There is an interesting parallel to humans being overly reliant on human authorities, and the development of religions.

Two hundred years ago, a machine that does what Chat-GPT does was unimaginable. Why think that the limits of your imagination is so informative?

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) introduction

This seems to assume that AI will never be provided with 'sensory organs', so that AI can never learn about reality first hand. That doesn't seem like a good assumption to me.

So, there is no issue. — AmadeusD

Tell that to the spouse of the duplicated person. :wink:

Can you give a definition of "creative thinking " that could be used in a Turing-type test? — Ludwig V

AI outperforms humans in standardized tests of creative potential:

Score another one for artificial intelligence. In a recent study, 151 human participants were pitted against ChatGPT-4 in three tests designed to measure divergent thinking, which is considered to be an indicator of creative thought.

Divergent thinking is characterized by the ability to generate a unique solution to a question that does not have one expected solution, such as "What is the best way to avoid talking about politics with my parents?" In the study, GPT-4 provided more original and elaborate answers than the human participants...

The definition I linked to was as follows:

Biological reductionism: A theoretical approach that aims to explain all social or cultural phenomena in biological terms, denying them any causal autonomy. Twentieth-century incarnations of biological reductionism have relied to varying degrees on Darwin's theory of evolution and principles of natural selection. Within the human sciences, there have been attempts to explain observed differences in group behaviour—such as performance on intelligence tests, rates of mental illness, intergenerational poverty, male dominance or patriarchy, and propensity for crime—as being biologically determined, by claiming that groups have different biological capacities or evolutionary trajectories. The theories of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and sociobiology often involve biological reductionism. A recognition of the importance of biological conditions and human nature need not involve biological reductionism. — Wayfarer

There's a bit of argumentum ad odium to that definition.

One might also say, that some understanding of the way things reduce to biology is a matter or being educated.

...I can't believe we just 'pick it up' by nature. — kudos

It seems to me we pick up experience and knowledge by nature. Experience and knowledge are part of most definitions of wisdom I have seen.

Why think that people wouldn't tend to pick up wisdom by nature?

That's exactly why Turing's test is so persuasive - except that when we find machines that could pass it, we don't accept the conclusion, but start worrying about what's going on inside them. If our test is going to be that the putative human needs to have a human inside - mentally if not necessarily physically, the game's over. — Ludwig V

It seems to me that it is time to rethink the relevance of the Turing Test. If humans ever create a machine that develops sentience, I would expect the machine to think in ways quite alien to us. So I don't see 'being indistinguishable from a human' as a very good criteria for judging sentience. (Or at the very least, humanity will need to attain much deeper understanding of our own natures, to create sentient machines whose sentience is human-like.)

Furthermore, it seems quite plausible that machines with no sentience will soon be able to convince many Turing Test judges. So to me, the Turing Test doesn't seem to provide a useful criteria for much of anything.

It isn't dismissive, it's objective. The fundamental mechanism of information processing via artificial neural networks has not changed. — Pantagruel

There are different aspects of information processing to be considered. Yes, understanding of how neural networks can process data in powerful ways has been around for a long time. The hardware that allows that sort of information processing to be practical is a much more recent arrival.

It is simply faster and more robust. It isn't one whit more intelligent than any other kind of mechanism. — Pantagruel

Well, it has an important aspect of intelligence that many other systems don't have, which is learning. Do you think that a distinction between learning mechanisms and non-learning mechanisms is worthwhile to recognize?

Nvidia hasn't become a two trillion dollar corporation because hype.
— wonderer1

This has absolutely no bearing on inherent nature of the technology in question. — Pantagruel

It certainly has bearing on the systems that are actually implemented these days. The type of physical systems available to implement artificial neural nets play a significant role in what can be achieved with such systems. The degree of parallel distributed processing is higher these days, and in that sense the hardware is more brain-like.

What is being hyped as "AI" for marketing purposes is a simulation, a simulacrum, a model, nothing more. — Pantagruel

This seems overly dismissive to me. Nvidia hasn't become a two trillion dollar corporation because hype. Nvidia has become a two trillion dollar corporation because their parallel processing GPUs allow information processing to be done in ways which weren't feasible without highly parallel processor architectures.

There is revolutionary information processing going on in modern "AI" systems. Of course there is no good reason to think that there is anything like human consciousness happening in these systems, but that is a different matter from whether there is something substantially different between the leading edge information processing of today and that of ten years ago. (Which your post seems to suggest.)

Sure. I was just giving a thumb's up to the recognition of value in considering one's 'training set' shown by @Olento's post.

Lately I've been thinking that maybe human thought really is some kind of language model. We expose ourselves to massive amount of text and discussion, and then just "continue the prompt". Well I'm not saying this very seriously, but for sure I'm going to prepare myself to that scenario by reading and writing as much as I can. It will be good for me in any case — Olento

:up:

The issue is that the definition of reason itself, per Adorno and Habermas, has changed in post-Enlightenment philosophy. To throw that into relief, consider the mainstream consensus of the essentially meaningless nature of the Universe. On the one hand, from a purely scientific point of view, it makes complete sense, as we're looking at it from a completely objective point of view. — Wayfarer

On a scientifically informed perspective, it would be naive to think that we're looking at anything from a completely objective point of view.

