this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
116 points (88.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
29590 readers
2390 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics (NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out)
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What is the reasoning that you believe that your consciousness can't arise out of physical matter?
Because I have a subjective experience of it. The mindless and mechanical interactions of particles may give rise to the emergence of complex thought processes that seem to be experiencing the world, but actually seeing red, hearing music, not just input process output - that can't emerge from physical interactions of particles. It's a fundamentally different kind of thing. LLMs can say they're conscious, but if they actually are, it's not because of a bunch of 1s and 0s inside a computer.
Because an LLM is just a bunch on Matrix calculations, it's not the hardware it runs on. The maths already exists in theoretical space. Likewise, the more complex maths for neural interactions exists in theoretical space. If maths can create subjective experience, it shouldn't need the maths to be actually describing a physical object, it should be enough for the maths to exist. So if maths does create consciousness, then any possible state that could be described mathematically is conscious, not just brains that exist in the physical world. If maths can't create subjective experience, then something else must be creating that, which I call consciousness, and that I don't understand at all.
Thanks for explaining your reasoning, I see it different than you.
Especially your comment regarding the LLM is where our beliefs differ: an LLM is the software plus the hardware, so in my opinion for sure if there ever is a "real" conscious AI, we know what it is made out of and that it's the collection of programs that run on the hardware (we might never understand why that lead to consciousness, but it isn't more than what was put in). So whatever that AI is, is defined by those two things. Same as we humans are defined by our nerve system and brain. Take parts of it away and it changes the whole (=brain damage, trauma, drugs, etc.).
Especially drugs and their influence on our minds are a big reason why I'm strongly in the "it's all physical" camp. Taking drugs changes the minds of people while those drugs are in the system. That people feel their thinking change, is proof for me, that it's all physical, since it can be influenced by physical means, e.g. drugs.
Now we both stated our beliefs, but I don't think we will get a real answer in the close future and I don't think we will convince the other person, so thanks again for explaining your reasoning.