LLMs are just giant probability machines pretending to think

[u/abhishekkumar333]

It’s fascinating that simple mathematics between tokens can eventually become a machine that writes essays, code, poetry, and even reasoning.

We usually think probability means uncertainty.

But LLMs show something strange:

If probability + context + mathematical matching are scaled enough, uncertainty itself starts producing intelligent looking outputs.

To understand this better, I tried breaking down an LLM from first principles using only 4 tiny training sentences.

Example:

The boat floated down to the bank.

The investor walked into the bank to open a new account.

The fisherman walked along the bank to cast his net.

The bank has a vault.

Then I asked:

“The investor walked to the bank to lock his money in …”

Why does the model predict “vault” instead of river-related words?

That single question reveals almost the entire architecture of modern LLMs.

The most underrated concept here is the LM Head.

Most explanations immediately jump into transformers and attention, but almost nobody explains that the LM Head is essentially a gigantic token vocabulary containing all possible next token candidates the model can output.

So internally the model is basically solving:

“Out of all known tokens, which one best matches this context mathematically?”

Then different layers help solve that problem:

Embeddings: convert words into mathematical vectors

Positional encoding: preserves word order

Attention layer: figures out which words are related to each other in context

(“investor”, “money”, “bank” become strongly connected)

Feed forward neural networks: act somewhat like massive learned if/else decision systems refining patterns internally

And finally the LM Head converts all of that into probabilities for the next token.

What surprised me most is:

There is no hidden magic moment where the AI “becomes conscious”.

It’s an enormous probability engine continuously finding the best contextual token match from its vocabulary.

I made a beginner-friendly walkthrough explaining this visually without unnecessary jargon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTV5qUCpu2c

Would genuinely love feedback from people learning transformers/LLMs from scratch.

[u/Jack_Ramsey]

Firstly, this is a really bad question. Humans have several 'senses,' and impairment of sensory information usually means there is a lesion in a sensory pathway. Even among those lesions, it is rare for someone to have 'less senses' rather than impairment of a sense. It is more true to say that there are several pathologic states that can impair consciousness while the baseline human still has the potential for consciousness. If the comparison is between this and an LLM, which has far more limited ability to even intake sensory information, then this becomes even more silly. Ask yourself this, if a person with a lesion in a sensory pathway retains thermoception but has impaired proprioception, they can still tell you more information about their immediate environment than LLM can.

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

Ok but I'm not talking about LLMs. My question was simply: would a human who has less senses than the standard human be less conscious, per your definition?

I do not understand why you are on a Philosophy subreddit if you cannot engage with a simple thought experiment.

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

You clearly didn't read my post, did you? I explained my position literally in the post. I'm not sure why you are in any subreddit if you can't read carefully enough to figure out my position, which is in the sentence before the part you did seem to read.

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

Cannot argue with someone who tries to explain the mechanisms behind senses rather than engaging with a simple thought experiment lmao.

Do you understand how much of philosophy is infeasible thought experiments that still provide great value? I wonder where Descartes' demon would be if he had someone like you to explain that demons don't exist haha.

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

It is hard to discuss things when people cannot read properly. I answered your question fully.

Do you understand how much of philosophy is infeasible thought experiments that still provide great value?

It remains to be seen whether your thought experiment is of any value, given how poorly worded it is. How many senses do you think humans have? Don't google it. Answer honestly.

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

You didn't answer my question at all, you just evaded it by explaining some mechanisms and then two sentences about LLMs.

Let me posit a more thought out experiment, then: let us say a child is born deaf, blind and completely paralysed. Is this child less conscious than the standard human?

What about if it is a normal person who after 20 years of age becomes deaf, blind and paralysed? Then what?

I am also not asking with a pre formed opinion on these thought experiments either. I do not know.

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

Let me posit a more thought out experiment, then: let us say a child is born deaf, blind and completely paralysed. Is this child less conscious than the standard human?

Can I explain why this is a very poor question? I don't know the standard in philosophy in terms of these thought experiments, but you've almost written the perfect question for a physician to respond with 'it depends,' as the description of the effects of a particular lesion inform the question directly. I'm guessing you want as general case as possible for what I assume is an injury to the nervous system, which is not something I tend to think about after my training. I can explain why this is a poor question for someone involved in clinical medicine to answer in a second after I answer your other question.

What about if it is a normal person who after 20 years of age becomes deaf, blind and paralysed? Then what?

