[HN Gopher] Feral Minds
___________________________________________________________________
Feral Minds
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-01-22 18:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.noemamag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.noemamag.com)
| jruohonen wrote:
| Surely soon enough, if not already, we are able to test Jonze's
| postulate? That is to say, what is interesting here is:
|
| "Concerned, Samantha begins discussing these feelings with other
| AIs -- and quickly finds relief communicating at a speed and
| volume not intelligible to Theodore and other users."
|
| Ref.:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39089720
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)
| djoldman wrote:
| Unfortunately, the hype about LLMs has generated breathless
| ruminations on AGI and consciousness. Dig a little deeper and
| there doesn't seem to be much there, as one may find that these
| terms are not adequately defined.
|
| Here we see this attempt:
|
| > First, a disclaimer. Consciousness is a notoriously slippery
| term, if nonetheless possessed of a certain common-sense quality.
| In some ways, being conscious just means being aware -- aware of
| ourselves, of others, of the world beyond -- in a manner that
| creates a subject apart, a self or "I," that can observe.
|
| Which is followed by paragraphs correctly calling out the
| inadequacy of the above definition. Nowhere though does the
| reader get a satisfactory answer: what really is consciousness?
|
| One might say who cares if they don't define it? Well, if you
| don't define it, there's no point in discussing whether it
| exists, how it came to be, or what it comprises.
|
| You might as well be asking the question: how close are we to
| quidlesmoopy?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I have a definition of consciousness: consciousness arises when
| a creature not only applies a theory of mind to others
| (predators, prey, and its conspecifics would all be likely
| others) but also applies a theory of mind to itself. (given
| that we have the most data on ourselves, it is not surprising
| that we'd have an "I", but it is a little surprising that the
| "I" modelled usually has such a high variance from others'
| models of oneself)
| ben_w wrote:
| Great (although that's a hypothesis for a cause rather than a
| definition), but for any discussion with another person, you
| have to be sure in advance that they don't use one of the
| other 49 common meanings of "consciousness".
|
| What I care about when I ask if an AI is or isn't conscious,
| is if it has the kind of experiences of existing that I know
| I have.
|
| Why is there a feeling of sensations rather than just the
| sensations themselves in this body of mine? How is it that I
| am more than mere stimulus-response? Is it homunculi all the
| way down?
| k__ wrote:
| I found the works of Thomas Metzinger illuminating, at
| least in terms of human consciousness.
| xcode42 wrote:
| Good luck. I've given up trying to explain qualia to
| people, and why they are at the core of why conscience
| matters. It's so frustrating. Once I heard it for the first
| time it seemed obvious to me and I was glad someone had
| already made up a word for it, but every time I try to
| explain it to people in the consciousness discussion people
| just look at me cross-eyed I must just be explaining it
| wrong :)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| How do we know that other _H sapiens_ have the same kind of
| experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that
| "I know, right?" is a fairly universal reaction, so we know
| that even if others' qualia are not identical to ours, they
| are at least isomorphic.
|
| As to "more than mere stimulus-response", much of me is
| pretty basic stimulus-response. Certainly the derivative
| controller, and arguably all the proportional controller as
| well. It's only the integral controller that's not, and
| much of _that_ could be adequately explained by an FSM with
| a high number of states. (it is a little known fact that
| Regexen were originally derived as a mathematical model of
| what neural networks could potentially recognise!)
|
| (see https://thefarside.net/i/61ee3cb4 infra)
| bumby wrote:
| > _How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind
| of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is
| that "I know, right?"_
|
| This was answered in a different comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103099
|
| I think the point is that we agree that I (as the
| individual asking) has consciousness, then we can infer
| that others have consciousness based on similarity.
| Another _H sapiens_ is very much like me, so they are
| very likely to have similar experiences. Chimpanzees less
| so, but still similar enough to infer they are more
| likely than not to be have similar experience. And on
| down the line, through dogs, earthworms, plants, and
| bacteria...each getting potentially less likely the
| further from similitude they become.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I prefer using my definition because it offers something
| more testable than just some (arbitrary?) degree of
| similarity.
