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If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious

35 points · 103 comments · ashergill

omnicognate · 1789739615 · focus · HN ↗
> something it's like to be you
This phrase comes up a lot in discussions of consciousness and I've never understood it and never seen why it's supposed to encapsulate the idea.
It isn't "like" anything to be me. There isn't something else I can compare it to. All I know is that I exist and experience and that there is an aspect of that experience that is impossible to communicate, define or share.
1. ForHackernews · 1789739793 · focus · HN ↗
  Being you is (presumably) like something: it's nice being you, it's miserable being you, it's exhausting being you, it's invigorating being you... whatever it is like, I can't describe it but you experience it.
  You have a subjective internal experience. A thermostat does not. An LLM presumably does not. A dog or a bat [0] presumably does.
  [0] <a href="https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/thomas-nagel-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/Thomas%20Nagel%2C%20What%20Is%20It%20Like%20to%20Be%20a%20Bat.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/thomas-nagel-what-is...
  1. randallsquared · 1789909875 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't put a high likelihood on LLMs being conscious, but they certainly seem more likely to be conscious than a dog or a bat.
    ForHackernews · 1790195492 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe you have some other definition of "conscious" in mind but dogs and bats certainly seem far more sentient to me than then the linear algebra box is. My dog wants food, and he doesn't forget he wants food if I tell him he already ate a whole bowl of food.
    Oops, my mistake and you're right to call me out for that. I'll make a note in my MEMORIES.md highlighting that one whole bowl of kibble has been consumed. That requirement is satisfied.
2. d_theorist · 1789740386 · focus · HN ↗
  It comes from Nagel's famous paper "what is it like to be a bat?"
  He argues that something is conscious only if there is "something it is like" to be that thing. "Something it is like" meaning an answer to a question like "what was it like to speak on stage for the first time?", implying that there is some subjective character to the experience.
  1. omnicognate · 1789742227 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, it's just a rather unfortunate use of language. There is a sense in which "being like something" means that, but usually it means, well, being like something.
3. gavmor · 1789742289 · focus · HN ↗
  It's not saying there's something material out there which is relatable—it's saying that there's some ontological category, i.e. some Platonic or geometrically congruent notion, that is representative (if not constitutive) of the experience of being you.
4. somenameforme · 1789742960 · focus · HN ↗
  It refers to a simple issue. If you write a program to add 2+2, do you imagine some entity whiffs into existence, perceives itself deciding to add 2+2, and then whiffs out of existence at the conclusion? It seems fairly absurd. So the implication is that there is no consciousness behind the action, there is nothing like being a program adding 2+2.
  Yet if somebody takes an entirely materalistic take of the world, that is to say that all things are the result of purely physical processes, it leads to an odd scenario because a human would also just be a series of ongoing physical processes - neurons firing in response to stimuli leading the brain to some inevitable 'reflex', and so on. Yet we, or at least I, certainly am aware of this world and imagine myself being the driver of all my actions. In other words I am conscious.
  So the implication, if one accepts materalism, would be that if you make something complex enough - then at some point consciousness just whiffs into existence somehow.

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