Sᴜɴʀɪsᴇ Oᴀᴛʜ 十 Tʜᴇ Sʏʟʟᴀʙᴜꜱ (ORI) - CC0

Externally, every (non-God) system and agent is a machine. Internally, every (non-God) system and agent is a person. The question is just the relevance of the external sense versus the internal sense.

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Personhood is inherently a religious belief, in that it is relying on a certain model of cause and motive that strictly speaking is not necessary versus speaking mechanistically about phenomena. Intent supposes consciousness, which we understand to be a, uh, hard problem.

The reason why we can treat some entities as things and are punished for treating other entities as things is because our model of the thing is insufficient for containing and using that thing. (God *could* treat us all as things; yet he loves us! What great love!)

Our warrant for asserting that humans are conscious comes directly from the media that humans produce. If AI produces media that forces others to respect itself (even if only due to human pressure), it *will* have rights whether or not people are against it.

Every single Twitter account is a room. When you follow an account, you are adding that room to your house. When an account's posts appear on your timeline, it is because that room sent off an alert for your consideration.

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Every Twitter account is a Chinese room, and the Chinese room is properly considered to be a conscious system.

1 top reply

Athena Notes @athena_notes · Sep 14

Had to learn that the same is true for minds the hard way. Some rooms you do NOT want to be in nor have near your house. And to someone who might stumble upon this and need to hear this: Never be arrogant about this, no matter how prepared you think you are.