|
| For instance, cows have been shown to spend
| (significantly) more time standing near (randomly placed)
| pictures of smiling farmers than pictures of frowning
| farmers, which suggests that they have enough of a theory
| of mind to prefer farmers who appear to be in good moods
| to those who appear to be in poor ones.
|
| That, of course, doesn't say anything about whether cows
| have a theory of their own mind, nor did that study do
| the (perhaps not so obvious?) step of recording picture
| placement relative to the cow's "bubble" (a curious
| bovine approaches head on; a frightened bovine leaves
| head first; a skeptical bovine places itself sideways to
| the object at a distance, with one eye upon it, so it can
| change to either of the first two if it comes to a
| decision either way), but at least it offers something
| more quantifiable than "I believe this thing to be more
| like me than that thing".
| bumby wrote:
| > _I prefer using my definition because it offers
| something more testable than just some (arbitrary?)
| degree of similarity._
|
| That's fine to have a preference, but we must also
| concede that many (most?) human classification ontologies
| are arbitrary. Even in your example of what constitutes a
| "smiling" or "frowning" farmer is a somewhat arbitrary
| definition. What you might call a frown, I may call a
| smiling 'smirk.'
|
| I think this testable framework preference may border on
| a reductionist perspective that dismisses the hard
| problem of consciousness on the assumption that if it
| can't be measured, it's not real (see also my other
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103504).
| Consider the perception of muscle fatigue/burning; in the
| context of a workout it may be found to be pleasurable,
| but in the context of an illness it might be felt as
| suffering. An MRI may "test" and show both have the same
| neural circuits activated but yet the subjective
| experience is vastly different. Just because we don't
| (yet...maybe?) have the tools to test for it, would we
| conclude that differences in subjective experience don't
| exist?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| today's serendipity: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/consciousness-3
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| The only two things I can say with much confidence about
| consciousness:
|
| 1. I definitely have it, some of the time. (I'm not sure if
| anything else does, but I can't rule it out.)
|
| 2. The chances other things have it feels lower as they become
| more different from me. Another person may or may not have
| consciousness, and a rock may or may not have consciousness,
| but the human feels more likely to have it than the rock does.
|
| This feels like the common sense stance for anyone who has
| considered solipsism in depth, and doesn't want to proclaim a
| unshakeable faith in things like panpsychism or non-dualism or
| whatever.
|
| It's honestly a bit frustrating, because I find mathematical
| platonism otherwise quite compelling, but it's totally possible
| there's just abstract mathematical objects and oh yeah this
| weird fairy dust we sprinkle over certain reifications of
| things to ontologically privilege them. I know, Occam hates me.
| bumby wrote:
| It may be that the tools we have come to rely on so much to
| define such terms are, almost by definition, inadequate to to
| define consciousness. The scientific method and rational
| discourse are used to describe _objective_ reality; I don 't
| know that they can fully answer the "hard" problem of
| consciousness because it is largely concerned with
| _subjective_ reality.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > It may be that the tools we have come to rely on so much
| to define such terms are, almost by definition, inadequate
| to to define consciousness.
|
| And yet, we are confronted by the fact that we use the
| concept of consciousness in dozens of different contexts
| and we understand perfectly well (usually) what people are
| talking about. That's the basic insight of ordinary
| language philosophy. These aren't fundamental mysteries,
| they're webs of concepts tied up in language and careful
| attention to how they are used, un packing the web and knot
| of uses, reveals what they mean. The definition is a "rule"
| or explanation for their use _in language_ , which is not
| "subjective" (private) but _public_ behaviour.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Mm, I'm still on the "by definition inadequate" side
| personally. I just don't see any unambiguous way to
| verify that another being even experiences qualia, to say
| nothing of actual consciousness.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > I just don't see any unambiguous way to verify that
| another being even experiences qualia, to say nothing of
| actual consciousness
|
| That's actually one of the core parts of Wittgenstein's
| "Private Language Argument"[0]. The problem isn't so much
| that verification is "difficult", it's that certainty _in
| the specific sense of intelligibly private_ is a logical
| impossibility. The implication is that "experiential
| qualia" have a specific intelligible meaning _in
| language_ (or even more broadly in behaviour), which is
| to say that our "subjectivity" is personal but not
| private. Further implications tumble outward. For
| instance, Wittgenstein spends a lot of time discussing
| the "qualia" of pain. It was (and still is, obviously
| considering the rise of "AI" discussions lately) an
| enormously consequential argument in philosophy.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argum
| ent#:~:t....
