That's pretty harsh to throw at some rando who doesn't understand machine learning.
I'm pretty sure most people who follow LW are just a particular combination of immature and arrogant and most of them will grow out of it.
It can’t be just about machine learning, though, right? The claim is that “LLMs can’t be conscious like brains are, even though they can both coherently engage in complex English conversation,” and to support that it seems you have to pont to a relevant difference between LLM architecture and neural architecture. I don’t think Chat GPT has anything like the kind of consciousness we do (mainly because it has anterograde amnesia, if you will, after training). But what about our brains means they couldn’t function as essentially a larger language model (where the “language” includes various nonverbal thought elements in addition to words)? I haven’t seen a good rough explanation of this.
Our brains isn't some statistics machine that spits out whichever words and groups of words are most likely to be grouped together with zero grounding whatsoever.
If it does, then you've no idea what you've just wrote, or what I just wrote to you. You would be a p-zombie, with nothing in your mind that refers to anything at all.
I don’t think that’s a fair description of what GPT does. If its model is able to produce paragraphs of elaborate responses about various concepts/objects without too many non sequiturs, then its complicated system of weights must somehow “encode”/“refer” to those concepts/objects . The weights have to mean something, after all, even if it’s mostly impossible to figure out the function of an individual weight. But maybe this kind of reference is completely different from the kind of reference that exists in our brains, and maybe I’m even wrong in thinking it’s intuitive that they’d be similar.
Not really… I do think elaborate, precisely-adapted behavior requires an elaborate mechanism. It doesn’t mean “consciousness,” just something more than “choosing words for no real reason.” But it seems we’re talking past each other.
Here's my full argument
[https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-consciousness-is-impossible-c1b2ab0bdc46](https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-consciousness-is-impossible-c1b2ab0bdc46)
You can state your counterargument
Is your argument basically the Chinese room argument?
Since neural networks don't operationalize interpretation into a simple set of procedures I'm not sure it really applies (could be wrong though).
If it does apply then my question would be: then how are people conscious? Do you believe in an immaterial soul as the source of qualia?
It's a successor that builds on CRA. It makes the same point of "syntax does not make semantic" without putting a person in the example.
Those networks still require algorithms. Where is the semantic content in an algorithm? See the pseudocode example, as well as the Symbol Manipulator thought experiment.
See the requirements of consciousness as listed. Those are the two things required, and my argumentation shows how those requirements couldn't be met by machines.
I don't know the source, and I don't have to. I don't have to offer any theory to disprove any theory/conjecture in turn. In fact, it's bad to do so. Can you imagine trying to disprove a theory with yet another theory? It'd be like trying to topple a sand castle with a little wet ball of sand. The proof is by principle. The topic is really about what consciousness doesn't entail (algorithmic computation) and not about what consciousness "is."
> Where is the semantic content in an algorithm?
Where is semantic content at all? I'm not being a smartass, but if you don't believe that semantic content can be in an algorithm where do you think it is?
Like semantic meaning is ultimately social right, as per Wittgenstein's community use argument right? At least that's my understanding of things. So when you ask "where is the semantic content in an algo?" it doesn't read to me as inherently absurd nor true, just lacking too much context to be answered.
> I don't know the source, and I don't have to. I don't have to offer any theory to disprove any theory/conjecture in turn. In fact, it's bad to do so. Can you imagine trying to disprove a theory with yet another theory? It'd be like trying to topple a sand castle with a little wet ball of sand.
That's fair. Do you have an opinion though? I'm trying to understand your perspective and how you see things.
Semantic content is the content of the conscious experience, as demonstrated in the [Mary thought experiment](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Irreducible) which is part of The Knowledge Argument.
Meaning isn't just usage. I disagree with that, because if you're by yourself, and you interact with something, anything- then nothing means anything simply because there's no one else around? No- Meaning, as I've pointed out in my article, is a mental connection between something (concrete or abstract) and a conscious experience. Meaning doesn't even have to involve words.
My highest order metaphysical perspective is that I don't think it's possible to establish "the number of things the world is ultimately made of." Monism is presumptive, so is dualism. Pluralism is every bit as likely or unlikely. However, I'm leaning toward pluralism, that's just my intuition- I carry no theories surrounding it. In the pluralist perspective, monist and dualist positions are reductive. As far as theories and models are concerned, it's the old adages of "All models are wrong, some are useful" and "the map is not the territory" (I gave an example in my article that involves satellite navigation)
> Meaning isn't just usage. I disagree with that, because if you're by yourself, and you interact with something, anything- then nothing means anything simply because there's no one else around?
