[gary_0]

When I was about 3 I learned that the world did not revolve around me. Eventually, I learned my country wasn't special, nor the culture I was raised in. I learned the Earth was just another planet, and humans were made out of meat just like other animals, all of it governed by the laws of physics. There are no special rules in this universe just for us. We are not special.

None of this struck me as a revelation, it just felt like growing up.

It's honestly a little sad that something so simple as an LLM is causing so many people to come up short against these basic philosophical assumptions. The human brain weighs about 1.4kg (most of that being metabolic or structural support), runs on about 12 watts, and it takes only 3.2 billion base pairs to make a new one with a default template and peripheral systems already included. It is not that special.

[eimrine]

> and it takes only 3.2 billion base pairs to make a new one with a default template and peripheral systems already included.

I am struggling to understand what is this quote about.

[gary_0]

The number of human DNA base pairs. The data to grow a starting zygote into a brain with a default neural template (to keep it alive and allow it to start learning), and peripheral systems (the body).

As binary data, 3.2B base pairs is 800MB.

[eimrine]

Oh, it looks like a tabula rasa theory. No mithohondrea DNA, no special places in parents' body, no special behaviour required from parents. Just an 80-minutes audio CD.

[fragmede]

The copying of human DNA to make a new one.