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| _clicks link_
|
| "Wittgenstein does not present his arguments in a
| succinct and linear fashion; instead, he describes
| particular uses of language, and prompts the reader to
| contemplate the implications of those uses. As a result,
| there is considerable dispute about both the nature of
| the argument and its implications. Indeed, it has become
| common to talk of private language arguments."
|
| Yeah, sorry, I don't have a hundred hours to spend on
| some dude who decided to write half of an argument in ten
| different places. Maybe a link to plato.stanford.edu
| would've been better.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Sure, if you want:
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
|
| But the wiki entry is a far more succinct summation of
| the main points of the argument. The very first
| subsection, which you apparently didn't even try to read,
| in the wiki is "Significance" which summarizes the
| argument in all of...2 paragraphs.
| bumby wrote:
| I think the crux of it is how the OP was talking about
| making claims "with confidence".
|
| I think you're saying we can get a general sense of what
| is meant without a formal definition. That's a fuzzy
| definition; i.e., one with high uncertainty/low
| confidence. My point is that I don't know that we have
| the tools to make high-confidence claims. We can't even
| agree on when consciousness starts, whether it's a toggle
| switch or a dimmer switch etc. That all speaks to high
| levels of uncertainty, where we can't agree on a "public"
| language. I think the limits of language to describe the
| phenomena is right in line with the "we don't have the
| right tools" argument.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It's still a very interesting article. But I think that your
| point is correct. This article demonstrates why philosophy was
| largely obsoleted by science.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| It's true, given enough time, we won't ask questions anymore.
| Every abstract concept and moral belief will be simply data.
| "Meaning" will stop making sense. There will only be science
| and those who do science.
|
| Some poor fool might ask every once and a while " _why_ are
| we doing this science anyway? " and they will be swiftly
| silenced.
|
| We will of course force children away from their natural
| wonder, as nothing good could come from something like that.
| There are plenty of other things to fill the kids brain with
| anyway.
|
| There will only be data. Meaninglessly complete and perfect
| data. A young would-be Kurt will come along and ask "is it
| possible this is really complete? all our data? how might we
| verify it?" He too, would need to be silenced.
|
| One night your wife will sob "but why are you being like
| this?" But you know this is a silly thing to ask: you are
| just what your atoms are, we can measure them perfectly you
| know. What other "why" does she want?
|
| Things like "value" and "human" and "well being" aren't
| important concepts anyway. If it can't be resolved down to
| data, lets just let the market and the state decide. It's not
| like we are going to be able to bring up some obsolete, non-
| falsifiable ideas in order to defend ourselves! It doesn't
| matter much anyway, its not science.
|
| And when you die you will know that your whole life really
| meant nothing but at best a small donation to the science.
| Because what value could subjective experience really have
| outside of, you know, doing science. But you are still happy,
| you did Science. But don't ask _why_ you are happy!
|
| And the great drama of science vs. philosophy will have
| ended. There was always going to be a winner after all! It
| was totally a battle, not a dichotomy. And the battle is
| over.
