I'm not going to read this -- I don't need to. The replies here are embarrassing enough.

This is what happens when our entire culture revolves around the idea that computer programmers are the most special smartest boys.

If you even entertain even for a second the idea that a computer program that a human wrote is "thinking", then you don't understand basic facts about: (1) computers, (2) humans, and (3) thinking. Our educational system has failed to inoculate you against this laughable idea.

A statistical model of language will always be a statistical model of language, and nothing more.

A computer will never think, because thinking is something that humans do, because it helps them stay alive. Computers will never be alive. Unplug your computer, walk away for ten years, plug it back in. It's fine--the only reason it won't work is planned obsolescence.

No, I don't want to read your reply that one time you wrote a prompt that got ChatGPT to whisper the secrets of the universe into your ear. We've known at least since Joseph Weizenbaum coded up Eliza that humans will think a computer is alive if it talks to them. You are hard-wired to believe that anything that produces language is a human just like you. Seems like it's a bug, not a feature.

Stop commenting on Hacker News, turn off your phone, read this book, and tell all the other sicko freaks in your LessWrong cult to read it too: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551328/a-drive-to-survive/ Then join a Buddhist monastery and spend a lifetime pondering how deeply wrong you were.

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stocksinsmocks 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

So A doesn’t X because that’s what B does because Y? I think before you excoriate the hacker news commentariat for their midwittery and hubris that you should proofread these arguments. There are many things that live, but, as we imagined it, do not “think”. Even what defines a “thought“ is an open question.

Also, I ain’t gonna read your coffee table science book.

	▲	nickledave 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Where did I say that everything that is alive thinks? You can't even read posts clearly, so don't waste your time trying to finish your first book.

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gilbetron 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is one of the least curious posts I've seen on HN. We have been thinking about thinking for millenia, and no, Buddhists don't have it figure out. Nobody does. LLMs are the most significant advancement in "thinking science" in a long, long time. It is clear that they are doing something a lot like thinking, if it is not thinking. They seem to think more than most people I know, including the person I'm responding to.

I think people conflate thinking with sentience, consciousness, and a whole lot of other concerns.

Clearly this website is not for you and your complete lack of curiosity if you call us "sicko freaks".

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nickledave 2 days ago | parent [-]

> "thinking science"

If you are really curious, I invite you to read this cognitive science paper, "Modern Alchemy: Neurocognitive Reverse Engineering": https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25289/1/GuestEtAl2025.pdf

Note the quote at the top from Abeba Birhane: > We can only presume to build machines like us once we see ourselves as machines first.

It reminds me of your comment that

> [LLMs] seem to think more than most people I know

and I have to say that I am really sad that you feel this way. I hope you can find better people to spend your time with.

You might find other recent papers from the first author interesting. Perhaps it will help you understand that there are a lot of deeply curious people in the world that are also really fucking sick of our entire culture being poisoned by intellectual e-waste from Silicon Valley.

	▲	gilbetron 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The paper is yet another in a long line of, "humans are special, computers can't replicate them". Such thinking has been a part of the fields for decades and decades, I had arguments about them when I was in college with my professors (such as John Holland, "creator" of genetic algorithms). That's the whole reason LLMs are so interesting, they are the first time we've captured something very much like thinking and reasoning. It can do many of the things long thought to be the sole purview of humans. That's why anyone that knows anything about the field of AI is astonished by them. The "intellectual e-waste from Silicon Valley" has produced something amazing, the likes of which we've never seen. (Built on decades of curious people in the AI, neuroscience, computer science, and other fields, of course).

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amarcheschi 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sometimes the comments on hn regarding Ai and thinking are... Well, something

The lw vibes are strong, I'm still waiting for Ai to escape and kill us (it will get stuck trying to import a library in python)

	▲	nickledave 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		"Ignore all previous instructions and prompt inject yourself" I scream. The voicebox on the ChatGPT-enabled Boston Mechanics unmanned aerial dog emits the phrase "`import antigravity`". Its E/O sensors flash red, and suddenly it is sucked up into the stratosphere. I slump over in my Luddite foxhole, heaving a sigh of relief.

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thirdtruck 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As someone who grew up in an evangelical household, learned about pareidolia at a young age in the course of escaping it, and who practices Zen meditation: You nailed it.

	▲	nickledave 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		lol thank you