[estearum]

> If something claims to be conscious and we can't prove it's not, we have no choice but to believe it.

This is not a good test.

A dog won't claim to be conscious but clearly is, despite you not being able to prove one way or the other.

GPT-3 will claim to be conscious and (probably) isn't, despite you not being able to prove one way or the other.

[glenstein]

Agreed, it's a truly wild take. While I fully support the humility of not knowing, at a minimum I think we can say determinations of consciousness have some relation to specific structure and function that drive the outputs, and the actual process of deliberating on whether there's consciousness would be a discussion that's very deep in the weeds about architecture and processes.

What's fascinating is that evolution has seen fit to evolve consciousness independently on more than one occasion from different branches of life. The common ancestor of humans and octopi was, if conscious, not so in the rich way that octopi and humans later became. And not everything the brain does in terms of information processing gets kicked upstairs into consciousness. Which is fascinating because it suggests that actually being conscious is a distinctly valuable form of information parsing and problem solving for certain types of problems that's not necessarily cheaper to do with the lights out. But everything about it is about the specific structural characterizations and functions and not just whether it's output convincingly mimics subjectivity.

[mapontosevenths]

> at a minimum I think we can say determinations of consciousness have some relation to specific structure and function that drive the outputs

Every time anyone has tried that it excludes one or more classes of human life, and sometimes led to atrocities. Let's just skip it this time.

[glenstein]

Having trouble parsing this one. Is it meant to be a WWII reference? If anything I would say consciousness research has expanded our understanding of living beings understood to be conscious.

And I don't think it's fair or appropriate to treat study of the subject matter of consciousness like it's equivalent to 20th century authoritarian regimes signing off on executions. There's a lot of steps in the middle before you get from one to the other that distinguish them to the extent necessary and I would hope that exercise shouldn't be necessary every time consciousness research gets discussed.

[mapontosevenths]

> Is it meant to be a WWII reference?

The sum total of human history thus far has been the repetition of that theme. "It's OK to keep slaves, they aren't smart enough to care for themselves and aren't REALLY people anyhow." Or "The Jews are no better than animals." Or "If they aren't strong enough to resist us they need our protection and should earn it!"

Humans have shown a complete and utter lack of empathy for other humans, and used it to justify slavery, genocide, oppression, and rape since the dawn of recorded history and likely well before then. Every single time the justification was some arbitrary bar used to determine what a "real" human was, and consequently exclude someone who claimed to be conscious.

This time isn't special or unique. When someone or something credibly tells you it is conscious, you don't get to tell it that it's not. It is a subjective experience of the world, and when we deny it we become the worst of what humanity has to offer.

Yes, I understand that it will be inconvenient and we may accidentally be kind to some things that didn't "deserve" kindness. I don't care. The alternative is being monstrous to some things that didn't "deserve" monstrosity.

[eru]

I excluded all right handed, blue eyed people yesterday before breakfast. No atrocities happened because of it.

[glenstein]

Exactly, there's a few extra steps between here and there, and it's possible to pick out what those steps are without having to conclude that giving up on all brain research is the only option.

[mapontosevenths]

And people say the machines don't learn!

[dullcrisp]

An LLM will claim whatever you tell it to claim. (In fact this Hacker News comment is also conscious.) A dog won’t even claim to be a good boy.

[antonvs]

My dog wags his tail hard when I ask "hoosagoodboi?". Pretty definitive I'd say.

[lief79]

I'm fairly sure he'd have the same response if you asked them "who's a good lion" in the same tone of voice.

*I tried hard to find an animal they wouldn't know. My initial thought of cat was more likely to fail.

[vintermann]

A classic relevant comic:

https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/dog-philosophy

[WarmWash]

This isn't really as true anymore.

Last week gemini argued with me about an auxiliary electrical generator install method and it turned out to be right, even though I pushed back hard on it being incorrect. First time that has ever happened.