I’ve been in the AI space since ChatGPT first dropped. I’ve toyed around with a lot of Language Models, built random side projects, built a couple from scratch and I’ve spent hours looking at the math behind it all.
Yeah, the definition of “conscious” really is a puzzle. My guess is that the “nothing is conscious” model has a great deal of crossover with the “free will doesn’t exist” one; for both of those, I don’t consider them useful models even if they end up being true: if I’m not actually conscious and just think I am, I might as well behave as though I am.
Regardless, we really do need to define what exactly we mean by “conscious” before we can have a meaningful discussion about it. Where’s Socrates when we need him?
Within a complex enough system the difference becomes functionally meaningless anyway, We could re-configure all matter (except you) in the universe into one giga computer and it would still struggle to accurately predict your behaviour beyond a few minutes because the physical system of your brain is just that chaotic. So wether we’re concious or not, or have free will or not ultimately makes no difference.
Yeah, the definition of “conscious” really is a puzzle. My guess is that the “nothing is conscious” model has a great deal of crossover with the “free will doesn’t exist” one; for both of those, I don’t consider them useful models even if they end up being true: if I’m not actually conscious and just think I am, I might as well behave as though I am.
Regardless, we really do need to define what exactly we mean by “conscious” before we can have a meaningful discussion about it. Where’s Socrates when we need him?
Within a complex enough system the difference becomes functionally meaningless anyway, We could re-configure all matter (except you) in the universe into one giga computer and it would still struggle to accurately predict your behaviour beyond a few minutes because the physical system of your brain is just that chaotic. So wether we’re concious or not, or have free will or not ultimately makes no difference.