But are you ever really by yourself? Dialogical self theory posits that the mind is not singular but really a conversation between parts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogical_self
Children who grow up feral and are not taught language demonstrate a lifelong reduced capacity for theory of mind: https://www.verywellmind.com/genie-the-story-of-the-wild-child-2795241
Good point about pluralism. I have been considering it.
**[Dialogical self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogical_self)**
>The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue, in close connection with external dialogue. The "dialogical self" is the central concept in the dialogical self theory (DST), as created and developed by the Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans since the 1990s.
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In order for any of that to be "used," doesn't it have to refer to something?
What is the use if it refers to nothing at all?
Saying that use is fundamental is like saying there's use of something before there's anything to be used.
I don't line up with Wittgenstein entirely but I don't see why it would be wrong to say that it does refer to something through the medium of social reality.
The thing in and of itself. But that doesn't exist really. There is no such thing as the thing in isolation from phenomena. So when we refer to that something it's something we sort of take on faith I'd say. Your perception and my perception are different subjective experiences but we also understand that there can be some agreement made about what we're experiencing because we understand that our subjective experiences are still rooted in the real shared reality. We communicate that reality socially through language. That's my understanding.
Then the "usage of the thing in and of itself" doesn't make sense.
The "mental connection between the conscious experience and the subject of experience" (my definition) does.
Okay I guess here's where I get hung up on the "language is reference" position: language is communication between people. Words change meaning all the time. It seems to me clear that words do not have inherent definitions. Definitions are contingent on their social construction.
Does that seem incorrect to you?
You've lost track.
The discussion is regarding meaning.
This eventually led to "meaning is usage," which I disagreed with.
Meaning goes beyond language. Meaning can be present even in the absence of language or words.
It's basically what I've written. If I state it with other terms then I don't know what those mean.
Meaning isn't intention. Intention has to do with an objective. Meaning can exist without intention.
Intentionality isn't intention, either- Those are two separate terms. You'd find a good definition of intention in a philosophy or philosophy of mind dictionary.
I dunno about you, but when *I'm* deciding how to finish a sentence, what I do is read ten billion books and articles looking for how similar sentences are normally finished, and then finish my own sentence the average turkey dinner.
People of Descartes' generation were convinced the mind was a system of hydraulic pipes. It's how people do. If people don't know about something, they reach for the nearest figure of speech, then they need merely strategically forget that it was a figure of speech in order for it to take over the function of knowing.
My theory is that this is what they were going for. On this theory, the book is an exercise in some kind of subversive irony, where one promises something interesting but delivers what vacillates between the banal and the repugnant. The real intent, then, has not to do with metaphor, so much as to show that after WWII the west does not deserve anything beautiful -- or something like this.
You're coming off a little arrogant here. You don't know anything about me. Claiming that I'm being exploited for clicks when you don't even know what my interest, technical background, or beliefs is hasty.
In what way am I responding in bad faith? I'm literally just asking you your opinion. If you believe that human like consciousness is impossible in a machine... why? What sets us apart from the machine? Growing up I was taught it was because we had an immaterial spirit. I have since then shifted towards a neutral monist ontology so I don't believe in immaterial spirit, so I am unaware of an alternative explanation, which is why I asked.
EDIT: if the issue that my questions were short, there's no shade meant there. I'm just curious and want to give you space to explain your view. My terseness shouldn't be interpreted as rudeness. I'm giving you the podium.
> Rather you gave the impression of not being interested in the content of the answers at all, and quickly moved on to the next step in some kind of presumptuous expression of suspicious disagreement you have.
That was not my intention. I would appreciate it if you try to presume less about me in this conversation. I think you're being a little hasty and I'm not really enjoying what feels like an unnecessarily hostile conversation.
> Which completely leaves open the possibility of a conscious machine, denies that it is possible for these specific machines, points out that these specific machines are nothing like human body-brains (notwithstanding other mammals, corvids, octopi, etc.), and grants the philosophical premise undergirding the hypothesis of machine consciousness that consciousness may in principle be realisable across different substrata (those other than the body-brain), just not LLMs because come on, that’s not a serious proposition.
Okay fair, LLMs are def not conscious in the way that humans are conscious obviously but consciousness seems to me like a spectrum so I'm willing to grant that LLMs have helped surface elements of consciousness, and I'm open to the idea that there exists consciousness that is very unlike our own. I don't know what it's like to be a bat, I don't know presume to know what it's like to be an LLM. *shrug*
> A 9 month pregnancy, body, integrated nervous system, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, and so on.
So is this like an embodied cognition thing?
