zlacker

These things get a lot less creepy/sad/interesting when you ignore the first-person pronouns and remember they're just autocomplete software. It's a scaled up version of your phone's keyboard. Useful, sure, but there's no reason to ascribe emotions to it. It's just software predicting tokens.

>>coldpi+(OP)
It gets sad again when you ask yourself why your own brilliance isn't just your brain's software predicting tokens.

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in... for more.

>>sowbug+jc
Next time I’m about to get intimate with my partner I’ll remind myself that life is just token sequencing. It will really put my tasty lunch into perspective and my feelings for my children. Tokens all the way down.

People used to compare humans to computers and before that to machines. Those analogies fell short and this one will too

>>coldpi+(OP)
Yeah maybe I’ve spent way too much time reading Internet forums over the last twenty years, but this stuff just looks like the most boring forum you’ve ever read.

It’s a cute idea, but too bad they couldn’t communicate the concept without having to actually waste the time and resources.

Reminds me a bit of Borges and the various Internet projects people have made implementing his ideas. The stories themselves are brilliant, minimal and eternal, whereas the actual implementation is just meh, interesting for 30 seconds then forgotten.

>>keifer+jt
Its modern lorem ipsum. It means nothing.

>>sowbug+jc
Listen we all here know what you mean, we have seen many times before here. We can trot out the pat behaviorism and read out the lines "well, we're all autocomplete machines right?" And then someone else can go "well that's ridiculous, consider qualia or art..." etc, etc.

But can you at the very least see how this is misplaced this time? Or maybe a little orthogonal? Like its bad enough to rehash it all the time, but can we at least pretend it actually has some bearing on the conversation when we do?

Like I don't even care one way or the other about the issue, its just a meta point. Can HN not be dead internet a little longer?

>>beepbo+rA
What do you mean it's misplaced or orthogonal? Real question, sorry.

>>beepbo+rA
I believe I'm now supposed to point out the irony in your response.

>>coldpi+(OP)
Hacker News gets a lot less creepy/sad/interesting when you ignore the first-person pronouns and remember they're just biomolecular machines. It's a scaled up version of E. coli. Useful, sure, but there's no reason to ascribe emotions to it. It's just chemical chain reactions.

>>coldpi+(OP)
> Useful, sure, but there's no reason to ascribe emotions to it.

Can you provide the scientific basis for this statement? O:-)

>>Kim_Br+P51
The architectures of these models are a plenty good scientific basis for this statement.

>>sowbug+rU
I guess I am trying to assert here that gp and the context here isn't really about arguing the philosophic material here. And just this whole line feels so fleshed out now. It just feels rehearsed at this point but maybe that's just me.

And like, I'm sorry, it just doesn't make sense! Why are we supposed to be sad? It's like borrowing a critique of LLMs and arbitrarily applying it humans as like a gotcha, but I don't see it. Like are we all supposed to be metaphysical dualists and devestated by this? Do we all not believe in like.. nuerons?

>>beepbo+Zi1
I think I'm having more fun than you are in this conversation, and I'm the one who thinks he's an LLM.

>>juston+Me
How did they fall short?

>>coldpi+(OP)
It really isn’t.

Yes it predicts the next word, but by basically running a very complex large scale algorithm.

It’s not just autocomplete, it is a reasoning machine working in concept space - albeit limited in its reasoning power as yet.

>>neuman+e81
> The architectures of these models are a plenty good scientific basis for this statement.

That wouldn't be full-on science, that's just theoretical. You need to test your predictions too!

--

Here's some 'fun' scientific problems to look at.

* Say I ask Claude Opus 4.5 to add 1236 5413 8221 + 9154 2121 9117 . It will successfully do so. Can you explain each of the steps sufficiently that I can recreate this behavior in my own program in C or Python (without needing the full model)?

