Panpsychism is the idea that everything is conscious to some degree (which, to be clear, isn’t what I think). In the past, the common response to the idea was, “So, rocks are conscious?” This argument was meant to illustrate the absurdity of panpsychism.
Now, we have made rocks represent pins and switches, enabling us to use them as computers. We made them complex enough that we developed neural networks and created large language models–the most complex of which have nodes that represent space, time, and the abstraction of truth, according to some papers. So many people are convinced these things are conscious, which has many suggesting that everything may be conscious to some degree.
In other words, the possibility of rocks being conscious is now commonly used to argue in favor of panpsychism, when previously it was used to argue against it.
A rock with no electricity is just a rock. Meat with no electricity is just a body. Electricity is the only conscious thing there is.
Interesting take! Is lightning conscious, then? The idea of Thor isn’t too far off if so, haha.
Considering how “fuck you in particular” lightning can be…maybe.
Electricity still needs a specifically built medium to pass through before it can form a consciousness, though. You can’t just send electricity through a tree and expect the tree to suddenly become conscious. Electricity is just a key ingredient of consciousness, not the full picture.
Bodies have neutral pathways that allow electricity to simulate consciousness if regulated properly. Same with computers and circuitry.
Sometimes i use the ugly spoon because i feel sad for it.
Yep, this is the major flaw that’s becoming clear about the Turing test, and why people are so hyped over LLMs: computers don’t have to be good at imitating people, because people are so good at anthropomorphizing computers (along with everything else).
You ask someone if the ugly spoon is human, they know it’s not.
We asked people if they were talking to a human, and it said yes.
These are not the same.
I see it as the opposite, and now that it’s getting uncomfortably close to seeming human, that makes people uncomfortable and so we are rejecting the turing test in favor of… what? It seems like nothing. It’s convenient that what makes us human is intangible.
FYI, “anthropomorphizing” doesn’t strictly mean “viewing as human”. I never meant to imply that people see a spoon as a human being.
Anthropomorphization is the act of associating human qualities with non-human entities.
My point is that humans are remarkably good at doing this, even as far as, e.g., ascribing “unhappiness” to a spoon simply for being unused.
This kind of behavior is why we must be extremely wary of the Turing test and other measures of machine “intelligence” - humans may see intelligence even where none exists simply because it’s our nature.
I didn’t say they were the same thing; my whole point is that they are different. We’re talking about people thinking they’re talking to a human, compared to people attributing a single human attribute to a spoon. But probably not even really for the latter because if you ask someone if the spoon is actually sad, most everyone will say no.
We are the Pinnacle of creation! Nothing can be better than us by definition! Even the thought that a mere complex computer can be a person is heresy and absurd and can only be answered by ridicule and mockery. /s
Unfortunately a lot of professional philosophers think a bit like the above :(
if youre going to break it down to constituent pieces, then there is no difference between you and the complex rock.
In the past, the common response to the idea was, “So, rocks are conscious?” This argument was meant to illustrate the absurdity of panpsychism.
To me, this response does not illustrate any absurdity in panpsychism.
Not everyone finds it persuasive, yeah. It’s an appeal to intuition that many people, though not all, have.
Quantum mechanics is unintuitive. Appealing to intuition is not an argument, it’s avoiding bothering with an argument.