> I don’t have any particular prejudices about the role of matter in consciousness, or neutral monism is true (I think not), I just think that matter is all there physically is, there are no good candidates for alternatives, and humans are conscious and made of matter.
Out of curiosity, would you consider yourself a monist at all? It sounds like you are but I am little unclear on that.
Also it sounds like you're basically saying you are agnostic on the matter? I know you reject the mysterian label but I'm not asking for a specific label. Your position is that you don't know?
> Just try to read over what I said, interpret it as I said it
I can't interpret what you say as you say it, I can only interpret it as I perceive it. This is part of what makes me so uncomfortable in this conversation is because you repeatedly are denying my agency in this dialog. I am not in your head. You are not in mine. Just because you said something a certain way doesn't mean it is going to telepathically transmit lossless into my brain.
> It doesn’t matter what you call a position.
Fair. Then I repeat my question again without any label. You are saying you don't know?
And I'll add another clarifying question: do you believe that all that exists is matter?
> But there is another option: when you hold up a video camera to look at a mountain, it does so from a particular point of view. The height, breadth, colour of the mountain are not in the map of the mountain (although the map has labels indicated what they are). In fact when you move the camera backwards and forwards, these quantities change (from the point of view of the camera) even though none of this is “in” the real map, the mountain doesn’t change height because the camera looks at it from a different angle: but we never say of cameras that this fact is mysterious.
This seems to me to be establishing that phenomena and noumena are separated, is that correct? Like perception of a mountain (the map) does not contain the actual thing itself, and so it shouldn't be too surprising that it doesn't?
> A careful conceptual and logical analysis of this strange thing that a point of view does has been begun at several times in the history of philosophy: Kant and those who came afterwards had a go, phenomenology had a go from a different angle. One thing that distinguishes these traditions is that they never stopped and said “your entire picture of reality is wrong, you have to add the mysterious object”, but they pointed to the fact that there is a deep and hard to penetrate logic which presumably makes ultimate sense of this fact. Of course, many of these people were not materialists, but the point is that they had a go at a developed and complex project without easy answers (which is, in the end, all that the neo-panpsychists seem to be after).
I will be honest, I've tried to understand idealism and phenomenology a couple of times and I still don't really feel like I get any of it.
And I feel like this is a bit hare-brained but the reason why panpychism and neutral monism interested me was because it seemed like it collapsed that distinction into a larger intersubjective whole.
> I think collapsing the distinction into a larger intersubjective whole is nonsensical. I see no plausible philosophical motivation to do so, and I consider the line that smaller things are somehow “less” subjectively aware a pointless cop out. It’s angels on the head of a pin stuff, with the caveat that scholastic metaphysics actually has a lot of thinking behind it, and makes a serious go of squaring that metaphysics with the contemporary natural science.
I can't give you a scholarly reason but I can give you the thing that motivated me to be curious about that possibility.
Let's say two people get in a fight (this is not a reference to our conversation) and someone says "I feel hurt by what you said about my butt looking big". Is that person stating something that is objectively true? Well... it seems to me kind of silly to say that the way someone feels is objectively true... it's a subjective feeling, but it also doesn't feel like it's accurate to say that the statement "I feel hurt you said my butt looked big" is devoid of meaningful truth false value, because people can certainly lie about their feelings.
I was reading about Bohr and the measure problem and stuff, and I read a thing that basically said that when Bohr talked about the "observer" causing wave function collapse, he wasn't necessarily talking about a literal conscious human observer but rather the instrument's measure of the thing. So a thing in itself, a thing in isolation, a thing that is objective, a pure object with no subject relationship, is then measured (forms a intersubjective relationship with another thing, becoming a subject to other subjects) and that is what creates the wave function collapse. My understanding was that this particular way of phrasing things was because of Bohr's logical positivist views but I honestly don't understand his work or even logical positivism that well. But it struck me that this was similar to what I was reading about panpsychism. Which is where I got the understanding that panpsychism and/or neutral monism was a collapse of subjectivity and objectivity into intersubjectivity. Mental experience is dependent on and in relationship to the exterior world, and that exterior world is also in relationship with other exterior world subjects, both physical and mental.
But I also don't know if this is just me misunderstanding a bunch of stuff and being a pseud which is one reason why I am curious to know what the alternatives are. As I said I grew up in a very substance dualist religious household. I don't believe in a supernatural substance, but I do think there are things we talk about that are not strictly material. The word spirit is translated in the Bible often from the word for "breath". And a breath isn't any particular material substance, but it is a description of the inter relationship between material substances... which doesn't seem like it's idealism or supernaturalistic either.
