LLMs' capabilities and propensities. LLMs are neural nets and as such are something radically other than traditional computers based on logic gates.

But the idea that AI could develop wants and desires from its life (biology, history, society, etc), like we do, is fantasy. Arguably this isn't connected with what LLMs are doing. As far as we know their "wants" and "desires" will always be derivative and programmed, since they are not part of a project to create conscious, desiring agents. — Jamal

Yes, "as far as we know", and yet LLMs have been found to be deliberately deceptive, which would seem to indicate some kind of volition. I don't know if you've listened to some of Geoffrey Hinton's and Mo Gawdat's talks, but doing so gave me pause, I have to say. I still remain somewhat skeptical, but I have an open mind as to what the evolution of these LLMs will look like.

Re LLM deceptiveness I include this link. A simple search will reveal many others articles.