SoulFire
a natural neural network
Politics is the continuation of drama by other means.
Programmer and mind upload enthusiast from Finland. Trying to become a better writer.
User ID: 529
SoulFire
a natural neural network
11mo ago
I'm certainly with you as well! This has been a frustrating debate to follow if not only for the satisfaction of reading someone else express my views on continuity of self identity almost exactly. I wish people would not sneer as much, but I suppose as an uploadist, one needs to have the humility to recognize their view is the more peculiar one.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
What do you mean by "incoherent"? Do you mean that the concept of a p-zombie is like the concept of a square triangle? - something that is obviously inconceivable or nonsensical.
Not him, but basically this. If you define consciousness functionally, then a p-zombie is conscious because it is functionally equivalent to a conscious entity. Whereas if you define consciousness non-functionally, then it becomes impossible to verify that even humans are conscious.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
Only on a narrow definition of ‘exist,’ and only if you exclude the empirical observation of your own qualia, which you’re observing right now as you read this.
I could be GPT-7, then by your definition I would not have qualia. Of course, I am a human and I have observed my qualia and decided that it does not exist on any higher level than my Minecraft house exists. Perhaps you could consider it an abstract object, but it is ultimately data interpreted by humans rather than a physical object that exists despite human interpretation.
It’s your world, man, and you’re denying it exists. Cogito ergo sum.
Your computer has an inner world. You can peek into it by going in spectator mode in a game or even the windows on your computer screen are objects in your computer's inner world. Of course, I would not argue that a computer is conscious, but that is because I think consciousness is a property of neural networks, natural or artificial.
Artificial neural networks appear analogous to natural ones. For example, they can break down visual data into its details similar to a human visual cortex. A powerful ANN trained to behave like a human would also have its inner world. It would claim to be conscious the same way you do and describe its qualia and experience. And these artificial consciousness and artificial qualia would exist at least on the level of data patterns. You might argue quasi-consciousness and quasi-qualia, but I would argue there is no difference.
My thesis: simulated consciousness is consciousness, and simulated qualia is qualia.
More precisely, qualia are synaptic patterns and associations in a artificial or natural neural network. Consciousness is the abstract process and functionality of an active neural network that is similar to human cognition. Consciousness is much harder to define precisely because people have not agreed whether animals are conscious or even whether hyper-cerebral psychopaths are conscious (if they really even exist outside fiction).
I do start doubting when I read about behaviorists who don’t believe qualia exist or are important, though.
I think qualia does not exist per se. However, I do think qualia is important on the level that it does exist. We have entered such a low level of metaphysics that it is difficult to put the ideas into words.
Although I’m not certain, I extend the same recognition of some kind of qualia to most animals because they are like us, and from a similar origin and evince similar behavior
With AI, though, this goes out the window: computers are not the same sort of thing as you and me or as animals, and thus I have no reason to suspect it will have the same sort of consciousness as I do. It’s a fundamentally different beast, not even a beast, but a machine.
But why make the distinction? If you recognize animals as conscious, I think if you spent three days with an android equipped with an ANN that perfectly mimicked human consciousness and emotion, then your lizard brain would inevitably recognize it as a fellow conscious being. And once your lizard brain accepts that the android is conscious, then your rational mind would begin to reconsider its beliefs as well.
Hence, I think the conception of a philosophical zombie cannot survive contact with an AI that behaves like a human. We can only discuss with this level of detachment because such an AI does not exist and thus cannot evoke our empathy.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
One key point in the definition of qualia is that there need not be any external factors that correspond to whether or not an entity possesses qualia.
I disagree with this definition. If a phenomenon cannot be empirically observed, then it does not exist. If a universe where every human being is a philosophical zombie does not differ, then why not Occam's razor away the whole concept of a philosophical zombie?
I consider it much more reasonable to define consciousness and qualia by function. This eliminates philosophical black holes like the hard problem of consciousness or philosophical zombies. I doubt the concept of a philosophical zombie can survive contact with human empathy either. Humans empathize with video game characters, with simple animals, or even a rock with a smiley face painted on it. I suspect people would overwhelmingly consider an AI conscious if it emulates a human even on the basic level of a dating sim character.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
As someone who peaked slightly higher than stick figures, meds definitely make it easier to practice lots of repetitive wrist movements. My daydreaming also becomes more vivid, and I can write more words. Meds tend to drive me more to the execution side of things and maybe terminate my endless tangents of information gathering.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
Wait, Yudkowsky doesn't believe in the scaling hypothesis? That's super interesting to me! Has he written about this? That could put a hamper on any kind of FOOM scenario. Rather than crack some kind of grand theory of intelligence, a super intelligence would need to hijack trillions of dollars worth of computing resources to gain a competitive advantage and a correspondingly huge amount of training data.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
1yr ago
I don't see how it would follow that in order for African immigrants to be more intelligent than Europeans and Europeans to be more intelligent than ADOS that African immigrants should have a greater overall genetic distance to ADOS than Europeans do. Only the intelligence related genes would need to be different. And suppose that the African elites and the unfortunates who were shipped off diverged only centuries before they were enslaved, two distinct populations could have evolved where one is more intelligent and one is less than the median European.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
I started splitting my tabs into different windows for different contexts, then I started just bookmarking all the tabs into a bookmark folder when I was done with the subject.