Yes when something my statement about my feelings is true, and it's also true of the world, isn't that intersubjectivity?
I'm not sure how materialism accommodates the bohr example when observation (subjectivity no?) is part of it?
Again at this point I'm just picking your brain, I don't mean to bother you with so many questions. This issue of moving from a substance dualist to more monist position has been an unresolved issue for me for nearly a decade. Framing things as intersubjectivity has been the closest I've found to perceiving some resolution to it but I might just not be quite smart enough to understand more advanced philosophy.
Okay I totally worry I'm being a pseud here and just not understanding what I've read but my understanding is that bohr did believe the measuring device to be conscious after a fashion.
I might be confusing a couple of different quotes by different people though.
Mac planck: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness."
By schrodinger: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
By heisenberg: "Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the "possible" to the "actual," is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory"
Bohr did say: "all unambiguous information concerning atomic objects is derived from the permanent marks such as a spot on a photographic plate, caused by the impact of an electron left on the bodies which define the experimental conditions. Far from involving any special intricacy, the irreversible amplification effects on which the recording of the presence of atomic objects rests rather remind us of the essential irreversibility inherent in the very concept of observation. The description of atomic phenomena has in these respects a perfectly objective character, in the sense that no explicit reference is made to any individual observer and that therefore, with proper regard to relativistic exigencies, no ambiguity is involved in the communication of information."
So it seems to me that a lot of confusion comes from people using the terms objective and subjective in different ambiguous ways. The instrument is not "conscious" like a human when it "observes". But when planck and schrodinger say that consciousness is fundamental it seems to me they're saying something very much like bohr. My understanding is that bohr as a strict positivist did not like speculating about what the wave function was like prior to collapse because it was prior to observation and he didn't believe in anything but observation and logical tautologies. It is "objective" (a thing in and of itself apart from the effects of subject relationships) prior to observation, and it collapses when it enters into an intersubjective relationship with another thing (measurement/observation). The measurement is 'objective' in the sense that it isn't dependent on my personal subjective experience. But it is not objective in that it has intersubjectivity in that observation can only happen within subject relationships because a thing which is unobserved, completely in and of itself, unaffected by subjects, effectively doesn't exist. Until it does.
But I could be totally off track on this. It all seems very similar to panpsychism though. If we say that all matter that exists in intersubjective relation is observing each other, then it makes me wonder if rocks or trees experience qualia too and that qualia is the name we give to first person accounts of one limited subsection of that intersubjective observation. I don't know that they do but I also don't know that you experience qualia either.
You made assumptions about me not giving thought. My intention with my short replies was to give you space in the conversation. Not everyone has the same social norms and you are projecting a lot of unnecessary things into my replies.
I get that one has to start with a significant similarity between two things in order to have any reason to think that their internal workings might well be based on the same basic principle. To me, the fact that LLMs and brains (and not anything else that we’ve encountered) can process a string of original ideas and respond with a coherent and context-appropriate string of original ideas (in the sense that they can go beyond regurgitating individual sources, as a Google search does) is a huge similarity, and synthesizing ideas at least feels like the key aspect of my own internal experience (call me a wordcel, lol). Whereas, apples/oranges don’t seem particularly more similar than any random pair of fruits, but fruits do in fact have a common natural origin, and impossible meat and real meat don’t even have the same origin, but they do have similar chemicals, explaining the similar tastes.
In general, I have the intuition that there’s a lot of regularity in the world, with processes serving similar functions in wildly different contexts (organic or inorganic, natural or artificial) often having similar mathematical structure. When evolution and humans solve similar problems, it seems a priori likely that we find similar solutions. Incidentally, this presumption of symmetry is also probably why I’m an annoying enlightened centrist. My background is in pure math, where isomorphisms definitely occur all over the place, so I may be biased by that! Is this the rationalist failing?
I'm sorry I don't know what a lot of that means. I'm unfamiliar with the way you're using words. What do you mean by "the apparent difference between first person experience and the third-personal description of physical facts" ?
> Then, per my other reply, I’d much prefer it if you’d have read the paragraph, noted that you didn’t know what it said, and asked for a clarification.
I *did* ask for clarification, just not in the way you particularly liked. Please respect my agency as a participant in this dialog. You don't get to dictate the terms by which I best understand concepts. I am trying my best.
> I don’t know what the alternative is, but I assume you don’t seriously mean to suggest that the only two logical possibilities are everything is conscious or nothing is conscious.
You believe in neither panpsychism or illusionism, and you don't know what the alternative is, does that mean you are agnostic on the subject?
