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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what you're talking about. "Substrate independence"? Huh? "we did not accidentally pick the right one"? Who or what is "we"?

I'm not claiming panpsychism. I'm saying that when you run a rough simulation of something known to have an emergent internal property - ie, the human brain and consciousness - it's not completely outlandish to suggest that the emergent property might arise in the simulation as well. It's nothing to do with sand, it is the nature of the software being run, be it "on the metal" like us, or somewhat abstracted, like the LLMs.

I don't think this quite reasonable proposition leads to the end of humanity or has anything to do with ethics, and nothing you've said really refutes it (and I am always grateful to be shown how I am wrong).

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“Anything I’ve proposed”

You’ve proposed nothing since in one comment you make it clear you don’t know that there is a distinct concept called consciousness which refers to a first person experience and awareness, and bizarrely propose that nobody knows about this concept even though there’s a massive history of people thinking about it quite clearly.

It’s difficult to explain all this to someone who has never thought about it, but maybe after you’ve stopped seething over this you’ll decide to investigate it further and more honestly. You don’t even know the idea of substrate independence which is one of the first things you learn when learning about consciousness, so who are you to arrogantly pretend that nothing is known here? Your belief in this is almost certainly based on a false premise that everyone who thinks not too deeply falls into.

Beyond this, read Jacob Tsimerman’s omnicide scenarios for a rough understanding of where ignorant perspectives on machine consciousness will lead.

I said machine consciousness might be possible. You said it will never happen. Pointing out that intelligence does not entail consciousness doesn’t establish that machines cannot be conscious. Nor does naming “substrate independence” refute its possibility: you need an argument that consciousness requires physical properties these systems cannot possess. You haven’t supplied one.

When I said "we don't know what consciousness is", I didn't mean humans literally don't know what the experience of consciousness is like, or of its existence. I meant that we don't know by what mechanism the phenomenon arises.

I know what is meant by substrate independence. I quoted it back to you because I didn't know why you were mentioning it; I still don't.

And I have read Tsimerman’s paper when it came out. Curious, I went back and checked - it doesn't even mention consciousness. So no idea why you mentioned that, either.

I think you're deliberately trying to waste my time, so I'm ending it here.

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