My issue with, say, “love is chemicals” isn’t that the experience of feeling love is neurochemical activity. It’s the crude reductionist conclusion of “and therefore it is meaningless just like based Rick Sanchez said, get schwifty!”
Similarly, I don’t hold a position that living brains are impossible to fully understand; it’s that there’s more left to know and a lot of unknowns left to explore. The implication of some people in this thread is that you must choose between “LLMs are at least as conscious as human beings or are getting there very soon” or “I am a faith healer crystal toucher sprinkled with fairy dust” which is a bullshit false dichotomy.
I sort of regret posting that meme because it was more cheeky and silly than an actual position I was taking, myself. The “dae le meat computers” reductionism enjoyer I was replying to (with the “therefore you must believe that LLMs are that close to sapience or else you believe in souls and are living in a demon haunted world unlike my enlightened euphoric Reddit New Atheist self” take) was abrasive enough where I was trying some levity but it didn’t go over well.
My issue with, say, “love is chemicals” isn’t that the experience of feeling love is neurochemical activity. It’s the crude reductionist conclusion of “and therefore it is meaningless just like based Rick Sanchez said, get schwifty!”
Similarly, I don’t hold a position that living brains are impossible to fully understand; it’s that there’s more left to know and a lot of unknowns left to explore. The implication of some people in this thread is that you must choose between “LLMs are at least as conscious as human beings or are getting there very soon” or “I am a faith healer crystal toucher sprinkled with fairy dust” which is a bullshit false dichotomy.
Yes, I agree completely. I had to rewrite my comment multiple times to clarify that, but yeah. Sorry :(
I sort of regret posting that meme because it was more cheeky and silly than an actual position I was taking, myself. The “dae le meat computers” reductionism enjoyer I was replying to (with the “therefore you must believe that LLMs are that close to sapience or else you believe in souls and are living in a demon haunted world unlike my enlightened euphoric Reddit New Atheist self” take) was abrasive enough where I was trying some levity but it didn’t go over well.
I understand, either way the meme you posted is funny though because it would piss techbros off
Judging by the reactions it got, it certainly did.