philipswood

Oh, and by the way: it looks like Claude wrote this up.

A lot of these arguments are based in embodiment and sensory input. That's fair.

But I can't help noticing that I spend the bulk of my workday in disembodied virtual spaces, and that in those spaces, agents act and "move around" in ways that is not too different from ways that make sense to me too.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Make of that what you will.

While the math genius in this thread is mythical, I sort of had Shinichi Mochizuki in mind.

Honest question: how is this different from some unknown mathematician having a breakthrough?

I mean: if some reclusive Japanese genius had a breakthrough on your problem and published it, would you have felt the same?

And if not, why not?

So someone with a medical condition that causes them to be a vegetable without being connected to a machine wouldn't be conscious?

E.g. Let's imagine we get some cybernetic approach that can work around an inoperable deep brain tumour in the brainstem.

Without the prosthesis the person is in a coma or dead. With it they are normal, but need to be connected to the prosthesis.

I have no problem with someone having a position like:

Conscious is a field phenomenon caused by the brain. GPUs can't induce these fields. So LLMs can't be conscious.

Or

Conscious arises from some quantum physical effect that GPUs can't do. So LLMs can't be conscious.

Or

God made man with a soul, spirit and body and He didn't give these to LLMs.

But in these cases at least the position is understandable.

I don't see what point she is making (besides philosophers being cleverer that they are given credit for and LLMs are clearly not conscious and her little flow chart of questions somehow will convince people their thinking is unclear and muddled and incoherent)

Absolutely yes.

And you then get to ask the question: let's say we can model one neuron accurately. (And I think we sort of can).

If we replace one of her neurons: is it still her?

OK. It seems the answer should be "yes", right?

But now we can repeat that process a few billion times?

Did she stop being herself sometime?

Classic ship of Theseus move.

To be fair she might be a philosopher, but she didn't exactly show much actual philosophy in her flowchart.

I also found it quite wishy-washy.

So socially aware creatures are more easily proved to be conscious?

Let's say you artificially meet or restrict the biological basis of the needs.

E.g. put the subject on a drip so that none of the hunger senses are triggered. Automatically manage the body's water balance with sensors and a feeding tube. Restrict them so that they can't hurt themselves to feel pain. Modulate their sexual hormones to inhibit sexual desire. Etc., etc.

Do they stop being conscious?

OK. Going along with the thought experiment here:

So would someone subjected to some damage that makes them unable to act stop being conscious?

Let's take Bob who can feel that shopping list of emotions and has agency to address them and can delay gratification.

And we tie him to a chair and medicate his somatic nervous system so that he can sense, but not act. Has he stopped being conscious?

What would you regard a trusted demonstration that someone can?

I mean, there are people with aphasia and hyperplasia - how do you prove actual 3D visualisation.

There are games that people play that need 4D visualisation to be able to do well and they perform at that.

I think it would be fair to say that at least a few people can do a small amount of 4d visualisation.

Agreed, I don't think anyone has a good grasp on, say, 64K D, but we can do a bit better than just 3.

Why?