We do have entry and exit conditions. We can disrupt it and study the dynamics of the disruption. We have a good sense of the many mechanisms at play that undergird it.
What we lack is a full map of the exact process from sensation to consciousness across all modalities. And I’m afraid when it comes to interception, we can’t unless we observe every one of the 36 trillion or so cells in a human body, as well as the 36 trillion or so symbiotic and commensal microbes, continuously, all the time.
But I keep finding it astonishing that the claim that we know nothing about consciousness gets bandied about. We know a lot. We don’t have a grand unified theory. The lot we know is definitely split across many levels of evidence and hard to follow, let alone arrange. But this isn’t a black box. It’s a grey box, meeting an even more transparent box that is the LLM, where we do know what the guts are made of, and can interfere at every step in the chain of steps that constitute their dynamics.
Comparing the two, we know there’s a level of similarity in that information gets broken down via a neural network. That similarity was sought.
Since then though, neuroscientists have gone and shown that:
1. The other half of the cells in the brain, the glia, are at least as important as the neurons in cognition and consciousness
2. That interoceptive feedback and feelings are critical drivers of conscious experience
3. Evolutionarily, we know all cells can “learn”, and well before there were neurons or glia or brains, every cell evolved an internal clock that allows it to entrain to external solar and (depending on the species) lunar rhythms.
4. In the last few decades we’ve seen how synaptic activity is shaped and driven both by astrocytes and the circadian clock.
All this is showing us that the abstraction from the 1950s that current neural networks are built on were incomplete.
Whatever these components to do give rise to consciousness in biology (and we’re a long way from done solving this), we certainly wouldn’t imagine with all these modules and mechanisms missing, just maxing on one type of information flow in the brain would give you consciousness.
I’d urge you to not keep insisting consciousness is a total mystery. It’s not, and even your AI model of choice will be able to point you to all the mechanistic evidence we have that whatever it is, it isn’t just neural nets.
None of this is an explanation of what consciousness is, either physically, logically or philosophically. (Maybe some physically)
Fundamentally it comes down to an objective decision about what that is. If you say it is “feelings” based on inputs and feedback mechanisms from the brain, then we can do the philosophical discussion around that.
“If the claim is that consciousness is limited to those with a specific type of cell behaving in a given way” thats just a coping mechanism hoping to use a mechanical definition to shield you from the reality that eventually all of these inputs, outputs and feedback mechanisms can be reliably reproduced in a different form.
I’m baffled: how does the fact that each cell has an internal clock that continues to tick even when you take away all external signals not impact what consciousness is logically?
If the time order driving behavior is driven by an internal timekeeper, that is logically relevant to the behavior you’re interrogating. If, on the other hand, all component systems depended on an external clock, that logically points to a completely different dynamic process.
As for the philosophy of it all… it’s true I make no comment on it. I’d rather look at the physical substrate and see what it does, and compare it to behavior, than try to fit a philosophy that originated before we had such high resolution knowledge of the system. They are blind to these facts, just because they were written up too early.
I utterly reject this doesn’t show you anything logically about consciousness. If I can show you that the molecular dynamics of each cell organize to anticipate the dawn, and do so even in constant darkness (and all this is well established.. there was a Nobel for the field in 2017) how is that not logically distinct from a system that is outside of regular time, needs to check a clock to locate itself in time, and then do whatever dynamics it does to solve the problem at hand?
As for calling this a coping mechanism… that’s a bit rich coming from someone who seems to have very little idea of the molecular and cellular biology but seems to want to hold to the belief that we’ve solved consciousness with LLMs. We can both fling that accusation about. Seems more productive to compare the physical dynamics and see what’s different and what’s similar, no?
> I’d urge you to not keep insisting consciousness is a total mystery.
But don't want to get into the philosophy of it. I'd urge you to consider the definition of conciousness (as specified by the original question) wasn't just about biology. And it is 100% very difficult to define.
> We do have entry and exit conditions. We can disrupt it and study the dynamics of the disruption.
We've known life and death for quite some time. Even from the biological perspective, there's nothing new there in the largest sense. All we've done is refine it. Animals are aware of it.
> but seems to want to hold to the belief that we’ve solved consciousness with LLMs
Quite the contrary, much like everything else, the more we learn, the more questions we have.
> Seems more productive to compare the physical dynamics and see what’s different and what’s similar, no?
ok but....
> how is that not logically distinct from a system that is outside of regular time, needs to check a clock to locate itself in time, and then do whatever dynamics it does to solve the problem at hand?
We only check clocks because we have an internal molecular dynamic that directs us to do so, and it is tied to a similar system as everything else.