We are creatures that find things meaningful. Looking for meaning, beyond actually finding things meaningful in this life, might be a fool's errand.

Science consciously excludes anything subjective in its reckonings. — Wayfarer

That is clearly one of your favorite things to say. But it's simply not true. It strongly suggests you are ignorant of a whole lot of scientific thought.

But when this becomes a belief about the 'the way things really are' that it opens up the chasm of nihislim. — Wayfarer

Your bogeyman.

Because we don't actually live in the scientific universe, we dwell in the human condition. — Wayfarer

False dichotomy.

...and then you have to factor climate change in again.... — Pantagruel

AMOC collapse would make Britain a far less balmy place.

How can You convince someone, who thinks that philosophy is just idle talk, that at least not all of this kind is mere empty stream of words? — Pez

Demonstrate the social ninjitsu skills that come from long involvement with philosophical arguments?

ChatGPT has adopted the philosophical approach. Everything seems factual and devoid of evaluation, at least until the conclusion that "belief in the existence of the world is generally regarded as a foundational assumption of human cognition and inquiry, underlying our understanding of the natural world and our place within it," for which no support is provided. — Gary Venter

Do you think the statement is lacking in support? I would think randomly polling people on the question would show general agreement with ChatGPT.

Both, I guess. The fallacy of composition is to assume that because a certain type/element of thought is linguistic, that all aspects of it must be — e.g., if there are things we like about a piece of music or art that we can't put into words, this je ne sais quoi isn't contained in "thought." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's an interesting way of looking at it. It reminds me of recent discussions on TPF, of variation in the extent to which people experience an inner monolog. I wonder if there is much correlation between the degree to which people experience an inner monolog, and a tendency to categorize things that cannot be put into words, as other than thought.

I'm not at all sure what you said there. I don't know what a "physical reference" might be... — Banno

By a physical reference I mean a physical system used in comparing a second tier reference standard to the current definition of a physical unit (e.g. metre). The physical reference for a metre is something that has changed over time.

The metre was originally defined in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's polar circumference is approximately 40000 km.

In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar, the bar used was changed in 1889, and in 1960 the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that the metre is a measure of proper length. From 1983 until 2019, the metre was formally defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second. After the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units, this definition was rephrased to include the definition of a second in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs. This series of amendments did not alter the size of the metre significantly – today Earth's polar circumference measures 40007.863 km, a change of 0.022% from the original value of exactly 40000 km, which also includes improvements in the accuracy of measuring the circumference.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre

...nor an "actual metre". — Banno

I wasn't suggesting that you had a concept of an "actual metre". As I said, "I assume you aren't suggesting there is such a thing as an actual metre, aside from there being such a consensus on how "metre" is defined." I suppose I was mostly concerned that people might misinterpret you saying "...no more a fact than the length of the standard metre was 1m." as suggesting there is a fact of what an actual metre is, apart from the human consensus.

Are you aware of the difference in opinion between Wittgenstein and Kripke?

A thread on its own. Or a career. — Banno

Not very aware.

I have a career very much involved with metrology (though not metres specifically). I suppose I'm inclined to get pedantic on the subject.

I am questioning the idea of anything being perfect. I am saying that it could be impossible, or simply a made up concept, since there is no evidence of it. If this is the case, according to your definition, goodness also does not exist. Now, something is clearly amiss here. This would suggest that there is something wrong with your definition. — Beverley

:up:

Language as the defining aspect of thought or mental life appears to be a sort of synecdoche, or maybe a fallacy of composition. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fallacy of composition or division? I could see it as a fallacy of division, i.e. 'thought is language all the way down' or "In the beginning was the word." I'm not seeing how a fallacy of composition might be in play, however.

In any case, this is a very interesting topic to me personally. I'd love to see an OP where you delve into the topic further.

Can you see an analogy with the idea of the conservation of energy? — Janus

I'm not seeing any very good analogy.

I'm suggesting that perhaps the conservation of energy is no more a fact than the length of the standard metre was 1m. — Banno

From my perspective the standard metre is an agreed upon physical reference as to what distance is to be considered 1m. It seems to me the point of a standard metre is that a bunch of people agree to use it as the definition of a metre, until something better comes along. I assume you aren't suggesting there is such a thing as an actual metre, aside from there being such a consensus on how "metre" is defined.

With science we force the object to present more of itself than it wants to. — Jamal

So a connotation of animism? :wink:

Maybe you can help Janus? Why do you and I want to say, and why do some phenomenologists say, that the things we perceive present themselves to us? I feel I’m missing something obvious. — Jamal

Something obvious to me is how much is not being talked about with a statement like "Things we perceive present themselves to us." There are a lot of details that might be understood, that are seemingly brushed under the rug with such a statement.

I'd be curious as to what connotations "present" has in this context and how those connotations might contrast with a scientific view on the matter.

Well, another problem would be that human experts tend to be continually learning, so the system you describe would seem to inevitably lag behind human expertise. So unless the system is going to have a perceptual system, enabling it to become the world's leading expert at everything, how can it avoid lagging behind human experts?