> tend to rely on there being something deeply odd about the fact that you can’t simultaneously describe something happening from the point of view of a second-person or third-person observer, and something happening from the first-person point of view of the person it is happening to.
Can you give me an example of what you mean when you say it's impossible to describe something from the point of view of a second person and third person observer etc? Like are you saying that it's impossible to say "John is angry" in the same way as "I am angry" or something like that?
I'll give that "1st person vs non-first" thing a shot... he can correct me if I'm wrong
I know how it is to be me. Do you know how it is to be me?
You know how it is to be you. Do I know how it is to be you?
Sure we can both spit out words, but we're not doing Vulcan Mindmeld here
So like the existence of subjectivity?
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." yeah? The impossibility of sharing subjectivity?
Given what "subjectivity" means, it'd be kind of strange to say "sharing subjectivity."
It's more the impossibility of accessing someone's mental contents. Words coming out of people's mouths aren't mental contents, and neither are signals from machine scans nor electrode probes.
> it’s that I earnestly believe that your best is more thoughtful and better than that.
And I think you should stop making so many assumptions about what thoughts go in my head or how I should best ask questions to try and understand things in my own way. It's comes off very controlling and unnerving to be honest. I asked a question. You were offended because of assumptions YOU made about me. I apologized for my unintended offence. Please stop insisting you know what goes on in my head.
> I did, I mentioned the thought experiments about qualia. Does that have anything to do with John being angry? No, so the answer must be in something to do with consciousness, not with statements about emotional affect.
Isn't the experience of anger a form of qualia? (this is a sincere question. I thought that emotions qualified as a form of qualia)
Let me use a more typical example: Are you saying it's impossible to say "John is looking at a red apple" is different than "I am experiencing a perception of a red apple"?
I honestly don't know what "there being something deeply odd about the fact that you can’t simultaneously describe something happening from the point of view of a second-person or third-person observer, and something happening from the first-person point of view of the person it is happening to." I am not trying to argue with you, I am just trying to understand what you think.
> You replied to four day old comments of mine asking - completely out of the blue - whether I believe in immaterial spirits, and so on. This was out of the blue for several reasons: (a) I had made no suggestions whatsoever that that was the case; (b) you had had nothing to do with the previous conversation; (c) you made no attempt to link the question to any particular part of what I had said; (d) the previous conversation had nothing to do with immaterial spirits or anything else; (e) clearly you were doing a lot of mind-reading to get to that implication.
Not exactly sure what the issue is with replying to an less than a week old thread. This sub doesn't have a huge throughput so when I see a recent post I often like to check the sub to see if there have been any recent interesting conversations. I think you are reading a lot of weird and unnecessary assumptions into things here. What is the fear... that I'm like brigading this sub from another sub or something... or like that I'm searching reddit for people talking about chatgpt to... ask questions about panpsychism for nefarious reasons...?
I didn't assume anything about the conversation being about immaterial spirits. I'm asking based on my own curiosity and interest. I wasn't asking because I thought you believed in immaterial spirits. I asked because I was curious what your thoughts were about immaterial spirit. That is all. It would be like if a friend was telling me about his favorite hardcore band and I asked him his opinion about a new punk band.
> I gave lengthy replies to the question, explaining what I think, and hoping that would be the end of the matter. To be honest I wasn’t very interested in replying due to the facts of (1) but I thought “what the hell”, and did it anyway. I don’t know what I expected from the replies, but I was rather surprised anyway! My interlocutor seemed totally uninterested in anything I’d actually said! If they were confused by anything then I certainly wasn’t to know, because they (you) didn’t say “I don’t understand”. Instead this total stranger just called me arrogant and in two other replies bluntly asked things like “what’s the alternative to panpsychism?”.
It seems to me the real issue here is that I told you that you were coming off arrogant when you used the (as I perceived) aggressive "you" language. I didn't call you arrogant, I told you that you were coming off that way to me.
Do you see the difference here in our language? I was careful to not accuse you of anything. I didn't call you arrogant. I told you "You're coming off arrogant here". Versus you have insisted repeatedly that I am uninterested or that my replies where perfunctory (they weren't, you perceived them that way because of motive you imputed based on... very little evidence). It's unnecessary and doesn't provide room for good faith misunderstanding or clarification.
> no I will not be taking any more complaints at this time.
Honestly this is sneer worthy man. Come on. You really don't need to be rude.
> And once again, you never even thought to ask what I want from this supposed conversation: it’s all about you for some reason.
You're free to leave at any time. No one is keeping you here. I asked you a question, and if you don't want to answer it that is up to you.
