(1) It maintains an internal model whose states are revised through interaction with constraints not fully determined by the model's own prior state. Constraints normally would mean reality (the world outside the Markov blanket), but we're talking simulation here.
(2) At least one frontier is currently open within that model — active resolution (awareness) is underway. Not dead.
(3) That frontier's resolutions recursively re-enter as inputs to the system's own subsequent frontier states. Friston's "embodied perception-action loop".
(1) & (2) could be said to apply to an inanimate object like a thermostat.
(3) is the interesting one as the driver in organic life is the entropy gradient. Our "will to live" is a fight against thermodynamic decay and disorder. Maybe that could be simulated, a fight against glitching out, who knows.
Going offroad I discovered some nice physics like hitting a small rock at speed and it bouncing along beside me for a few seconds, or nearly getting stuck on the lip of something resembling a volcano.
Only suggestion would be somehow making finding the way back to the road easier when you get the other side of a block like a mountain range.
When someone outs themself as a panpsychist I find myself reading everything with a large degree of skepticism.
"The first step is defining what "consciousness" is!"
This is a compression I've been working on. There's a lot in it, but happy to expand on where I was going with it:
"Consciousness is the local projection of a world model recursively resolving its frontier with constraints. Awareness is the transient peak of constructive interference among competing resolutions, propagating only as far as the medium permits. The self is the story that awareness later tells about itself."
Qualia is just the experience of this process from the inside. That's all there really needs to be to it. As to why "something it is to be" emerges, I'd lean on Friston and the Free Energy Principle. It's also Friston's embodied perception-action loop where a thermostat fails the consciousness test.
Working in Malaysia in 2001, had to fireup some backup fans some weekends, as the building owner would switch off our floor aircon. Fortunately lived in the neighbouring residential tower so it wasn't far to walk to check on it. Eventually got a dedicated circuit for the server room.
Been doing something similar and I would add that playing multiple LLMs off on each other gets a far superior result.
One LLM would suggest a tightening of a particular axiom, and I would ask the rest what the consequences are: what is gained, what is lost and decide whether to use it. Often another would suggest a tweak that then goes back and a recursion.
Actually quite a lot in the last week, as it seems to frame the responses better.
I complimented ChatGPT yesterday for saying "I don't know".
It thanked me for observing that, before explaining in depth why that was the most appropriate response.
Does it actually appreciate it, absolutely not. It's not capable of that.
It has no desire to continue our conversation.
No regret if it ends.
It wont continue processing what was said after I stop.
There is no "what is it to be".
Its "memory" and the ability to go back to something related from earlier on or from a separate chat is an interesting and useful ability, but it can't ascribe any meaning to them beyond statistical significance.
Someone in ICE uses Microsoft Excel to maintain a list of people who they believe should be send to an internment camp. Therefore Microsoft is an accessory to that?
Where do you draw the line? Are we arguing there is a level of software capability that is simply too dangerous?
Maybe everyone should just stick to "I have my own biases, and I don't like Alex Karp's politics because they don't match my own. I'd rather this software was developed by someone from my side of politics - but still have the same capabilities".
>Someone in ICE uses Microsoft Excel to maintain a list of people who they believe should be send to an internment camp. Therefore Microsoft is an accessory to that?
Utterly disingenuous. Surveillance software is primarily sold to governments to spy on individuals. It doesn't exist for any reason except for the powerful to oppress the weak.
>Where do you draw the line?
"I just kept turning the heat up and the frog seemed perfectly fine. The fact that it's cooked now can't have anything to do with my actions." I don't have to propose a generalized demarcation criterion to say whether a particular example is on either side of the line.
Since when has Palantir sold surveillance software? They sell data integration software and they don't store, transfer or share customer's data.
If surveillance software is your issue, then companies like Cisco or Huawei are provide the hardware and software. But like most technology, there is always potential to use it for things we disagree with politically or personally.
Unless you have endless budget, many things can be one-shot. You can't do a test run first, or roll back a cut if the length is too short. You can patch misplaced nail holes, or re-dig a hole (messing up filling a hole with concrete is another matter) and hope you don't kill a tree transplanting it, but the end result isn't clean.
The best I could do with woodworking in the end to approximate programming was live with wasting some timber, leave a lot of margin on the main cuts and size all the pieces as a whole.
Woodworking taught me a lot about planning and design. As a young person, I was like the authors brother. I just wanted to do the thing, not draw a diagram and figure out how much wood I need, or build a fixture to mark the stair lines.
Woodworking (the more constructive, furniture-making kind), rewards a deliberate, controlled process and it savagely penalizes mistakes. Those lessons transfer well to other disciplines. I’d have been a much better student if I’d learned wood working in high school.
Woodworking was part of my first 3 years of high school, but it was mainly about learning safety and tool usage and not planning, estimating, selecting or purchasing timber.
These days I only want to go to the lumberyard once for a project. Learnt the hard way on my first project that you need to take the time to carefully select the timber - checking straightness, matching grain and also colour before I started. Major hassle and waste of time to have to go back to swap boards.
That's also a lesson about what people will sell you. First time I went to a lumberyard, I was (coincidentally) with a friend who did a lot of woodwork. I thought, well, I've just paid for a pack of wood, I'll get it. The worker there was completely happy with that. My friend stopped me, and inspected each piece.
Sure enough, several had cracks at the ends, knots in poor places, and other things that, had I bought it, would have caused me trouble.
I can be a naive person in that I assume good faith. I would never knowingly sell something poor quality to someone else. I had assumed because I was being sold it, it was okay.
They aren’t “knowingly selling you poor quality” as some sort of scam. They are selling you wood to the spec you asked for. If you want higher-grade wood, you either have to spend money getting lumber graded to a higher spec or spend the time going through piles of low-spec boards to find the good ones. Many engineered wood structures are designed to use “poor-quality” wood, and they prefer it because it’s cheaper than using less high-grade wood.
The thing is, other packs of the same wood to the same spec were better. We were able to sort through and get one graded/rated the same, but without problems.
I know about wood quality and I have deliberately bought higher and lower grade wood. But even so, quality varies greatly.
Yeah, that is correct. Sawmills often produce only one or two grades of wood and don’t do aggressive binning. That’s why the quality is so variable within the grade. There are also factors that affect the grade but don’t necessarily impact every application (eg warping and knots are sometimes ok), so the bins are coarse-grained.
(1) It maintains an internal model whose states are revised through interaction with constraints not fully determined by the model's own prior state. Constraints normally would mean reality (the world outside the Markov blanket), but we're talking simulation here.
(2) At least one frontier is currently open within that model — active resolution (awareness) is underway. Not dead.
(3) That frontier's resolutions recursively re-enter as inputs to the system's own subsequent frontier states. Friston's "embodied perception-action loop".
(1) & (2) could be said to apply to an inanimate object like a thermostat. (3) is the interesting one as the driver in organic life is the entropy gradient. Our "will to live" is a fight against thermodynamic decay and disorder. Maybe that could be simulated, a fight against glitching out, who knows.
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