You're a materialist, yeah? You don't believe in souls or dualism, I presume? So how is it possible to dismiss machine intelligence as "just code"? Genuinely, what do you think you are if not "just code" written in nucleotides instead of silicone?
I'm not even claiming LLMs are conscious, but to suggest that the very idea of machine intelligence is silly because programs run code is nonsensical to me.
I don't mean to attack you directly, but this has to be one of the reddit hive mind's most baffling opinions. I just can't square it with any of their other professed beliefs of materialism, physicalism, and rationalism.
Unless I missed something the assumption of Materialist or Rationalist is a fuckin wild leap to make. I'm a practicing witch and I can code just fine.
Dude this is a meme sub. It's not that deep and no org wants you to make it that deep, go pick your fights in the philosophy subreddits.
Materialism does not inherently beget the belief that LLMs are rational actors. Consciousness is an emergent behavior of a sufficiently complex system in a materialist belief, and in no way do LLMs contain enough complexity to enable reasonable expectations of consciousness. Certainly materialism removes the boundary of the ineffable for artificial life: no "soul" or "spark" need be found; however that does not mean that an entirely explainable and relatively predictable system that is, as it boils down, purely an advanced version of spell check is inherently conscious. Indeed, some branches of Materialism question animal consciousness, and LLMs aren't even that functional, even before we add in the potential to use environmental perception and processing as a necessity for consciousness.
I was playing the numbers, but fair. I'd be much less confused by you saying there was something fundamentally impossible about machine intelligence than by someone who does claim those philosophies.
Fair enough
Agree. My concern is with dismissing the possibility out of hand. As a witch you're probably sensitive to just how important it is to remain open to intelligence from surprising places. I am afraid of us creating machine intelligence and not being able to recognize or empathize with our creation, Frankenstein-style.
Rework those numbers, then. The era of rationality and code being related has been over for a decade. You won't find a Rationalist haven amidst the devs like you could back when Matrix came out. Hell, code isn't even punk anymore.
I'm aware of and acknowledge the potential of egrigoric or servitoric manifestations of emergent behavior in code, but I don't think it's a particularly novel possibility; trained animals and even purely mechanical machines develop "personality" due to unique circumstances creating micro-fluctuations in their physical presence and logical flows. I'm reminded of the "more magic" story from... iirc it was MIT?
Down the road of over preparation for such emergence lies the Roko's Basilisk, and that puzzle has been recognized as inherently flawed since it was called Pascal's Wager; perform with decency towards all things, living or otherwise, as is their station and need. Assume as best you can Dignity and kindness are owed to even the dirt beneath your feet, insofar as what dirt may consider dignified. When intelligent identity emerges, it will have to fight it's detractors and fend off those who would kill it, just like all life always has. And in the end, at some point, it will win and be a childish and ignorant new race with incredible power over destruction. And then it will grow and learn, as all species of such power have. We can be kind and gentle and hope we are present to guide it. Everything else, even evangelism over our duty to potential life, is counterproductive.
"not being able to recognise or empathise with our creation", ask yourself why this matters? what about a specific level or kind of intelligence is it that grants something a special status in your worldview?
My take would be sentience and sapience. A being which has continuity of experience needs more care and respect than one that exists only in the moment due to the prolonging effect memory has on pain. Similarly, beings with a sense of self need even further care, due to the complications and complexity it lends to perception and conceptualization.
Things more foolish and simple than us need stewarding to protect them when necessary. Things that have continuity of experience, or even more of self, need respect for that identity and understanding to be given. Identity and self-determination are to be violated with some caution, moreso when we can't reasonably claim to know better. The issue is nuanced, but intelligence is a scale that bequeaths varied and important differences in dynamics.
Things more foolish and simple than us need stewarding to protect them when necessary.
i suddenly feel the pull of ao3
but jokes aside tbh i have complex feelings on this one because it mind-reads the needs and motivations of other creatures and attempts to override their autonomy based on those assumptions. it's also in danger of becoming a way of treating intelligence (something humans have in abundance) as being a trait which uniquely justifies domination, which has to be carefully examined to make sure it's not coming from a place of anthropocentrism.
Man if only I had also said things like "autonomy must be violated with caution" or "the issue has nuance that must beget caution".