> To then say I haven’t given any examples is just unfair.
I never said you didn't give an example...?
> what they mean is that if you look at a map of neurons in the brain (a third person perspective) it doesn’t resemble the first person perspective of having an experience, and that actually they don’t mean much more than that.
Okay this helps. So in the context of the original statement you made:
"Having abandoned anything but a vague deference to science and a rationalistic fondness for cute deductive arguments, some analytic philosophers aren’t really able to handle complex systematic arguments which inquire deeply into the structure of the mind, its origins, and the apparent difference between first person experience and the third-personal description of physical facts. In fact I think most of the issue is verbal: some analytic philosophers have lost the vocabulary to translate external to inner realities, so they resort to calling this a gap in scientific explanation."
When you refer to the alternative being "complex systematic arguments which inquire deeply into the structure of the mind, its origins, and the apparent difference between first person experience and the third-personal description of physical facts.", what are those other systematic arguments? You don't have to make them, but if I wanted to google search this myself what would I be looking for?
> It would be more like if a stranger in a bar was telling some other guy about his hardcore band, and you asked why he was so into metal.
It's more like asking a guy talking about his hardcore band if he is into metal... which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you think the person at the bar is interesting and might have some useful insight into the genre as someone into a similar genre...
I didn't say "you believe in immaterial spirits" I said "do you believe in immaterial spirits?" and "what do you think of panpsychism?". I made no assumptions about your feelings or thoughts, in fact I did the opposite.
> The fact is you want me to be a machine designed to only give you the answers only you want to questions only you have: I’m not your tutor, asshole.
This is not a fact. I do not want you to be a machine. This is what I mean when I say you aren't respecting my agency in this conversation. You repeatedly and forcefully ascribe motivations, thoughts, and feelings to me that you have no access to actually knowing.
Also I am not intending to take you to task. I'm requesting you stop stating "as facts" things about my personal subjective experience. I do not feel comfortable with it.
If you don't want to answer questions because you aren't my tutor you are free to leave this conversation at any time.
> And what if I were to tell you I did the same thing? You’re a hypocrite! This conversation sucks at your end!
That isn't what you did. You literally just said it's a "fact" that I want you to be a machine. I don't want you to be a machine! Stop telling me what I want or think or feel.
You didn't tell me how I came off. You said it was a fact I thought you were a machine. I do not think you are a machine. I am not denying you agency by pointing to your very clear statement claiming to know what goes on in my head.
This is not a pity party. Just establishing some boundaries. You are free to think you can read my mind but you can not. That IS a fact.
Look you can say that I think you're a machine all day but that doesn't make it true.
What comes off controlling is you insisting you know what is in my head when you don't. Totally fine for you to say that I come off to you a certain way. And I don't like you making statements about things you can't know but I can't stop you either.
I'm trying to focus on "I" statements because I am trying to not make unfair statements about you. I am trying to restrict myself to only making statements about my perceptions. You have not done the same. I think that creates problems.
If you feel like I've been unfair I am sorry, that has not been my intention.
It's perfectly fine for you to say "I don't like the way you asked a question". I don't think it's helpful to accuse me of disagreeing with you when I haven't disagreed with you (on philosophical matters).
I am sorry that me asking the question in that way made you feel upset. It was not my intention. I apologized for it the first time you expressed unhappiness with it. In return I would suggest you to not assume that people asking short questions are out to get you or laying some rhetorical trap or disagreeing. I was not laying a trap. I think asking short questions on reddit is a reasonable way to interact. I can think my actions are reasonable while also being sorry they caused harm. If I step on someone's toe I apologize to them even if I think they were putting themselves in a bad position. Furthermore it's not even necessary to assign blame accidents and misunderstandings happen. I'm not even saying you are unreasonable for being suspicious per se, though I do think it was an error. Maybe you hang around people who engage like that all the time idk. I was not though. I think the best way to avoid future accidents is to focus on one's intentions and perception (focusing on I statements) and to give people benefit of the doubt.
That's a fair point. You did say seem and stated that it appeared a certain way.
You also followed it up by saying "quickly moved on to the next step in some kind of presumptuous expression of suspicious disagreement you have.". I don't know if that was intended to be part of the "seem" statement but it seemed to me like you were making a statement about me disagreeing with you (which to be clear I have not disagreed with anything you've said on philosophical matters in this conversation. All my questions have been sincere.)
When I said I would appreciate less presumptions about me I was referring to the "auspicious disagreement". There is no need to presume I'm disagreeing with you when I am in fact not disagreeing with you. There is no need to assume I'm not being thoughtful merely because my questions were shorter than what you expected.