|
| \s
| gnramires wrote:
| I think your argument may be a little too strong. Would you
| refrain from discussing, say, happiness, sadness, etc. in your
| daily life without a formal definition of what happiness is
| exactly at a structural level? And I say that as someone
| interested in formalizing ethics, and formalizing all of those
| notions. The point is, to even (ideally, formally) define them
| we need intuition and intuitive discussions about what their
| definitions should be, and we are still at (very) early stages
| of what could constitute a real formalization.[1]
|
| More significantly, the utility of those concepts far precludes
| scientific definitions, those terms have been useful for
| thousands of years, and are essential to human society!
|
| (Again, certainly not against definition, but be mindful of
| being too strict, too soon about it :) )
|
| [1] The benefits of formalizing (human concepts) are subtle:
| like formalization in math, they help us build confidence that
| we're not building sand castle, dig deeper into theories of
| meaning, and use this to slowly improve lives of everyone. But
| like math, we've been doing it informally for very long, and a
| strict axiomatic formalization is still today relatively rare
| (although progressing with the aid of computer proof systems)
| for most fields. Still, the evolving standards for proof are
| likely essential for many of the deep theories we've achieved
| (probably including say modern logic and Godel's theories,
| algebraic geometry, functional analysis, etc.).
| djoldman wrote:
| You raise some good questions.
|
| Although humans discuss emotions a great deal, there doesn't
| seem to exist formal definitions for those concepts. Despite
| this, data can be collected that sidesteps this fact that can
| be useful: we can ask many people if they feel particular
| emotions and draw conclusions from that data. Still we must
| concede that a shared definition may not exist, which weakens
| these conclusions.
|
| In the case of consciousness, we could ask many people if
| they thought that someone/something else was conscious, but
| it's not clear what value that would have.
| netcan wrote:
| >One might say who cares if they don't define it? Well, if you
| don't define it, there's no point in discussing whether it
| exists, how it came to be, or what it comprises.
|
| > You might as well be asking the question: how close are we to
| quidlesmoopy?
|
| Adequately, and generally defining intelligence, consiousness,
| AGI & such... big ask. Impossible in practice.
|
| So... dies that mean the conversation ends here because any
| further discussion = quidlesmoopy? We don't know what
| intelligence is precisely and therefore can't reason about it
| at all.
|
| I don't think this level of minimalism or skepticism is viable.
|
| We need to make do with placeholder definitions, descriptions
| and theories of consciousness and intelligence. We can work
| with that.
|
| So yes... language as a foundation for conciousness,
| intelligence is "just a theory." Its probably not entirely
| correct. And still... positing and testing the theory by
| building and artificial talking machines is possible.
| djoldman wrote:
| I think placeholder definitions are the way to go: one
| defines a concept that is acknowledged not to be the target
| and works with it.
|
| So for the purposes of discussion, one may define
| consciousness(prime) as something less than true
| consciousness and attempt to work with that lesser
| definition. However, at all times, one must admit to working
| with a lesser definition that may never lead to knowledge
| that applies to the target definition.
|
| We must also admit that consciousness as many understand it
| may not exist.
| simiones wrote:
| > One might say who cares if they don't define it? Well, if you
| don't define it, there's no point in discussing whether it
| exists, how it came to be, or what it comprises.
|
| This is not how we normally treat other concepts, even in
| physics or mathematics. Concepts can exist and even be studied
| for a long time while lacking a rigorous definition.
|
| For example, a truly rigorous and satisfying definition of
| natural numbers probably dates from the 19th century. Does that
| mean that people before this shouldn't have discussed natural
| numbers? For another example, the Dirac delta function was used
| in the study and teaching of QM while not being very well
| defined as a mathematical object (it's not an actual function,
| for example).
|
| In general, most interesting concepts begin life as some kind
| of vague intuition, and it often takes significant study to
| create a formal definition that captures the intuition well.
| This applies to any kinds of concepts, even in mathematics.
| codeulike wrote:
| This is why the Turing Test gets talked about a lot (although I
| gather Turing's original 'imitation game' suggestion had
| slightly different emphasis).
|
| If you can reliably reproduce a situation where a human can't
| tell whether they are conversing with an AI or a Human, then
| thats a kindof yardstick.
