This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In effect LLMS aren't smart, they are just great at recognizing patterns they are trained on. Google is great at recognizing text strings that it remembers, LLMS don't need matching strings they match on patterns and are able to combine patterns from multiple sources. LLMs aren't truly intelligent because they are dumbfounded if there isn't a good matching pattern in the training set. They are stumped in a way a human isn't if they encounter something new.
LLMs aren't going to replace humans because the set of all data is miniscule to the set of all potential patterns in the world.
I mean, you can say LLMs aren't going to replace humans...but the 'potential patterns in the world' are all reducible to data in one way or another.
So some Machine trained on language AND physics data AND biology AND etc. etc. is still a potential contender, no?
I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.
I've consistently pointed AI hype believers to their own metaphysical assumptions and this is the crux of it.
Are we just pattern matching engines or does agency have another source and is that in anyway connected to our experience of consciousness?
I think when people believed that larger gizmoes we don't fully understand would give us the answer to this question, they were deluding themselves, and I'm somewhat dissapointed that I was right since we are still without answers. But at least the possibility that we have a soul, ghost or another manner of special thing that automata don't is still secure.
Now the real test will be this: if Musk can convince enough people to use Neuralink and get their brain patterns recorded 24/7, and if someone trains transformers on that, what will be the outcome? Can we Chinese room our way to general intelligence?
I don't know, but it seems like the most logical way forward, since access to immense unpolluted datasets is no longer a possibility.
Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?
Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:
Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.
Scott's metaphor is funny to think about but it has no philosophical rigor.
Complexity theory is not meaningfully different from other mathematics in its relationship to the metaphysical: it's a pure reason construct that attempts to map out necessary truths.
In many ways it it actually completely disconnected from the question at hand, because the machines it is concerned about are abstractions that are not and cannot possibly be real. They just happen to map onto real objects in a useful enough way. As you point out.
Scott isn't the first to connect this type of endeavor and the sacred. Pythagoras did it a long time ago. But the connection isn't relevant to the question of intelligence in my view.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think pure data is a directionally useful way of looking at the world, and useful for most problem-solving purposes. I am a theist so I think there’s more beyond just physical reality, but whether or not it’s true, I think that for most projects, reducing the universe to data is going to work just fine. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and definitely experienced there, so I think you can get something like a conscious AI simply by recreating a brain. Might be easier to start with a dog or something like that, but I think even though there’s a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point to studying it in brains.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose it comes down to whether or not there is a ghost in the machine.
If human intelligence is all neurons that can be modeled as a graph with weighted edges then we should be able to simulate it.
Maybe we do that and still can’t get human intelligence to pop out of the simulated brain and find that something is missing.
It would be a bit funny if they design a machine that is provably a 1:1 simulation of a human brain, switch it on, and get an error message to the effect of "Cannot Execute Commands: This unit is not ensouled."
“Humunculus not installed: please refer to manual.”
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, that kind of sounds like you're saying it's provably not a 1:1 simulation of a human brain.
What you're describing is measurable evidence of new physics. Every physicist in the world would want to buy you a beer.
More options
Context Copy link
...Please contact your local soul provider for further information
If you believe that you've received this message in error, please contact your system administrator at t0.yahweh.root.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Control thread not found.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link