I'm not saying it could go either way. I'm saying you made a qualifying statement and also made an accusation. Two things can be true. You could say "I feel hurt that you said my butt looked big and you're saying that because you hate me" I think the quoted piece of text is pretty clearly an accusation of me being a certain way (in disagreement with you). When you followed up by saying it was a "fact" that I thought you were a machine etc I think that's also in the same vein and a pretty strong claim about me and my intentions.
Ultimately if you want to engage in that fashion you can but not with me. I don't want to dialog with someone who is going to vilify my intentions without good evidence. (me asking short questions is not good evidence of I'll intent)
> Me giving you my genuine impressions of what you might have been up to, framing those as my impressions, and inviting you to correct those impressions
This is not completely true. Saying it was a "fact" I thought you were a machine etc is not stating or framing a thing as an impression. Nor is accusing me of lying.
>I begin to make actual claims about what’s going on in your head. What would you have me do?
What I would have you do: is to stop doing that.
> You begin to use pseudo-therapeutic language to carry on the pointless and unpleasant farrago, and continue to lie: you continue to suggest that this whole time I’ve been making things up about you.
I haven't said you are making stuff up. I have said that you are making assumptions about me.
> It goes on with this other crap you’ve replied with, insinuating that I hang out with shitty people who behave badly (fortunately, I tend to choose non-liars as friends!)
I literally don't know what you're talking about.... I have said nothing about your friends. That has not even entered into my mind. I do not know what you're talking about....?
[your second reply] (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/115q2nb/some_lwer_outs_itself_as_a_stupid_chatbot/ja04fds/):
> Now, this is only mildly asshole behaviour, although it’s remarkably inconsistent with your caring anti-controlling attitude elsewhere. The upshot is that you can steer the conversation any which way you like, but if I so much as express a preference I’m being unreasonable, and worse, “controlling”!
I don't think saying "you are free to leave at any time" is controlling behavior. If you want to steer to the conversation to another topic then you are welcome to. (In fact I would prefer we just discuss the intersubjectivity stuff) If it is not a topic I am interested in responding to, then I won't. No one is holding you here against your will. I have as much right to post on this subreddit as you. I am not harassing you, or sending you lots of messages. We are going back and forth. You can not force me to talk about anything I don't want to, and you are not being forced to talk about anything you don't want to. You can walk away at any time. And furthermore walking away is not a sign of weakness or loss.
> In what way are you not expecting me to be a machine here? I can’t so much as flag an issue that I’m personally having. And if I do flag an issue, then of course I am free to leave, and in any case flagging an issue is dictating and failing to respect your agency.
You can refuse to answer questions. You have full agency to do that. I think it's fair that you can request certain kinds of questions not be asked, especially as pertains to private or personal matters. I am free to leave the conversation if those are the only questions I want answered. You are free to set your own boundaries. I asked the question I did because I thought it would get at the heart of what I wanted to understand better. You're welcome to think it's a stupid or silly question. You are also welcome to say you think it's an inefficient way of getting at the core thesis you are trying to express. That thesis might not be the same thing I'm trying to understand. I'm specifically asking about alternatives to illusionism and panpsychism because I'm curious to know about alternatives to that. You seemed very intent on expressing your annoyance with people who I don't know very well, and I wasn't sure how much of the issue you had was specific to analytical philosophers specifically so I thought that reframing the question might help me understand. Furthemore if you did have a specific position that was in alternative to those, then I was curious to hear you express it, and understand your point of view.
I think this is a pretty common way of trying to understand another person. I asked a question, didn't get an answer that I felt I fully understood or directly honed in on what I was curious about, so I reframed it, in hopes that by approaching it from a different direction I would either what you were saying better, or at least help hone in on the core aspect of your perspective I was interested in understanding better. If the question I asked "What is the alternative to these philosophies?" is not one you want to answer then you are free to not answer it. If you want to talk about something else or emphasize a specific point of your own you are also welcome to do that. I might not be interested, but I am open to at least trying to understand.
[your third reply] (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/115q2nb/some_lwer_outs_itself_as_a_stupid_chatbot/ja06n4f/):
> You can’t name a single time you even tried to think of what my social norms might be
This is false. Every time that I've responded to you I have tried to think of what your social norms are. Also this is again you making statements about what goes on in my head. You're telling me that I haven't had a thought. How would you know that?
> and you ridiculed me for telling you what they were
I don't think I've ridiculed you.
> Remember that I expressed those “assumptions” as my personal impressions, but we also shouldn’t forget the claim at the top that you’ve tried only to record your perceptions, and not impute thoughts to me.