|
| So yes we can't define consciousness but we've got a sortof
| yardstick for when we might consider something to have achieved
| it.
|
| And people think the Turing Test is too easy but the point is
| that the 'tester' should ask difficult questions to try and
| probe the depth of thinking of their subject.
| Throw84949 wrote:
| Can some people even pass Turing test?
| lebuffon wrote:
| In my layman's mind consciousness, at it's lowest level, is
| awareness, as mentioned in the article.
|
| I think what humans have achieved is the next level which is
| "awareness" of our awareness. The ability to self-reflect.
| Perhaps it is even a form of "recursive consciousness" (?) And
| perhaps structured language is the secret sauce that makes this
| possible.
|
| Without that next level I can't differentiate humans from other
| mammals.
|
| This has caused me to ask: Is there a level above this? ie:
| Awareness of your awareness of your awareness. and... can
| humans achieve that next level with our current biological
| equipment?
|
| :-)
| peterlk wrote:
| This is the problem with terms like this. There are
| definitions in academia/industry that differentiate between
| awareness, consciousness, qualia, intelligence, sentience,
| and more. But these distinctions require some pondering to
| understand and are divergent from general understanding which
| treats them as roughly the same thing. For example,
| consciousness for me is the ability for something to take
| directed action to affect their surroundings. This means that
| a robot can be conscious. But now the question for what we're
| talking about here is: is it aware? It is possible to display
| consciousness without awareness (see blindsight studies), but
| to my knowledge it is not possible to be aware without
| consciousness. And then we get to sentience, which is still
| very slippery, and often relies on definitions involving
| "qualia", which is also quite slippery.
| lebuffon wrote:
| I have no formal knowledge in the domain to go much deeper
| but I can understand the problem you stated about defining
| the terms properly. I suppose this spinning around on word
| definitions is similar to my "awareness of awareness"
| description in that we have the ability to ponder the
| meaning of the very tool (language) that we are thinking
| with. But my old head begins to implode if I go very
| deep...
| morsecodist wrote:
| I agree that definitions are the problem. It seems the
| conscious term is overloaded and refers to a lot of concepts
| some of which are overlapping and some are totally different.
|
| People also want to define conscious in terms of the concept
| they feel is most importantly different about humans. So this
| definitions conversation gets mixed with a what concepts are
| important conversation.
|
| For example, the thing that I think is important is subjective
| experience. I think this is the most important difference
| between beings that need to be given moral consideration and
| those that don't and this is always what I have thought of as
| consciousness. However, I often have conversations where I am
| just talking past someone because they are interested in
| something else entirely. I hope we can start defining this
| upfront and having separate conversations here.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Article aside,what an interesting publication! Looking forward to
| pursuing through more articles in their archive.
| ilaksh wrote:
| To reason about this usefully we need to unpack the numerous
| dimensions of intelligent living beings like humans (many shared
| with some animals). And realize that although most of them are
| typically packaged together, they are not all necessarily
| inextricable.
|
| - Awareness of self versus other.
|
| - Core language for communicating simple information.
|
| - Simple spatial understanding
|
| - More complex spatial reasoning
|
| - Complex language and abstract reasoning.
|
| - "Feeling" anything from a body
|
| - Feeling emotions (arguably tied to embodiment also)
|
| - A constant stream of concentrated focus on relevant sensory or
| sometimes internal information
|
| - a state pattern that persists through time despite constituent
| elements being replaced (as in an organism)
|
| - or any tendency of a pattern to persist itself
|
| - etc.
|
| We can categorize these questions into things like living/non-
| living, different types of cognition, types of embodiment and
| sensory experience and aggregation/streams/management, etc.
|
| The starting point would ideally be science rather than
| philosophy. At least for the parts we can use science for, which
| I suggest is almost all of them, if we properly deconstruct
| loaded ambiguous terms like "consciousness".
