Just because consciousness is something we don't fully understand doesn't mean it's the same thing as something else that's similar that we understand. That's a cargo-cult. The stone age Melanesian islanders making air strips out of bundles of weeds and talking into coconuts as if they were microphones to bring back western goods was the same thing as us making LLMs to recreate consciousness. They were using technology they understood to try to recreate something they didn't.

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lutanista 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just swap out LLMs for spiders.

A spider obviously "knows" how to build a spider web.

Does a spider "understand" how to build a spider web?

From a pragmatic theory of truth, a spider obviously "understands" how to build a spider web. A spider understands how to build a spider web much better than a human.

But when it comes to LLMs we start adding all this extra nonsense. As if the spider is blanket "smarter" than me because I can't spin a web. If the spider is "smarter" than me then it must also have this Cartesian theater of the mind like many people think they do.

It is layered philosophical misunderstandings to talk about LLMs in this way.

	▲	BOOSTERHIDROGEN 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What could be an alternative explanation or approach for that spider? I’m out of loop, interested in what is currently academia trying to solve, thanks.

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hnlmorg 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Just because consciousness is something we don't fully understand doesn't mean it's the same thing as something else that's similar that we understand. That's a cargo-cult.

Nobody has said they’re aren’t different. And it’s not cargo cult to say you need philosophical conversations to understand how they’re different.

> The stone age Melanesian islanders making air strips out of bundles of weeds and talking into coconuts as if they were microphones to bring back western goods was the same thing as us making LLMs to recreate consciousness. They were using technology they understood to try to recreate something they didn't.

That’s not even remotely a true. Computer scientists understand how a neurone works. The conversations are around what constitutes as “intelligence”. That’s not a technical limitation of the models, it’s a philosophical problem we need to figure out.

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narrator 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No you don't understand how a neuron works fully or else you'd be able to make a synthetic one from chemical building blocks not using another living thing to do it. If you used another living thing to do it, you could say an ancient farmer understands plants cause they can put seeds in the ground. You have an incomplete model of it that is wrong but useful. Call me back when you can 3d-print a living person from raw chemical feedstock.

On top of all that, you're abusing the fallacy of composition. The bolt that is part of the aircraft carrier is light, therefore the aircraft carrier is also light. The atom is simple, therefore a living human being that is composed of atoms is also simple. Quantum mechanics is influenced by the observer, therefore you can change the external world just by thinking, and other new age stuff like that abuses a similar fallacy.

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hnlmorg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> No you don't understand how a neuron works fully or else you'd be able to make a synthetic one from chemical building blocks not using another living thing to do it.

We don’t know how a quantum mechanics works fully and yet we’ve built countless systems based on quantum behaviour including the CPUs that power the computer you’re replying to me on.

The point here is we’ve built something that emulates intelligence and thus further exploration into what intelligence is, is required. Arguing it isn’t intelligent because it was built differently isn’t an answer, it just dismisses the question entirely.

> On top of all that, you're abusing the fallacy of composition. The bolt that is part of the aircraft carrier is light, therefore the aircraft carrier is also light. The atom is simple, therefore a living human being that is composed of atoms is also simple. Quantum mechanics is influenced by the observer, therefore you can change the external world just by thinking, and other new age stuff like that abuses a similar fallacy.

You’re the one who keeps bringing up composition, not me. I’m the one telling you that you’re falling into that fallacy. So don’t start telling me that I’m wrong because of an argument you’re exclusively making.

My points were this:

1. we don’t have an understanding of what intelligence is and thus we need to explore that problem more deeply.

Given your comments about our ignorance, you of all people should agree with this point.

2. Arguing that AI is just “floating points” is overly reductive and misses the point that we don’t know what “intelligence” is.

So instead of claiming that AI is just numbers, a more constructive stance to take would be to build out better vocabulary and understanding about the distinctions between different types of “intelligence”.

Again, this aligns with your comment about the composition fallacy. Thus you if all people should be supporting my comments here.

Also your comment about us not understanding how a neurone works does vast injustice to the amount of research that has been done in this field. At this point in time we do have a very good understanding of how a neurone works. What we don’t understand is how consciousness arises from it. And that’s the very thing you seem to be arguing that there’s no point researching.

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svnt 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Also your comment about us not understanding how a neurone works does vast injustice to the amount of research that has been done in this field. At this point in time we do have a very good understanding of how a neurone works. What we don’t understand is how consciousness arises from it. And that’s the very thing you seem to be arguing that there’s no point researching.

This is the part you keep stating that is wrong. We know a lot about the most obvious electrical way that neurons act. That is nowhere near having a good understanding of how they work.

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hnlmorg 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Define “work”? Because the way they act is the way they work. What isn’t understood is how complex systems arise from these relatively simple parts. Which is the point I’ve made repeatedly.

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svnt 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I responded with an informative post but apparently made the mistake of disclosing it was generated and it was flagged. I reviewed the post and it is correct. If you cannot see it, it says you are wrong/incomplete here and cites three studies I know of:

Beniaguev, Segev & London, "Single cortical neurons as deep artificial neural networks," Neuron, 10 August 2021, Volume 109, Issue 17, pp. 2727–2739.e3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.07.002 Open-access preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/613141v2

Gidon et al., "Dendritic action potentials and computation in human layer 2/3 cortical neurons," Science, 367(6473), 83–87 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax6239

Randi, Sharma, Dvali & Leifer, "Neural signal propagation atlas of Caenorhabditis elegans," Nature, 623(7986), 2023, pp. 406–414 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06683-4 Open-access preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.04790

Neurons are not individually simple, in any sense. Nor are they the only class of cell involved in cognitive processes — glial cells are involved in inhibition, memory, network modification, etc.

	▲	foobar10000 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		While I was not participating actively in the discussion - I just want to thank both participants for embodying the spirit of HN and academic discourse - especially in the face of a difficult debate that stirs strong emotions. @svnt, @hnlmorg - this conversation - and the links it produced - are a fascinating read, and honestly gave me hope for discourse on the open internet.

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hnlmorg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

@svnt I don’t know why your comment is flagged (wasn’t my doing) but thank you for the thorough response.

I’m going to hold off any more constructive response because I’m not familiar with those research papers specifically so have some homework to do :)

But I just wanted you to be aware that your comment was appreciated even if HN flagged it unfairly.

(I can’t reply in thread for the same reason. But hopefully you see this).

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svnt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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squidbeak 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> No you don't understand how a neuron works fully or else you'd be able to make a synthetic one from chemical building blocks not using another living thing to do it.

This is a bizarre contention. The test for whether something is understood isn't that we have the engineering capability to replicate it.

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narrator 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Just because you partially understand something like the ancient farmer partially understands plants by knowing to plant seeds, that doesn't mean you fully understand it and can thus reproduce all the properties of it synthetically like you are trying to reproduce a brain synthetically from scratch inside a computer with LLMs.

You can reproduce part of it, the intelligence, but consciousness and intelligence are not necessarily the same thing. This is why I compare it to cargo-culting. The Melanesian tribesmen thinks the coconut looks like a microphone, and he can use it as a paperweight just like a microphone and that's useful, but it is not actually a microphone.

	▲	hnlmorg 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Nobody is claiming we can recreate it fully. The crux of the matter seems to be that you think it isn’t worth our effort researching just because it isn’t identical. But that isn’t how research and discovery happens.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]