2 pointsby abtinf7 hours ago1 comment
  • abtinf7 hours ago
    The claim that LLMs are conscious is exactly the same as the claim that this mechanical movement (a NAND gate) is conscious.

    If you created an enough of these and connected them (material properties permitting), you could implement anything in computing, including LLMs.

    Asserting that a trivial mechanical movement (or indeed any non-biological process) is conscious has no evidentiary basis in reality, is absurd, and should be rejected out of hand as arbitrary.

    • Festro7 hours ago
      Please provide an evidentiary basis for human consciousness.

      Please refrain from reductio ad absurdum.

      The building blocks of 3D graphics, cryptographic encryption, protein folding algorithms, and much more are not trivial, rather they are critical elements of our current understanding of how to make something 'compute' like a brain does.

      If you think a human synapse is a trivial part of human thought and consciousness I'd say you are the absurd one. (Not saying you think or would say this, just flipping the scenario to beg the question: what do you think consciousness is exactly?)

      And not that I am saying LLMs are conscious, nor currently capable of consciousness. I just don't think it's trivial, absurd, or arbitrary to suggest or discuss it.

      • abtinf5 hours ago
        > Please provide an evidentiary basis for human consciousness.

        Direct experience. No further justification is necessary.

        All arguments against consciousness presuppose the existence of consciousness (the so-called stolen concept fallacy). Any attempt to refute it necessarily relies on it.

        You can’t even have a coherent concept of “knowledge” without it, let alone knowledge of specific things like 3D graphics, algorithms, and synapses.

      • _wire_5 hours ago
        > Please provide an evidentiary basis for human consciousness

        I think, therefore I am.

        Try it yourself.

        If that's insufficient for you, you'll have to deal with this on your own.