The premise is - you fucking can’t. It acts ex-act-ly like the real thing, and for all the same reasons

You literally made the simulation, so yes you can tell the difference. And the math is inevitably different, because the math of the simulation includes the math which defines the different substrate. So it is physically different, a different thing. Assume whatever you want, but in the end it is a physically different thing, and it takes different math to fully describe it. We only know for sure that conscious experience happens with this substrate.

Fuck off

k

Dog-torturing prejudice.

k

fuck off again

good bye

Simulating physics from first principles is not “mimicking human behavior.”

Our “first principles” are knowledge, not a new universe. You’re not absolutely re-creating the entirety of reality. You’re making a model that is useful, something that is “good enough” that it will produce outputs that can be used to roughly predict the outcome of real processes.

You think an entire simulated human being, that acts exactly like a living person for the same underlying reasons, must be different - somehow

No matter how detailed your simulation is, it’s still physically different. You’re admitting this every time you call it a simulation. You can tell the difference between a simulation and the thing it’s simulating.

This is dualism

No, because I’m saying that consciousness is a physical process. You’re saying that it’s a mathematical process and that the substrate doesn’t matter. I’m saying the substrate is a physical thing, and that consciousness is a physical processes, and so different substrates enable different physical processes. I don’t claim that consciousness comes from some Beyond, or from Heaven, or from God. I’m saying it’s a physical process, and that a simulation is a different physical process, no matter how detailed.

To the guy in the simulation, any experience is real.

Again, you have no basis for claiming that there is experience in the simulation in the first place. If you set up some simulation to mimic human behavior there’s no reason to assume that it is experiencing that behavior. You’re putting an assumption here.

If you would insist ‘well that’s only simulating consciousness’ - that counts.

I never insisted that it’s “only simulating consciousness.” I’m rejecting the baseless assertion that consciousness is what’s being simulated. If you simulate the physical processes that we associate with consciousness (neural networks), even if it produces enough observable behaviors that we find the model useful, it is still a different physical thing and therefore we are unable to assert that it is experiencing consciousness.

Hey buddy

Hello.

you suck at philosophy

When you said, “If a simulated person experiences consciousness, that experience is real”, you’re just saying “If my statement is true then my statement is true.” You offer no basis for assuming that “a simulated person experiences consciousness” in the first place. You are simply assuming it. Your whole side of this entire conversation is just an assumption.

physics can be simulated

Yes and the simulation is a different physical process than the process that it’s simulating.

numbnuts

k

If a simulated person experiences consciousness, that experience is real.

You’re just throwing the assumption of experience into the sentence for no reason. You have beliefs about this stuff, not facts.

Like planes don’t experience flight unless they flap.

Are you claiming that planes experience flight?

This is stupid.

k

come the fuck on

k

neurons made of silicon

Two problems with this: (1) The virtual neural net of LLMs don’t have neurons made of silicon. Their neurons are virtual, abstract, not physical phenomena. (2) Even if we move to the idea of a positronic brain like Data from Star Trek or the Terminator, it still isn’t our chemical-electrical brain which has different physical properties. This is very simple. It is a different physical object. It is different. It is not what we are.

Chinese Room horseshit

k

simulate the entire physical environment to do the same thing

If you are simulating it, it is a different thing.

It’s literally math.

This is a metaphysical assumption much closer to the “woo” that you keep accusing me of, and cursing at me about.

it cannot matter what substrate they run on

This contradicts your statement that “It’s literally math” because you can calculate the difference between substrates.

they run on physics

that’s precisely what I’m saying

LLMs display intelligence without consciousness

That’s precisely what I’m saying

doesn’t work as a gotcha

Nobody said anything about a gotcha

magic isn’t real.

Nobody said anything about magic.

If consciousness is a physical process, then a different physical process (such as an intelligent process running on different hardware) cannot be assumed to produce the same result (the result of conscious experience).

Sure, but we need to also avoid situations where we are simply following its protocols while thinking that we’re fighting it. Occupy Wallstreet just vented our energy, and then we went back to work while the same processes accelerated. Terrorism always just increases the power of the police state. Both of these things operate within the protocols of the cyberpunk dystopia, and ultimately facilitate its growth.

The cyberpunk dystopia wants you to fight it. It wants a strong immune system. It wants you to test its boundaries. But I’m not suggesting complacence either.

I would reframe "fighting the cyberpunk dystopia no matter what" into something more human-affirming, just as a starting point. Human communities, human learning and expression, homesteading and communing with nature, anything DIY and IRL, I think all these things are more positive than falling into the excitement-trap of believing that you’re “fighting” the monopoly on violence.

Thought is a process, like math.

You’re making a baseless assumption about the inner being of every process. If you simulate physics then you’re actually doing different physics, where the map is not the terrain. If the hardware is different then the inner being of the thing may very well be different.

You’re actually displaying a lack of imagination here. You’re not considering things other than consciousness. If you simulate the processes which on the surface resemble the processes that you see in the brain when observing from the outside, what you produce may be something equally interesting and yet totally different in-itself from subjective experience.

You don’t know as much as you think you know.

I’m fairly pessimistic about the future. Occupy Wallstreet was a total failure. A bigger version can still be a total failure. We’ve been in a cyberpunk dystopia since 9/11, totally and transparently owned by megacorporations. I can easily see an AI-powered police state dramatically wasting energy to dominate the population.

It’s going to collapse in a big heap

Just like the housing market which the government bailed out at our expense. And housing prices continue to outpace salaries. There’s a strong possibility that this is a permanently-forced inefficiency.

Nothing’s inevitable. And as for “building a mind”, while it depends on precisely what you mean by “mind”, it’s totally possible that only a biological brain can produce minds as we understand the word “mind”. Building AGI doesn’t necessarily mean building a mind. And since thoughts seem to be properties of “matter”, and there seem to be rules about which configurations of matter produce mind, we don’t necessarily know that there are other configurations that can produce minds. We might produce something else equally interesting which still is not a mind.

That will come back to bite them in the arse

Nothing ever bites them in the arse. It always runs downhill.

LibreOffice is generally better anyway. I’ll admit there are some formatting things I find smoother in Office, but overall it’s bloatware and it keeps crashing. I really hate Office and avoid it whenever I can.

Nay

I have some old Tupperware I could spare.

Thank you China

What do you suggest?

Just trust the government with your identity bro

Whoops yeah indeed.