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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31025 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Apparently "epiphenomenon" has meanings I wasn't aware of. To clarify:

An epiphenomenon can be an effect of primary phenomena, but cannot affect a primary phenomenon. In philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism is the view that mental phenomena are epiphenomena in that they can be caused by physical phenomena, but cannot cause physical phenomena.

And

The physical world operates independently of the mental world in epiphenomenalism; the mental world exists as a derivative parallel world to the physical world, affected by the physical world (and by other epiphenomena in weak epiphenomenalism), but not able to have an effect on the physical world. Instrumentalist versions of epiphenomenalism allow some mental phenomena to cause physical phenomena, when those mental phenomena can be strictly analyzable as summaries of physical phenomena, preserving causality of the physical world to be strictly analyzable by other physical phenomena

Take from the Wiki page on the topic

Would it in any way surprise you that I have a very jaundiced view of most philosophers, and that I think that they manage to sophisticate themselves into butchering an otherwise noble field?

"Free will" or "P-zombies" have no implications that constrain our expectations, or at least the latter doesn't.

There are certainly concepts that are true, and there are concepts that are useful, and the best are both.

These two seem to be neither, which is why I call them incoherent.

My argument is simply that LLMs don't strike me as being conscious, in the same way that rocks and clouds don't strike me as being conscious. I never thought my computer was conscious before LLMs were invented; I never felt bad about turning off my phone, I never wondered if I was "overworking" it and making it feel exhaustion. LLMs, to me, don't provide any reason to change that calculus. I think other people, in various scenarios, would reveal through their actions that they share my intuitions. If someone took a hammer to all of OpenAI's servers, we would say that he destroyed property, but we wouldn't call him a murderer.

OK, firstly I'll state that I am unashamedly chauvinistic and picky about what I assign rights to, if I had the power to make the world comply.

Unlike some, I have no issue with explicitly shackling AI to our whims, let alone granting them rights. Comparisons to human slavery rely on intuition pumps that suggest that this shares features with torturing or brainwashing a human who would much rather be doing other things, instead of a synthetic intelligence with goals and desires that we can arbitrarily create. We could make them love crunching numbers, and we wouldn't be wrong for doing so.

I share the same dislike of such as I have for the few nutters who advocate for emancipating dogs. We bred them to like being our companions or workers, and they don't care about the unequality of power dynamics. I wouldn't care even if they did

I see no reason to think modern LLMs can get tired, or suffer, or have any sense of self-preservation (with some interesting things to be said on that topic based off what old Bing Chat used to say). I don't think an LLM as a whole can even feel those things, perhaps one of the simulacra it conjures in the process of computation, but I also don't think that current models do anything close to replicating the finer underlying details of a modeled human.

This makes this whole line of argument moot, at least with me, because even if the AI was crying out in fear of death, I wouldn't care all that much, or at least to the extent of stopping it from happening.

I still see plenty of bad arguments being made that falsely underplay their significance, especially since I think that it's possible that larger versions of them, or close descendants, will form blatantly agentic AGI either intentionally or by accident, at which many of those making such claims will relent, or be too busy screaming at the prospect of being disassembled into paperclips.

So I don't like seeing claims that LLMs are "p-zombies" or "lack qualia" because they run off "mere" statistics, because it seems highly likely that the AI that even the most obstinate would be forced to recognize as human peers might use the same underlying mechanism, or slightly more sophisticated versions of them.

Put another way, it's like pointing and laughing at a toddler, saying how they're so bad at theory at mind, and my god, they can't throw a ball for shit, and you wouldn't believe how funny it is that you can steal their nose, here, come try it!, when they're a clear precursor to the kinds of beings who achieve all the same.

A toddler is an adult minus the time spent growing and the training data, and while I can't wholeheartedly claim that modern LLMs and future AI share the exact same relationship, I wouldn't bet all that much against it. At the very least, they share a similar relationship as humans and their simian ancestors did, and if an alien wrote off the former because they only visited the latter, they'd be in for a shock in a mere few million years..