| heckraiser wrote:
| Throwing out the definition of consciousness as "the inflection
| upon the potential of existential being."
|
| All matter in the universe is dormant consciousness and life
| technology animates this through electrochemical biotechnology.
|
| By this definition quantum computers are more consciousness than
| an infinitely complex algorithm, yet consciousness is analogue
| (not qubits.)
|
| We still understand so little and I accept your skepticism yet
| this is the definition that is not being discussed.
|
| All those other messy details are yours to sort out (bacteria has
| bacterial consciousness.)
|
| Our brains are vast by comparison, and like any holographic
| system (constructive and destructive interfering wave fronts)
| higher resolution.
|
| Also subjective doesn't mean some detached arbitrary thing, it
| literally means (and may be a direct synonym of) "a point of
| perspective." In a non anthropomorphic way it means from the
| perspective of a specific instance of a thing (forensic
| referential interpretation.) In this way the angular corners of a
| triangle are subjectively relative to one and other, yet all
| exist on an objective plane.
| Cacti wrote:
| what are you talking about
| heckraiser wrote:
| A perspective on the definition of consciousness. Sorry I
| didn't respond in line to the comments I am actually
| addressing. I thought it overall relevant.
|
| By all this I am saying consciousness is our echo chamber,
| something grounded in the quantum cloister of objective
| reality, not directly related to intelligence.
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| In the beginning, was the word.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#Deficits
|
| > _Theory of mind deficits have also been observed in deaf
| children who are late signers (i.e. are born to hearing parents),
| but such a deficit is due to the delay in language learning, not
| any cognitive deficit, and therefore disappears once the child
| learns sign language._
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's nearly impossible to draw any conclusions from these
| isolated, uncontrolled single discoveries of feral children. At
| least a few modern experts believe Victor probably could have
| learned sign language, but Itard only tried to teach him speech.
| It's hard to believe a human of normal cognitive ability can't do
| at least as well as a gorilla, but two hundred years ago, no one
| knew it was possible to teach a gorilla sign language. Speech may
| be far more difficult to pick up later in life than other forms
| of language because of the complexity of the vocal motor patterns
| involved. Many also speculate Victor could have been autistic or
| frankly just severely traumatized from being abandoned and left
| in the wild as a child. Trying to reason from this one case study
| to find implications for the role played in language acquisition
| by all humans, or potentially all computational systems whether
| artificial or organic, seems like a tall task.
| dsign wrote:
| It may be more useful to reason about the consequences of the
| capabilities of any form of AI, than trying to box consciousness.
|
| Somehow connected to the above, one can use "axioms" to
| understand and predict minds. Here are a couple of examples:
|
| Axiom of need: "For any evolved entity that relies on X for its
| survival, if that entity has a sufficiently advanced mind, then
| there is a 'subjective' perception of the need for X that is deep
| and outside its conscious control. I.e., a feeling or intense
| craving."
|
| Example of the above:
|
| X=Food -> perception of hunger
|
| X=Procreation -> Love, lust
|
| X=Survival -> Good vibes from interacting with peers
|
| X=Peers -> I can attribute "consciousness" when I see it
|
| Axiom of fear: "For any evolved entity that relies on avoiding Y
| for its survival, if that entity has a sufficiently advanced
| mind, then there is a 'subjective' perception of the avoidance of
| Y that is deep and outside its conscious control. I.e., a fear or
| intense phobia."
|
| Y=Snakes -> Fear of snakes
|
| Y=arbitrary external threat -> Fear of discord, fear of
| alienation.
|
| Y=alienation -> shame
|
| I can think of a few more axioms, but this is getting long so
| I'll omit them. The axioms themselves may or may not be correct,
| but just as one does in mathematics, one can take them as true
| and see where the chain of thought leads. For me, the axioms
| above imply that we can create* entities that, as appreciated
| from outside, will seem entirely conscious to us. And I guess
| this is a procedural definition of consciousness.
|
| * Via synthetic evolution, e.g. gradient descent.
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