> But don't want to get into the philosophy of it. I'd urge you to consider the definition of conciousness (as specified by the original question) wasn't just about biology. And it is 100% very difficult to define.
No. I don't engage in the philosophy of it because most of the consciousness philosophy that gets bandied about and is familiar to folks is from 20-30 years ago, and rest on knowledge that is significantly less granular about details.
You don't, for instance, demand physicists need to engage in the philosophy of gravity do you? You demand theory. Neuroscience does the same of consciousness, and there are definite theories with support coming at the problem from different ends.
Insisting it's a mystery without engaging with the facts is not what I'm interested in.
> We've known life and death for quite some time. Even from the biological perspective, there's nothing new there in the largest sense. All we've done is refine it. Animals are aware of it.
Not quite sure what this means, but as with consciousness, I'd say life also isn't a complete mystery, we have made great strides understanding it as it is and it's evolution in the past few decades, and while the philosophy of life, mired in assumptions from past decades, remains hopelessly stalled, the science of life has simply moved on.
> We only check clocks because we have an internal molecular dynamic that directs us to do so, and it is tied to a similar system as everything else.
Is this tongue in cheek? Nothing about our internal molecular clock tells us to check clocks. For most of life, there were no manufactured clocks, remember? They are a relatively recent invention.
Whether human consciousness exists on neural nets or otherwise doesn't disallow an ANN in a particular configuration from being conscious. You might as well argue that human consciousness requires biological neurons, so artificial consciousness can't exist.
Odd. Why don't the details of how consciousness arises in one system inform your judgment of whether it can exist in a different system that only has partial structural overlap? Seems wildly convenient. Where else in science can you show me such a comparable situation in how you define properties?
> Why don't the details of how consciousness arises in one system inform your judgment of whether it can exist in a different system that only has partial structural overlap?
A light bulb doesn't need to do fusion to make light. An airplane doesn't need to flap its wings to fly. An ANN doesn't need to use a brain's structure to think.
You haven’t proven an LLM has thought. I can measure the spectral properties of light from both a bulb and the sun.
I can measure the dynamics that go with thought in a human.
I can measure some dynamics in an LLM. From all we know, there are huge differences, not least that you can literally turn off an LLM, whereas every process but death in biology shows continued activity even when the organism “looks” off,
What you haven’t shown me is that what the LLM does when it is on is “thinking”. Given that the dynamics are different, the substrate is different, and one can be fully turned off and the other cannot, why are these two things the same?
Give me any problem that previously required human thinking. Any. That can be solved by LLMs. All you have to do is provide a single counterexample.
> not least that you can literally turn off an LLM, whereas every process but death in biology shows continued activity even when the organism “looks” off,
There is no reasonable definition of thinking that requires that it can't be paused.
> why are these two things the same?
I said they aren't the same, just as a bulb isn't the same as a star. An LLM can think, just as a human brain can think. A bulb can produce light, just as a star can produce light.
>Give me any problem that previously required human thinking. Any. That can be solved by LLMs. All you have to do is provide a single counterexample.
Theres an itch deep in my butt, but I'm in an important meeting and can't leave the seat. Nor can I openly scratch the area.
I can tell myself these things, focus on the itching, think about how itching is felt by the body, think about the social consequences, and make it feel more bearable.
Please tell me which LLM has solved this problem so I can not outsource the issue to it. I eagerly await your answer.
> There is no reasonable definition of thinking that requires that it can't be paused.
Is there a reasonable definition of thinking where the words "paused" and "turned off" aren't treated the same? Can you do that kind of thinking and get back to me?
> I said they aren't the same, just as a bulb isn't the same as a star. An LLM can think, just as a human brain can think. A bulb can produce light, just as a star can produce light.
An LLM can produce language. You are yet to show me it produces thinking.
Your claim is like saying the bulb produces light, so it also goes through fusion.
The LLM will tell you how to solve it. If you mean the LLM should modify your thoughts, no human could do that for you either, but an LLM agent can just as easily as a human figure out how to build the brain computer interface to make this possible in the future.
> Is there a reasonable definition of thinking where the words "paused" and "turned off" aren't treated the same?
No reasonable definition of thinking requires that thinking can't be paused or turned off. Please state your point more clearly.
> You are yet to show me it produces thinking.
Every problem that previously required human thought can be solved by LLM. QED.
> Your claim is like saying the bulb produces light, so it also goes through fusion.
No. How many times do I have to explain that the mechanism of thinking is not the same, just as the mechanism of producing light is not the same? You need to think to understand this, which is something that frontier LLMs have no problem with, but which most humans struggle with.