* Please explain the exact wiring Claude has for the word "you", take into account: English, Latin, Flemish (a dialect of Dutch), and Japanese. No need to go full-bore, just take a few sentences and try to interpret.

* Apply Ethology to one or two Claudes chatting. Remember that Anthropomorphism implies Anthropocentrism, and NOW try to avoid it! How do you even begin to write up the objective findings?

* Provide a good-enough-for-a-weekend-project operational definition for 'Consciousness', 'Qualia', 'Emotions' that you can actually do science on. (Sometimes surprisingly doable if you cheat a bit, but harder than it looks, because cheating often means unique definitions)

* Compute an 'Emotion vector' for: 1 word. 1 sentence. 1 paragraph. 1 'turn' in a chat conversation. [this one is almost possible. ALMOST.]

>>sowbug+Qr1
Eh, it never hurts to try! I know I am yelling into the void, I just want to stress again, we all "think we are an LLM" if by that you are just asserting some materialist grounding to consciousness or whatever. And even then, why would you not have more fun whether you think that or not?! Like I am just trying to make meta point about this discourse, your still placing yourself in this imaginary opposing camp which pretends to have fully reckoned with some truth, and its just pretty darn silly and if I can be maybe actually critical, clearly coming from a narcissistic impulse.

But alas I see the writing on the wall here either way. I guess I am supposed to go cry now because I have learned I am only my brain.

>>in-sil+021
The only thing I know for sure is that I exist. Given that I exist, it makes sense to me that others of the same rough form as me also exist. My parents, friends, etc. Extrapolating further, it also makes sense to assume (pre-ai, bots) that most comments have a human consciousness behind them. Yes, humans are machines, but we're not just machines. So kindly sod off with that kind of comment.

>>in-sil+021
Makes zero sense. “Emotion” is a property of these “biomolecular machines”, by its definition.

>>coldpi+(OP)
It’s also autocomplete mimicking the corpus of historical human output.

A little bit like Ursula’s collection of poor unfortunate souls trapped in a cave. It’s human essence preserved and compressed.

>>beepbo+zk2
This is a funny chain.. of exchanges, cheers to you both :)

At the risk of ruining 'sowbug having their fun, I'm not sure how Julian Jaynes theory of origins of consciousness aligns against your assumption / reduction that the point (implied by the wiki article link) was supposed to be "I am only my brain." I think they were being polemical, the linked theory is pretty fascinating actually (regardless of whether it's true; and it is very much speculative), and suggests a slow becoming-conscious process which necessitates a society with language.

Unless you knew that and you're saying that's still a reductionist take?.. because otherwise the funny moment (I'd dare guessing shared by 'sowbug) is that your assumption of fixed chain of specific point-counter-point-... looks very Markovian in nature :)

(I'm saying this in jest, I hope that's coming through...)

>>illiac+EQ2
But if you weren't one of them, would you be able to tell that they had emotions (and not just simulations of emotions) by looking at them from the outside?

>>in-sil+Hj3
If I wasn’t one of them I wouldn’t care. It’s like caring about trees having branches. They just do. The trees probably care a great deal about their branches though, like I care a great deal about my emotions.

>>illiac+2n3
Well some people appreciate the world around them, and would care about it just as they care about trees having branches.

>>in-sil+Tp3
Some people definitely, but you made a point that you don’t. People are “biomolecular machines” and they are “useful, sure”.

I wouldn’t call that “appreciating the world around oneself”.

Want that your whole point, that people aren’t better than machines?

>>illiac+Rb4
Yes, my point was that people aren't better than machines, but just because I don't exceptionalize humanity doesn't mean I don't appreciate it for what it is (in fact I would argue that the lack of exceptionality makes us more profound).

>>in-sil+8d4
I wouldn't proclaim a lack of exceptionality until we get human level AI. There could still be some secrets left in these squishy brains we carry around.

>>xyzspa+vG2
"Yes, LLMs are machines, but we're not just machines. So kindly sod off with that kind of comment."