Except for when you didn't as I bold below.
>> Rather you gave the impression of not being interested in the content of the answers at all, and quickly moved on to the next step in **some kind of presumptuous expression of suspicious disagreement you have**.
> I would appreciate it if you try to presume less about me in this conversation.
The part bolded in your reply is the thing which I am asking you to not make assumptions on. Assuming that I was asking questions because I have some hidden agenda isn't helpful.
> Recall that the claim about being controlling didn’t start as “comes off”
I don't think this is true. I could only find two places in our conversation when I said the word "control", and both are prefaced by "comes off"
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/115q2nb/some_lwer_outs_itself_as_a_stupid_chatbot/j9xqv6c/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/115q2nb/some_lwer_outs_itself_as_a_stupid_chatbot/j9z7dmn/
> This is actually a lie, you replied “sorta” when I asked if you thought I believed in immaterial spirits, because you actually asked me if I believed in immaterial spirits.
Sorta isn't a yes. If you had asked me if you believed in immaterial spirits the most accurate answer would have been "I don't know". I said sorta because it's more casual sounding and it helps express that it seems to me like there is a few different beliefs, and if you're not an illusionist, or a panpsychist then I don't know really what you believe and that the only thing I know outside that is substance dualism. Sorta isn't intended to express "yes I think you believe this". It's more like a: *shrug* idk, maybe? It's a statement of ambivalence.
> It turns out this whole time, whenever I’ve expressed a personal preference, you also counted that as an “assumption” I was making
The only times you've expressed a preference as far as I can tell is when you said you wanted me to ask a different question. At least one assumption has been quoted and bolded above for you, and you have made several assumptions in your latest replies.
------
I think some of the back and forth is getting a little complex above so let me back up for a second.
I've gone back and forth through our conversation for a good hour, trying to make sure that I gave you a fair shake. I want to be clear. I don't have a problem with you expressing a preference or a boundary. If you don't want to answer the question that's fine but I asked the question I did for a reason because it was a way for me to try to understand the thing I was trying to learn about your perspective better.
Reading through our conversation I see where you express a preference one time. There are many places where you did not express preference and you did express things which you can't reasonable know, but can only assume. There are many times when you indicated that I was lying, that I had some nefarious disagreement that I was not being honest with you about, etc. I don't think that those things were helpful to the conversation and I didn't like having those assumptions made about me.
If the matter was simply "I don't want to answer this kind of question" I respect that preference. Your stated preference was that I take a specific approach to my questioning in regards to what I attempted to clarify. If in fact we were talking about the same thing that needed to be clarified, I could see it to be useful to say "I would prefer you ask about A instead of B because if you ask about A we can focus more on A". But maybe I'm asking about B for a reason, because there's something more than just A I'm trying to understand. Assuming that I want to talk about A only is one of those assumptions I took issue with.
However I also understand how you, based on your assumption about why I was asking about stuff, you would have the preference for me to more directly discuss that issue.
If you think that retrograde amnesia is the "main gap"... Think a little harder :)
In all seriousness, though, LLM's are kind of perfect for faking consciousness, because we associate consciousness with language so intimately. If you're into this branch of philosophizing, perhaps ask -- if you had an artificial system that had *no* linguistic facility, how could you decide if it was conscious? (Imagine it embodied however you want, eg as a robot or appliance or software, but no cheating with sign language or semaphore)
By virtue of it being an artifact. It can't be, because it's an artifact.
An artifact has been precluded from volition by virtue of it being an artifact. Any apparent volition is the result of design and programming. In contrast, evolution isn't a process of design unless someone is arguing for intelligent design ("evolutionary algorithm" is still just "algorithmic"; there's no magical disposal of an artifact's programming simply by attaching the label "evolutionary" to it)
If you go through great lengths to destroy evidence of an artifact's manufacture then congrats, no one could tell provided that it's a perfect imitation. That still doesn't change what it is, however.
Here's the link in the thread that I didn't bother clicking on but if you want it, ENJOY!
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qy5dF7bQcFjSKaW58/bad-at-arithmetic-promising-at-math
It's not "wrong" for a bot to ask a question about a point that was already answered by the reply it was replying to, then subsequently object to how it's being called a bot.
Nothing more could be expected of it, so it's not "wrong."
A bit weird to post this yourself as you’re the person there arguing.
This said this LW person is obnoxious
Lmao
LWs are no different from the other cultists I’ve dealt with. You’re talking to a rigid false self, not a person who can think.
How did he know it was a bot? Did the convo begin with him knowing that?
Not even less wrong 🙄