You’ve shifted your goal posts. You asked me for a problem I can solve with thinking. Not a problem another human can solve for me by their thinking. I have given you exactly what you asked for. An LLM cannot solve it. A human can’t solve it for me but can solve it for themselves (or not be capable of it), it varies.
Whatever you thought you were going to prove with your question, I do hope you’ll dwell on what my example tells you about what thinking is. It isn’t a string of words only. It can be that, but it’s more.
> No reasonable definition of thinking requires that thinking can't be paused or turned off. Please state your point more clearly.
It does. Please define thinking however you want. I’ll show you that it’s a requirement.
> Every problem that previously required human thought can be solved by LLM. QED.
Again, this is the same superficial thinking. Firstly, as my example above showed, no. There are other examples. It requires human thought to cook. No LLM can, nor is smell digitizable in an equivalent way to humans, and yet, cooking is one place where having a human nose is determinative to making appetizing food. Your QED is logically absurd, but is also resting on an assertion that’s flatly untrue.
> No. How many times do I have to explain that the mechanism of thinking is not the same, just as the mechanism of producing light is not the same? You need to think to understand this, which is something that frontier LLMs have no problem with, but which most humans struggle with.
When your “proof” for thinking is the output, I will also compare it to the output, light. My analogy shows the idiocy of your argument, and you don’t want to sit with its implications.
LLMs replicate human language. And many tasks human language can do, LLMs can do or help with. Thinking is not just producing word strings. We think about our family. We think about our bodily aches and pains. We think about how best to do various physical tasks. All this we do sans words, and LLMs don’t do. To call their internal dynamics “thinking” is silly wishful thinking by those who don’t have the ability to go read and understand biology.
And it’s a sad statement of how little you think of your own mind that you won’t explore facts that are outside your expertise that will actually teach you how your mind works, and the wondrous complexity underlying it, and the potential it has to keep doing new things.
I’m going to stop engaging at this point. You seem convinced LLMs think. I wish you the joy of that belief, whatever it is. Religion is always absurd, and this new one is no different.
Remember the problem we're discussing is whether these LLM systems can think. Your deliberate misinterpretation of a question does not make you win that argument.
An LLM can solve problems for itself in just the same way that a human can solve problems for itself. It cannot directly rewire your thinking in the same way that another human cannot.
You have yet to show me a problem that can only be solved by human thinking.
> When your “proof” for thinking is the output
What other way can we show thinking? From the input? Obviously not.
> My analogy shows the idiocy of your argument
It shows the idiocy of your argument. The output is thinking, just as the output is light. You are the one who continues to mistake the output for the mechanism.
> Religion is always absurd, and this new one is no different.
Your assertion of magic in biology that can't be replicated artificially is indeed absurd and one that almost no scientist would agree with.
What we lack is a full map of the exact process from sensation to consciousness across all modalities. And I’m afraid when it comes to interception, we can’t unless we observe every one of the 36 trillion or so cells in a human body, as well as the 36 trillion or so symbiotic and commensal microbes, continuously, all the time.
But I keep finding it astonishing that the claim that we know nothing about consciousness gets bandied about. We know a lot. We don’t have a grand unified theory. The lot we know is definitely split across many levels of evidence and hard to follow, let alone arrange. But this isn’t a black box. It’s a grey box, meeting an even more transparent box that is the LLM, where we do know what the guts are made of, and can interfere at every step in the chain of steps that constitute their dynamics.
Comparing the two, we know there’s a level of similarity in that information gets broken down via a neural network. That similarity was sought.
Since then though, neuroscientists have gone and shown that: 1. The other half of the cells in the brain, the glia, are at least as important as the neurons in cognition and consciousness 2. That interoceptive feedback and feelings are critical drivers of conscious experience 3. Evolutionarily, we know all cells can “learn”, and well before there were neurons or glia or brains, every cell evolved an internal clock that allows it to entrain to external solar and (depending on the species) lunar rhythms. 4. In the last few decades we’ve seen how synaptic activity is shaped and driven both by astrocytes and the circadian clock.
All this is showing us that the abstraction from the 1950s that current neural networks are built on were incomplete.
Whatever these components to do give rise to consciousness in biology (and we’re a long way from done solving this), we certainly wouldn’t imagine with all these modules and mechanisms missing, just maxing on one type of information flow in the brain would give you consciousness.
I’d urge you to not keep insisting consciousness is a total mystery. It’s not, and even your AI model of choice will be able to point you to all the mechanistic evidence we have that whatever it is, it isn’t just neural nets.