For example, I would sort all Blender related or specific university course related tabs in a single window. Or my EVE or Stellaris related searches. It's a lot easier to bookmark and close a window when it's all related to one topic, and you have some trigger to reopen the bookmark folder once you come back to the topic. Makes it feel less like it's lost to the void.
I also started separating my tabs based on type even if it's not strictly not one subject. Like separating forum posts from YouTube videos from Wikipedia rabbit holes. Every bit of organization also helps to spot things you plainly don't have interest in anymore. At some point I just give up on an old video essay and put it in the watch later folder because I never check the watch later YouTube page (I don't check the folder either). I also use Tree Style Tabs, which makes it easier to rip out some recursive new tab spree onto its own context.
I can't say I've fully beaten the tab addiction though. Now I've just got a lot of windows littering my taskbar as well. I started doing things like putting my video windows or language stuff on another monitor as well as putting my study related things to another desktop (as in Win + Tab). It's certainly more organized, and I've got the satisfaction of knowing I could close these windows if I really wanted to.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
Really? 90 minutes would be a disappointingly short session for me. Mine are closer to 7-11 hours but only every other week. But I don't feel like my life is particularly 'blown up'. Surely, it's not that big of a time commitment compared to a relationship? I still have time for university, parties, and other hobbies. I do, however, regret that the dopamine frenzy could have been used for more productive ends, like a programming project.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
I think there's still plenty of people on the fence or on their side, who don't buy into the narrative, but they can still be turned away, and I think having more people on your side is a help regardless of the situation. I probably wouldn't personally be that bothered by any trolling ops, but it would make me a lot more hesitant to even bring the site up here and defend it, and I couldn't really defend it to my more reasonable friends either in that scenario.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
Even from a strategic viewpoint it might not be such a good idea. It might turn away sympathizers and support the narrative of Kiwi Farms as a harassment website.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
The alternate themes don't seem to support a left margin line for a thread of comments. Other than that, I liked the midnight theme.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
Maybe I just have more selfish moral instincts, but I see moral worth as something that is formed through connection between me and that specific animal. I don't see it as something that is universally applied to every animal. Obviously, if our family dog was butchered, I would be shocked and outraged. But I find it difficult to feel anything for the vague abstraction of a chicken in a factory farm. Maybe if I could see one in front of my eyes, I would want to protect that chicken - but only that particular chicken.
Ultimately, I don't think it's something you can steelman or argue about. It's just a matter of one's moral intuition.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
I think we may have a ton of imported lurkers who were always just invisible before, and I'm glad at least some of them have chosen to come along.
Where else would we get our reading material from? I usually don't post much because I don't particularly enjoy writing like people here do, and I usually feel more pain than joy when I do post. I do mostly enjoy skimming every weekly culture war or small-scale questions thread, and also the other non-weekly random topic threads.
SoulFire
a natural neural network
2yr ago
Kiwi Farms is basically a gossip forum about internet personalities. They have a surprisingly high share of female users and even a sub-forum to discuss cosplay/makeup content creators, fat acceptance activists, trans people, and other girly things.
Originally, the site was called CWCki Forums, and they focused on documenting and discussing the life of an individual known as Chris-chan, or Christian Wenston Chandler (CWC), author of the Sonichu webcomic and prone to many hi-jinks. In the beginning of 2015, it appears they moved to the domain kiwifar.ms, and eventually to kiwifarms.net.
In Kiwi Farms, they have a term 'lolcow' for people that are walking disasters and that are 'farmed for endless lols'. These are the people that they initially focused on discussing, but as the community grew, they moved on to discuss online personalities and online communities more widely.
The owner of the site appears to be some degree of free speech activist. The posts on the site are allowed to include slurs against various minority groups. On the site, it's allowed to doxx the individuals that are discussed, as in release identifying information about them. More infamously, Kiwi Farms were one of the few sites not to take down the footage from the Christchurch massacre.
Kiwi Farms also has a reputation for being a platform for anti-trans activism. They harbor a number of TERFs and other people against trans rights activists or trans people in general. More recently, this lead to the #DropKiwiFarms campaign in response by trans activists, and this eventually lead to Kiwi Farms being dropped from Cloudflare. This lead to the migration to the URL kiwifarms.ru and a Russian DDoS protection service. However, this service caved under the network load.
Currently, Kiwi Farms is only accessible through Tor at http://uquusqsaaad66cvub4473csdu4uu7ahxou3zqc35fpw5d4ificedzyqd.onion/
Coffin of Andy and Leyley
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