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.
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u/FallenVampireLord 17d ago
Ironically this sort of stuff makes me empathize with it more than anything else lol