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maxbond | on: They’re made out of weights
I never said you couldn't write any arbitrary compelling story about a toaster, I said that this specific hypothetical story, where you rewrite "They're made of meat!" to be about a toaster, would not be compelling.

I am doing my best to communicate with you but to be honest you are not hearing me (across both responses), and I am out of words.

iainmerrick | parent | next
Just wanted to say, I appreciate your patience and good sense in this thread.

It's difficult to tell who's trolling -- probably best to go with the charitable assumption that everyone is honestly trying to convey their opinion, but mostly talking past each other. Unfortunately these discussions about the nature of consciousness never go anywhere useful.

I think I'm probably in the same boat as you, roughly: a) LLMs are doing something really interesting that resembles in many ways both intelligence and consciousness; b) I suspect they're not actually conscious but I don't know how you'd know for sure; c) it all just drives home that we still don't really know what consciousness actually is. But like (a), it's definitely something really interesting...

maxbond | root | parent
I don't think I was quite as patient as I should have been, but I do appreciate it.
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Planktonne | parent
It would be equally compelling, because the compelling nature of the story comes from the language, the presentation, rather than the [specific thing being ascribed consciousness].
iainmerrick | root | parent
No, the original "they're made out of meat" works because we're confident that we are in fact intelligent and conscious, despite how ridiculous and unlikely the author manages to make it sound.

"They're made out of weights" works precisely because LLMs really do have this mysterious property that they seem somehow intelligent even though nobody can explain exactly why, and there's active debate over whether they could be considered conscious.

The thing being discussed isn't simply an arbitrary MacGuffin; in both cases the nature of the thing is central to the impact of the story.

Planktonne | root | parent
I disagree; it works in the original because it's the unlikely consciousness that produces the text itself; in the LLM case, it's produced by the likely consciousness.

"Imagine how other intelligences would view us", written by us, hits a lot less hard when it's "imagine how our intelligences view a thing we are claiming is intelligent", not written by it.

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