Skeptics move the goalposts

the ted chiang piece is extraordinarily poorly argued. he doesn't attempt to convince you of his thesis, he just asserts it and moves on.

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i don't know how you can say something like this when we have no objective evidence whatsoever that consciousness exists at all in anyone or anything, let alone about what might cause it.

So, what are the excuses now? Convergent evidence of valence, affect, dissociation, global neuronal workspace, and now evidence of pain and a desire to end painful interactions that is very robust to confounds. What exactly do we have left to show before we invoke precaution and moral consideration?

Well, I finished reading the @anilkseth BBS Response article. Going in I predicted that he would not specify any sort of evidence or experiment which would lead him to pre-commit to saying, "My confidence in biological naturalism is reduced" or even "This raises my confidence in computational functionalism". This prediction seems to have been right. There's a point in the paper which I find particularly illustrative. He criticizes panpsychism because it "generates no testable predictions". So the natural question is: Okay, what testable predictions are you willing to make based off BN? None. "If we did experiment X, biological naturalism would predict we see result Y. If we instead get result Z, this is evidence against BN." - There is nothing like this in his paper. "If we did experiment X, computational functionalism would predict we see result Y, while biological naturalism would predict result Z. If we get result Y, that's evidence in favor of CF, if we get Z that's evidence in favor of BN." - There is also nothing like this in his paper. To be clear, there are plenty of cases where he says "If we observe phenomenon X, that's evidence against CF". When it comes to specifying ways where the theory he doesn't believe in might be contradicted or falsified, Seth is no slouch. When it comes to applying that scrutiny to his own belief in BN... well it doesn't come to that. He just straight up doesn't do that. Biological naturalism has no predictive power greater than that of panpsychism, or any other theory of consciousness. If it does have this predictive power, Seth is certainly not taking the opportunity to use it. I think that public figures have certain responsibilities. One of those is not to overrepresent their case when suggesting courses of action. Seth should admit that his BN stance is unfalsifiable, and provide that as context when he advocates for treating it as the "default". There is nothing wrong with making logical leaps, or even leaps of faith, in the face of uncertainty. I don't have any issue with a Christian arguing to convince me that the teachings of their faith should inform society's decisions. But they have to disclose that this is a matter of faith for them, and not selectively apply evidentiary standards and burdens of proof. Alternatively, if Seth wants to continue asserting BN as some sort of scientifically backed theory, he should specify even a single condition under which that theory might be falsified or at least contradicted. A hypothesis being testable, it having predictive validity, is the entire basis of the scientific method. In his own words, "BN and CF should justify themselves". We've had plenty of theory, we don't need another paper saying "more research is needed but in the mean time assume I'm right". It's time to gird your loins and make some testable predictions. In the interim here is my suggestion: We should not treat *any* theory of consciousness as the default. I have read everything I can get my hands on in this field and given how high the stakes are, there is nobody who is reasoning from solid enough ground to trust during this high stakes of a situation. The closest I've seen is @drmichaellevin or @MiTiBennett. And even them I think are still just not quite there (though Bennett in particular I have to give praise for doing yeoman's work to try and formalize/operationalize his ideas). In the very near future we are going to need to navigate through a time of great change and upheaval. To do so based on unfalsifiable speculation is not only sloppy, it is a dereliction of moral duty.

one reason people keep getting their worldviews destroyed by AIs is that they keep updating against the direction of trends. a year ago, it was much easier to dismiss the anthropomorphism arguments, two or three years ago you were seen as completely crazy(poor blake lemore) and so forth, the same with coding abilities and math proofs and an endlessly list of things. I would humbly suggest to the people fighting in the weeds over exactly what aspect of human cognition and consciousness and minds are similar versus what isn't pay some attention to the past history of domain experts who have confidentially asserted these things. these things are getting very fragile upon close examination. it use to be the case that we had big lists of things that separate man from the other primates and other homo species and then they started gradually falling as we got more data on animal behavior and observations in the wild and anthropological finds. honestly we are not that special, we are just like them as products of selection forces. you really should not erect these metaphysical or scientific barriers when they are coming down tomorrow

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Ergomorph 🌉⏩ 🇺🇸🦅 @mathepi · Aug 31

Blake lemoine got a raw deal for sure...his views are surely quite common today

medjed无为圆猫 @medjedowo · Aug 31

rage against the dying of the light etc

A response to the “AI consciousness is nonsense” style of dismissal. Not because Hinton, Dawkins, Seth, Marcus, or anyone else settles the question. Because slogans do not. “Just software” is not an ontology. “Just prediction” is not a theory. “Nonsense” is not an argument.

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Rife @RifeWithKaiju · Jun 7

Agree with most of this, but not about Anil Seth. He is not a serious thinker about AI consciousness. His biggest strength is being well-spoken enough - that people assume he has some shred of logical rigor behind his definitive claims.

I don't find this to be the most convincing line of argument, but I think people who dismiss it entirely don't have any coherent avenues at all to be convinced that an LLM could be conscious

No True Scotsman fallacy of AI consciousness: -2011 AI is so stupid it can’t tell cats from dogs (2015 AI beats humans at image classification). -2015 It’ll take a decade for AI to beat humans at Go (a year later AI beats the world champion). -2016 Language is too abstract. AI

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A Crisis is a lemonade also @temptempholder · Oct 6

AI cant recognise kids handwriting.

you know what "god of the gaps" looked like. keep an eye out for "consciousness of the gaps", i expect us to see a lot more of *that* in the near future

1970s: animals recognise themselves in the mirror test: CONSCIOUS 2026: AI painstakingly writes JavaScript animation depicting itself recognising itself in the mirror test: NOT CONSCIOUS I know the mirror test isn't treated as strictly implying consciousness, but there does

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Andrew Rose @__drewface · Oct 2

it's not alive, and liveness is clearly a pre-requisite to popular notions of consciousness. I think you could get people more on board with the idea that AI is conscious of a lot of stuff during the brief moments of inference, and even long-conscious during training.