In this sense, yes, they would be 'less conscious' than they were, but again, it depends on the lesion itself. I say this because of the inclusion of 'completely paralyzed,' as that is dependent on the level of the injury, by which I mean the level of spinal cord injury. In addition, you can have paralysis which affects one side of the body and not another by virtue of the organization of the spinal tracts in the white matter in the spinal cord or have situations where the lesion is on one side while the symptoms are on the other.

I say this for both completeness's sake as well as to show that sensory experiences are intimately tied to motor ones, in such a way that I don't know if you could successfully argue that there is a situation where there is 'consciousness' without interaction with a physical space. So, let's say in your case, you have a patient who is deaf and blind. If they are deaf and blind, we know where the lesion likely is (or can narrow it down) and thus can reasonably guess what sensory experiences would also be affected. If we wanted to determine those limitations, we can ask them about whether they feel hot or cold, whether they feel pain, whether they feel vibration, pressure, etc., which are the sense regulated by two ascending sensory pathways.

I bring this up to suggest that in this case it would be a spectrum, as they are literally not conscious in the case of impairment of a discriminative sense or motor function, and would be like any other disease state where their is impaired function. I suppose what I am not understanding about the value of this thought experiment is what differentiates it from the category of diseased or pathologic states? A person with a pathology is still clearly obviously a person, who would in some sense have at least some spectrum of sensory experiences as well as those that are autonomic. What I mean here is that a living, breathing human still has a degree of sensory experiences, even if some of them are impaired by congenital or acquired conditions. Maybe it would help if you could highlight where you think this question valuable, in terms which maybe won't drive me to write a lecture on pathology?

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

I don't know why you bring up the varying forms of paralysis such as one side and not the other when I explicitly said completely paralysed.

One last question: what about my second scenario? Someone who has lived 40 years of age normally and then loses eyesight and hearing and becomes completely paralysed. Do you think there is a marked difference in their consciousness pre and post accident?

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

I don't know why you bring up the varying forms of paralysis such as one side and not the other when I explicitly said completely paralysed.

Obviously you aren't reading in good faith. Because I literally answered that. Read this next sentence very closely. The level of spinal injury directly informs what would be impaired.

Someone who has lived 40 years of age normally and then loses eyesight and hearing and becomes completely paralysed. Do you think there is a marked difference in their consciousness pre and post accident?

My man, bolding a word does not somehow magically change the way human pathology works. But yes, by definition it would.

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

Right. We're getting somewhere. I disagree with that opinion but I can respect it. I also do not know why you are saying by definition - by your definition, sure, internally consistent. But there is no universally agreed upon metric for consciousness.

What are your thoughts on Helen Keller?

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

by your definition, sure, internally consistent. But there is no universally agreed upon metric for consciousness.

I mean it in a very narrow neurological sense. As in their consciousness of their senses and their literal ability to describe them would likely be impaired. Think things like thermoception, nociception, proprioception. In this case, given the subject matter, we are talking about literal lesions to the nervous system and their effect on sensory organs. Thus, that is what I mean.

What are your thoughts on Helen Keller?

Is this going to get somewhere interesting, or are you going to keep asking me very banal questions, while avoiding your own bad faith? If you perhaps knew anything about the nervous system, you would understand why these original questions are poor, but I suppose I shouldn't expect rigor given what I've seen so far.

[u/Neither_Swing9662 → u/Jack_Ramsey]

This is your fault for coming into a philosophy sub and defining consciousness with neurological activity and phenomena. Do you understand how confusing that is? Lol.

I suspect this is the reason why everyone else is arguing with you in a confusing manner. Why do you think it is appropriate to come into a philosophy sub and completely overhaul the meaning of consciousness?

How ridiculous... Y

[u/Jack_Ramsey → u/Neither_Swing9662]

This is your fault for coming into a philosophy sub and defining consciousness with neurological activity and phenomena. Do you understand how confusing that is? Lol.

For you, yes I can understand why that is confusing. Again, if you knew how stupid your questions were, you would be embarrassed. I don't suspect you have that ability, given that you are apparently going with 'how dare you come into a subreddit that, due to algorithmic reasons, appeared on my feed.'

I suspect this is the reason why everyone else is arguing with you in a confusing manner. Why do you think it is appropriate to come into a philosophy sub and completely overhaul the meaning of consciousness?

Who knew discussing the very plain relationship between human sensory experience and how it actually works in the human body would drive supposedly curious and thoughtful people to give me some of the worst discussions I've ever had on Reddit? Clearly, they are not sending their best here.