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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11900 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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The AP style guide is straightforwardly correct. LLMs are computer programs, not living things (let alone sentient). And while it would be fine to use the anthropomorphizing language if people actually understood that, they really don't. Look at Richard Dawkins or Kent Overstreet for example. Smart people, but completely taken in by the false belief that the machine is a sentient being. So, until more people come to understand that the clanker is just a machine, it makes sense to avoid using language that will mislead them.

LLMs are computer programs

Can you prove you're not?

Cartesian dualism admits some nice potential implications, but I can't help but notice that my sentience diminishes when the health of my meat does.

We are something like hard-wired programs that are hyper optimized for our interactable, feedback-heavy chassis. It's genuinely unclear what it would even mean to upload or copy us to silicon, and that should be obvious to anyone who bothers to notice the differences in their experience of cognition at different hormone levels.

I can't help but notice that my sentience diminishes when the health of my meat does.

Yeah, that's a good reason that AP is correct here: we have a pretty good understanding that meat (biological matter) feels pain and has desires and that not-meat doesn't. LLMs are not-meat.

If you think that not-meat can feel things you are going further than Cartesian dualism all the way to panpsychism.

we have a pretty good understanding that meat (biological matter) feels pain and has desires and that not-meat doesn't. LLMs are not-meat

Citation needed.

Last I looked, both meat and non-meat were made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. What's the property which only meat's configuration of those has that allows it to feel pain and have desires?

We don't know, but it's only ever happened in meat. So any claim it's happening elsewhere is extraordinary, and requires therefore extraordinary evidence.

This whole argument is nonsense because it's people with different metaphysics talking past each other.

Under what metaphysics does it make sense for LLMs to be able to feel things?

The answer here is not "under no metaphysics" but I think people are racing to be open-minded about LLMs being able to feel things precisely without contemplating what that implies about their metaphysics.

Functionalism

Functionalism doesn't give GPUs nociception.

What's the property which only meat's configuration of those has that allows it to feel pain and have desires?

It's called a "nervous system" and LLMs do not have it.

LLMs are software performing math on a physical computer.

If the physical part of an LLM feels pain, then it doesn't need an LLM - your computer is feeling pain when it suffers from an overtemperature warning because you've been playing Crysis or whatever.

If the math part of an LLM feels pain, then Magic: The Gathering can feel pain, since the game is Turing complete.

I think both of these conclusions are absurd.

And please don't try to insist that "your body can't feel pain without the brain" (not exactly true, the body responds to stimulus before it is perceived as pain; a GPU does not) or "your brain can in theory feel pain detached from the body, so an LLM could feel pain without the GPU being able to perceive it" - the brain is a physical object, not software.

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