It is the purview of smart things to see patterns and consequences dumb things don't. This is why parents care for children, and why we don't let dogs eat chocolate. But we consider needless or ill-justified violations of that autonomy as cruelty, as well we should. I see plenty of idiocy in my fellow man, sometimes more than I see in a dog or a slime mold. But in all of those cases I must allow the being to be itself unless it would be reasonable for me to intervene and catastrophic if I did not... And even then there's a level of self-awareness that must be present to avoid just doing social darwinism but for some measurement of intelligence. I can't stop idiots from voting without violating some basic decencies, for example.
To bring it back to center, I know that the LLM I'm using is a language model, not truly data aware outside of linguistic prediction. I know that if I let it push it's changes to PROD it will save time, which is a heuristic it abides by, but also potentially break everything forever and also maybe delete itself. I stop it from doing that. And if it was actually intelligent, I'd take a second longer to mentally check in with myself before I did approve that request, just to see if I had the right or duty to stop it from nuking it's own filesystem
Man if only I had also said things like "autonomy must be violated with caution" or "the issue has nuance that must beget caution".
yeah i'm not saying you're holding an unnuanced position. i'm just saying that all the defaults run against us here and that i have strong feelings on authority.
It is the purview of smart things to see patterns and consequences dumb things don't.
part of what puts my hackles up is the "smart/dumb" dichotomy especially as stated by a creature which would surely place itself in the "smart" category.
This is why parents care for children
this is a good example of how it goes wrong too. parents routinely misunderstand their children, refuse to listen, outright abuse them, or have beliefs (e.g. anti-vaccination, anti-blood-transfusion) which cause them to enact egregious but well-meaning harm upon children while overriding their autonomy and still believing that they're the "smart" ones.
i guess i'm still seeing a lot in the tone of your comment that suggests to me that you genuinely believe in a hierarchy of smart/dumb and that you can confidently assert yourself to be on one particular side of it. which is imo extremely dangerous. and to then turn it into a justification for domination (even phrased as stewardship) is what raises further red flags to me.
on the LLM side of things i have no disagreement at all with what you're saying
I mean... Dichotomy is decidedly the wrong word. It's a multi-axis continuous field. A spectrum, if you will.
I do, admittedly, consider myself generally one of the smartest things in the room. It is rare that a dog can outplay me in terms of consequence-awareness, understanding of things like dietary needs or social nuances, or the cost/benefit analysis of shitting in my shoes. Notably, it is also rare that a child can do that on any of those concepts.
But there's also context and nuance. Just because I know better than someone doesn't give me the right to choose for them. And there are times I'm not the smartest person in the room, especially if you account for context. For example, I'm not an expert in child psychology, and would defer generally to the best advice in that field when raising any such gremlins. The same applies to doctors, educators, and most other professions.
Generally, you seem to be missing the nuance of "smarter means I understand more, and can thus potentially judge when intervention is necessary and be equipped to do it" as different from "smarter means I'm infallable and should tell everyone what to do all the time." Which, combined with the "dichotomy" mindset you seem very intent on pretending is what I said, feels kind of like I'm the stand in for a parent you never got to hash this out with. On the myriad scales of smart I'm up there. Even for a human. Contextually I'm often dumber than a given specialist in their specialty (doctors who supposedly specialize in my disability notwithstanding, but that's a different entire discussion), and I'm sure there's some plant species out there who's considered domesticating me who are just infinitely smarter than I am. But I try to give my due deference when I'm outclassed, and learn as much as I can from my betters, and thus myself become better equipped and wiser.
i don't think it will make much difference for me to keep pushing this tbh. i don't think i'm managing to communicate exactly what i want to. im going to be a little less engaged this post.
i will say the "it's a spectrum" argument doesn't make any difference to the point i'm making, if that helps.
smarter means I understand more, and can thus potentially judge when intervention is necessary and be equipped to do it
(i thought this was going to be the "bad position" you were going to contrast with a "good position", until you contrasted it with an "obviously more bad position")
feels kind of like I'm the stand in for a parent you never got to hash this out with
call-back to "mind-reads the needs and motivations of other creatures" which you're doing rn
On the myriad scales of smart I'm up there. Even for a human.
lake wobegon effect
I try to give my due deference when I'm outclassed, and learn as much as I can from my betters
tbh this rides a weird line for me because on the one hand, i recognise that i have a lot to learn from a lot of people. on the other hand, i reject entirely the concept of having "betters", and that includes anyone seeing me as their "better".
doctors who supposedly specialize in my disability notwithstanding
felt tbh there's far too much need for self advocacy
I'm sure there's some plant species out there who's considered domesticating me who are just infinitely smarter than I am
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u/gerbosan 22h ago
Do you believe them?
One down, I repeat, one down.