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Re:Tests for Consciousness in Humans and Beyond by ForHackernews on Monday March 18, 2024 @09:33AM (#39744253)
> people who thought humans were special

Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Keep going, though. All the other species of monkeys and I are enjoying it.

> so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best

Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. The null hypothesis is that your chatbot isn't conscious in any way that matters (I'll happily grant it a slightly-lower-than-thermostat[0] level of consciousness).

I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1]. Maybe you are an LLM, after all? Prove you're human: tell me a racist joke? (this question is a joke – something else LLMs are bad at)

[0] http://romainbrette.fr/is-a-thermostat-conscious/

[1] https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/

Re:Tests for Consciousness in Humans and Beyond by naasking on Monday March 18, 2024 @01:10PM (#39747048)
> Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man.

Second actually. Are you an LLM since you're having trouble counting?

> Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious.

No, I never claimed they were conscious, I refuted the claim that we can say with confidence they are definitely not conscious, because such a claim requires knowledge humanity simply doesn't possess. Perhaps you should reread this thread if you're unclear about what I claimed.

> I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1]

The hard problem is an alleged problem, there is no proof that it's real. All thought experiments that purport to show its existence (Mary's Room, p-zombies), have acceptable possible answers under physicalist interpretations, and some neuroscientists are now pursuing such theories [1].

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

Re:Tests for Consciousness in Humans and Beyond by ForHackernews on Monday March 18, 2024 @03:30PM (#39748886)
That's fine, if you want to say consciousness itself is an illusion, no physicalist interpretation blah blah, knock yourself out. I know that I'm a conscious being, and, reasoning by analogy, I'm more than happy to credit other mammalian life (and perhaps even other animals) with consciousness.

Chairs, chatbots, and internet commenters are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny for their dubious claims of sentience.