Slightly related excerpt:

"Supporters of the Strong AI Hypothesis insisted that consciousness was a property of certain algorithms – a result of information being processed in certain ways, regardless of what machine, or organ, was used to perform the task. A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its ‘surroundings’ in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. ‘Simulated consciousness’ was as oxymoronic as ‘simulated addition’.

Opponents replied that when you modelled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modelled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modelled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modelled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?"

— Permutation City by Greg Egan

That is a very deep question.

A neural network can't think, please stop cargo culting neural networks

Panpsychism is a serious philosophical position.

Could you please give an explanation of panpsychism applied to software that make sense? Spoiler: you cannot and it's totally refuted empirically. If I code a hello world, what kind of cognitive abilities does this have?

BTW I guess panpsychism researchers should start talking to rocks maybe one day they'll find one that is an AGI! /s

The position is that information not physical matter is ontologically primary and that substrate independent integrated information processing is identical to consciousness.

A hello world program and a rock are not integrated information processing systems. The former is an automata which can be contained in an integrated information processing systems and the latter is a more arbitrary construct which does very little information processing at all (much less integrated).

Sounds like the ether in physics around 1900 or the four elements in Greek philosophy.

Non-falsifiable dreams.

Suppose there’s a highly-detailed molecular dynamics simulation of every atom in your brain: every ion channel in every neuron, any neurotransmitters wafting about, and whatever other mechanisms might be relevant (ephaptic coupling?) for good measure.

This would be frightfully expensive to build and run (BlueBrain blew billions on a very stripped down version)l Nevertheless, it’s not obvious to me that this MD model wouldn’t “think” in the same way you do.

The simulation you describe, if precise enough is isomorphic to a real brain so obviously it's tautologic that it would think the same way as the real brain do (qualias aside).

But panpsychism apply to anything, e.g a rock. And your statement does not apply to a standard neural network.

Personal attacks will get you banned on HN. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting.

Personal attacks will get you banned on HN. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting.

Still seems like an interesting question if you replace “think” with “inferred”, “learnt” (in the statistical sense), or any other synonym that’s in opposition to “memorized and parroted”.