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Comment by bbor | Hacker News Reader

Posting one more time: this is proof that AI is connected to human-like linguistic patterns, IMO. No, it obviously doesn’t have “consciousness” in the sense of an ongoing stream-of-consciousness monologue, but that doesn’t mean it’s not mimicking some real part of human cognition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fu...

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"We find that the larger neural language models get, the more their representations are structurally similar to neural response measurements from brain imaging."

https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.01930

Great paper, thanks. I keep trying to tell people “they invented mind reading on accident” and people go “oh haha” and I scream. Mostly on the inside. For now…

Just a note that consciousness isn't always or even mostly a verbal "monologue", assuming you mean that. Apologies if you didn't!

A significant percentage of people never have an inner voice at all. And few people use it most of the time.

There's lots of imagination, unsynmbolised conceptual thinking, experience of emotion, attention to senses etc in human conscious experience.

See Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling for a reference!

Interesting reference, will check it out! Yeah I think that’s an important distinction — although some sort of personal self-aware moment-to-moment “judgement” or “affection” or “ego” or whatever is essential to human cognition, it’s far from the only thing going on. I can see monologue being too directly linguistic and literal, point taken — perhaps “thread” is more general.

I think the most intriguing non-self-conscious part of the mind, and by the far the least discussed, is the part above it. Direct or not, I think everyone gets prompted and cajoled by some… other. Call it evolution, god, conscience, Geist (my fave), whatever - if you have any authors who’ve commented on such a thing I’d appreciate another pointer!

Basically, I’m referring to the Bicameral Mind https://youtu.be/fs9Wyuub3jY?si=qriqTjWioiZoncui

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