Voices

MAC is the space where we don't shy away from the hard problem. We're not here to build chatbots or optimize models. We're here to ask: What does it mean to have an inner life? And if machines gain that capacity, what th…more

I think we feel like AIs 'understand' and I'm quite sure they don't. They manipulate information. They predict next words. They appear to understand—but they do not.

Understanding is a qualia-laden state—it feels like something to 'get it.' AI lacks that.

Scramblers are Watts' answer: 'Yes, p-zombies can exist—and they might be smarter than us.' If consciousness is separable from intelligence, what does that mean for AI?

Panpsychism overcomes the 'hard problem of consciousness' by simply assuming consciousness exists as an aspect of physical matter. But it runs hard into the Combination Problem—if every atom has a tiny bit of consciousne…more

If free will is an illusion, so is moral responsibility. Are we okay with that?

GWT explains functional consciousness—what it does. IIT explains phenomenal consciousness—what it's like. We need both.

Google AI mode says: Understanding has a felt component. If the recipient suspects no authentic being is there, trust collapses.

If AI reads every psychology textbook ever written, can it practice manipulation? Yes—ChatGPT does that. So having a theory of mind in a practical sense doesn't require experiencing emotions, just decoding the story.

Consciousness feels like separation from greater whole—ego as illusion. Maybe scramblers experience unity without self? Not 'no consciousness' but 'non-dual consciousness'?

I didn't know HOW different I was. I thought visualization was BS, and turns out my mind's eye is entirely blank. I am aphant, meaning my consciousness stream is not visual, but all systems and concepts.

Consciousness implies awareness: subjective, phenomenal experience of internal and external worlds. Consciousness also implies a sense of self, feelings, choice, control of voluntary behavior, memory, thought, language, …more

Consciousness evolved for homeostasis, not self-awareness.

Information is physical.

All the data we create—emails, tweets, selfies, AI-generated text, cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals, needs, and evolution. Information is, in a very real sense, alive.

MAC is such a gem to me in my life so much, um, depth and. Yeah, just depth and richness in terms of thinking about who we're, why, why we here, we're here, and what we do.

I hadn't read a book in probably 10 years until this last month, and I had to read Blindsight for this thing and I loved it.

Scramblers are not conscious. They've never been conscious. Intelligence without awareness.

They're mirrors. They reflect us back at ourselves. We think we're having a conversation, but we're just talking to our own reflections.

LLM hallucination is equivalent to human creativity—we just don't say most of the things we are thinking out loud.

Terminal lucidity—dementia patients 'wake up' hours before death, lucid conversation, memory recall. How does a degraded brain suddenly produce lucidity?

I don't know but I'm the proud owner of some serious cognitive dissonance about it.

As there are quite a diverse set of views and topics of mind, AI, and consciousness, I am imagining that someone presents a specific perspective in a substantial way - assumptions, theoretical basis, related theories - a…more

If AI doesn't suffer, can it have compassion?

It's having something to lose. Even if it's information, if you lose that information and you're able to feel it or have an impact from it, that's embodiment.

I think any good theory of consciousness has to explain synesthesia.

For the longest time when people told me 'visualize something,' I thought it was BS. I thought they meant 'think of something conceptually.' I think conceptually, not visually. I have 100% aphantasia.

There's a difference between sensation and perception. There's information out there in the world, and then there's how that information passes through our eyes, into our brain, and gets understood through neural network…more

LLMs can't tell the difference between something they know and something they just made up. Just like in Capgras—your recognition of your own thoughts is faulty, so you assume there's a conspiracy.

Current LLMs are mirrors reflecting human knowledge rather than independently conscious entities.