My goal is (1) to make Boolean True(x) computable. (2) This requires that a machine has an understanding of the world at least equal to the best human experts in every field. — PL Olcott

Sounds like a wildly unrealistic goal to me.

Currently humans do not have as much as a good guess between truth and well crafted lies. — PL Olcott

I'd have to say that there is a lot of variation from human to human and subject to subject.

The database that I referred to has always been the the set of general knowledge of the current actual world that can be expressed using language. For example it is true that "cats are animals" thus disagreement is simply incorrect. — PL Olcott

Why is what is "general knowledge" so important? Typically, when I am talking about sailboats, I am talking with fellow sailors who understand "cat" is short for catamaran, and what a cat looks like:

For, "cats are a type of sailboat" could no doubt be defined as an "analytical truth," by fiat and entered into a database, but this would not make it true that cats are a type of sailboat. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Cats are my favorite kind of sailboat, because they are fast.

Perhaps Kant can help us? Or phenomenology? What methodology do you think you have access to that can answer the above and determine what direction this enquiry should take? Or do you think straightforward empiricism can resolve this matter? — Tom Storm

I don't think our science is so incomplete that we can't determine that there are regularities in nature independent of our cognitive faculties. For example, I routinely capture highly regular sequences of events using an oscilloscope, where the time intervals between events are measured in microseconds or nanoseconds. I have no reason to think that my cognitive faculties are capable of distinguishing events at such temporal resolutions, let alone impose such regularity on the events.

I don't see any sensible of interpreting such high speed events as products of my mind.

However, if we're going to amend these accounts of words to incorporate useful delineations, then we 'perceive' directly the representations which we are 'seeing' indirectly, — AmadeusD

I would think the representation is some collection of neurons in our brains firing with some relationship to a brainwave phase. However, I don't think it makes sense to say that "I see such a representation." At best I only vaguely imagine such a representation.

If the Direct Realist suggests that the dot "is" Mars, this reintroduces the problem of identity, in that how can a 1mm diameter dot in a person's visual field "be" a 6,794km diameter planet? — RussellA

Saying "I see Mars" is in effect saying that the photons which cause me to recognize that I am seeing Mars were reflected by Mars.

I'm afraid that it is rather mystifying to me, that someone capable of using the Internet, doesn't understand why an object the size of Mars at the distance of Mars would have the visual appearance that it does.

But should laws not refer to something? Law itself being nature sounds, for me at least, a bit inconceivable. — Pez

Is it inconceivable that there are naturally occurring negatively charged particles called electrons and positively charged particles caller protons that are naturally attracted to each other? Or is it more conceivable that electrons and protons don't actually have such properties, and are just following laws?

Quantum physicist Karen Barad has produced a model
of interaffecting matter that was inspired by the double
slit experiments.

Phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without pre-existing relata... — Joshs

Does Barad claim a scientific justification for the claim?

Under your criterial demand the only "direct link" would be if the object was the experience. If the object is separate from the experience of it, then you would presumably say there is a gulf between them, and that this gulf justifies saying we do not experience objects directly. As others point out it all comes down to what is meant by "direct". I have long thought that experience can be thought about as direct or indirect, depending on the definitions and framing. So, the whole argument is undecidable in any absolute sense and is thus really a non-starter, another confusing artefact of thinking dualistically. — Janus

Very well said.

Non-Magical Intuition :
Intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation. It is not magical but rather a faculty in which hunches are generated by the unconscious mind rapidly sifting through past experience and cumulative knowledge.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/intuition — Gnomon

Did you read the last paragraph?

It is possible to hone your powers of intuition. To some degree, intuition stems from expertise, which relies on tacit knowledge. Strengthening intuition requires making use of feedback, comparing the real-life outcomes of situations with the intuitive decisions you made. Even so, being highly intuitive in one domain of experience doesn’t guarantee reliability in every area.

:up:

:up:

Can there be a notion of progress in ethical or scientific understanding that doesnt need to rely on a true-false binary? — Joshs

In the case of scientific understanding, a spectrum from naive to well informed to me seems more relevant than a true false binary.

Can we make progress in understanding and navigating the world by continually revising this scheme, without having to declare the earlier versions ‘false’? — Joshs

Along the same lines, declaring the earlier versions naive seems more descriptive of the situation than false.

Yup. From what we have seen of quantum fluctuations, we know that's a possibility, given enough time? — Patterner

I'm not sure how we could say we know that.

I'm then questioning his suggestion that we can dismiss the conclusion that we are most likely Boltzmann brains a priori, as that then entails that we can dismiss some empirically well-supported scientific model a priori. For example, as per RogueAI's comment above, one supposed solution is to dismiss (4) a priori. Is that really rational? — Michael

First off, I don't know what you might be referring to with "really rational". As members of a social primate species go, (a social primate species which only began to develop literacy ~5500 years ago) I'd say Carroll is one of the more rational ones.

You see, there is empirical evidence we can intersubjectively consider, for a wide variety of scientific matters outside of physics. Carroll is certainly not ignorant of sciences outside of physics. It seems likely Carroll is inclined to consider The Big Picture.