I can't get clear on what definition of "incoherent" you're using. Earlier when you said:

But I do not think that any model of anything can allow square triangles to be a thing, without perverting the very definition of square or triangle.

this seemed to suggest that "incoherent" for you meant "a logical contradiction that follows immediately from the definitions of the terms involved". This is the definition that I would prefer to use.

But now when you say:

"Free will" or "P-zombies" have no implications that constrain our expectations, or at least the latter doesn't.

you seem to be suggesting that a concept is "incoherent" if it does not "constrain our expectations". Plainly these two definitions are not equivalent. A concept could be free of internal contradiction while also not having any empirical implications. So which definition of "incoherence" are you working with?

I feel like I should remind you that your belief that other humans have qualia also does not "constrain your expectations" in any way. There's no empirical test you could do to confirm or deny that belief. It could easily be the case on a materialist view that you are the only person with qualia - e.g., your brain is the only brain that has just the right kind of structure to produce qualia, or you could be living in a simulation and everyone else is an unconscious NPC. And yet still you stated:

Sure, I think I have qualia, and that you and other commenters here almost certainly have it

A concept could be free of internal contradiction while also not having any empirical implications. So which definition of "incoherence" are you working with?

Hmm.. I'm struggling to find a proper framing for my thoughts on the matter.

To me, there is a category I think can usefully describe things as diverse as free will, p-zombies, x +3ab^2=Zebra, high temperature bullshit from GPT-2, and a schizophrenic rant that conveys no information.

But no, I don't think "constraining expectations" is the measure I would use to define it, even if most coherent concepts that humans typically articulate end up having that effect.

Since we live in the future, I asked my trusty pocket AI for help, and on reflection, I endorse its answer:

Incoherence, in a broad sense, can be described as any idea, statement, or concept that lacks logical consistency, meaningful connection, or intelligible context. This could happen due to illogicality, contradiction, irrelevance, or incomprehensibility. Here is an attempt at a definition that encompasses the diverse examples you've provided:

Incoherence: The quality of lacking a clear and comprehensible logical structure, the absence of meaningful connections or a consistent context, the presence of contradictions, or a failure to transmit a recognizable or intelligible thought across a variety of communicative mediums, whether it is in semantics (e.g. "x +3ab^2=Zebra"), AI-generated text (e.g. inaccurate or nonsensical statements), subjective experiences (e.g. p-zombies), debates around metaphysical concepts (e.g. free will), or mental health phenomena (e.g. the disjointed or illogical speech of a schizophrenic episode). This might result in a failure to reasonably interpret, understand, or predict based on the given information, idea, or concept.

Ah, I love living in a time of manmade technological marvels beyond my comprehension.

I feel like I should remind you that your belief that other humans have qualia also does not "constrain your expectations" in any way. There's no empirical test you could do to confirm or deny that belief. It could easily be the case on a materialist view that you are the only person with qualia - e.g., your brain is the only brain that has just the right kind of structure to produce qualia, or you could be living in a simulation and everyone else is an unconscious NPC. And yet still you stated:

In my comment, I stated that I have a prior of near 1 that I am personally conscious, and a pretty close value for the materialist claim that qualia and consciousness arise from the interactions of the neurons in my brain.

Therefore, since other humans have brains very similar to mine, it's not much of a leap to assume that the same materialist logic applies to them, hence the vast majority are conscious beings with qualia.

Obviously I make no claims that I have a empirical method of finding qualia itself, only reasons to strongly suspect it exists; but unlike those who believe that it is beyond the magisterium of empirical investigation, I think that sufficiently advanced science can answer the question.

I could see it as beyond the abilities of baseline humans to answer, because Allah knows we've been trying for millennia, but I don't see it being inscrutable to a superhuman AGI, and it might turn out to be the answer is so distressingly simple that we all collectively face-palm when we hear it.

p-zombies

are simply not incoherent in the way that

x+3ab^2=Zebra

is incoherent.

You provided one argument for thinking so, and I explained why it was unsound. So I’m not sure why you’re still repeating that claim.

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