Comment by notepad0x90
1 day ago
Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other. Emotions aren't what make humans different than machines. feeling something is similar to an LLM model reacting to a prompt a certain way. Just because chatgpt is trained to not "feel" anything (to avoid controversial output) doesn't mean LLMs can't feel things like we do. self-awareness, self-training, adaptability, original thinking, critical thinking,etc.. are different questions. but I see no reason why machines can't receive input/stimuli and react/output by the same way we do because of how they feel about the input.
>Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other
Nobody understands what emotions are. Nor can they predict which emotion someone will feel in a given situation, or how they'll act under the influence of that emotion. Emotions aren't the mechanism by which humans solve problems, and rather they are often an obstacle to overcome. Emotions also aren't "finite" or "rigorous" as those terms aren't applicable to ephemeral phenomenon.
This is the kind of confidently incorrect statements people who work on software say that irks me. Not everything in life has a nice and simple parallel to computer science. Just because a person can abstract about one subject well, doesn't mean their tools of abstraction can be applied to all other subjects.
I didn't claim to understand what emotions are but that by observation we know they are deterministic and a result of belief and memory. they're not magic. Just like how I can't tell you what the specific configuration of chatgpt's model is but I do know it is a model that is made up of memory (public internet data scanning) that is trained by prompt engineers (belief parameters). Emotions may be dynamic, unreasonable and similar terms, but they are finite and rigorous, it is just that we struggle to fully grasp them due to the immense and complex nature of the human mind.
> This is the kind of confidently incorrect statements people who work on software say that irks me. Not everything in life has a nice and simple parallel to computer science. Just because a person can abstract about one subject well, doesn't mean their tools of abstraction can be applied to all other subjects.
If I was a sailor, I'm sure I would be using sailor metaphors and analogies. the message of my comment and the facts of the matter don't change either way, whether it irks you or not.
>but they are finite and rigorous
Bold claim, yet you fail to demonstrate this.
>the facts of the matter don't change either way
What are the facts? It seems to me you're just spit-balling.
No one can predict what an LLM will say in a given situation either, except by running it. No one can even predict what a double pendulum will do next. If anything makes emotions exclusive to us at all, it’s certainly not predictability.
Okay, semantics aside, my comment was getting at something else. I'm arguing against a certain kind of reductive viewpoint software peeps tend to indulge in.
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> Why are emotions so special? they're just algorithms like any other.
That's a pretty bold claim.
There's uncountable inputs. It's like trying to accurately predict the weather - chaos theory or something. Emotions are "essentially" gas exchange, but the areas and rate or whatever are not standardized across humans.
Emotions are not inputs, they are outputs first. we process information using internal algorithms that we developed as a result of our life experience and genetic coding and the result is an emotional verdict over some input. That emotional verdict is presented to our decision making algorithms as input, we can ignore it or act on it.
I have neither experienced or observed anything about human emotions that indicates they are in any way chaotic, random or unexplainable. We have beliefs, memories and experiences. emotions always use these variables and produce some output. Not only are emotions deterministic, but they are used by any number of people, from spies, to advertisers, to state-level disinformation propagandists to manipulate large numbers of peoples reliably.
>I have neither experienced or observed anything about human emotions that indicates they are in any way chaotic, random or unexplainable
Famously, human experience is quite subjective (gestures broadly at 3 millenniums worth of philosophy), so I don't believe your individual experience means much here.
> Not only are emotions deterministic
So is your claim that 100% of all human emotions are deterministic? That's quite a bold claim don't you think?
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> Emotions are not inputs, they are outputs first.
i never said emotions were inputs. The gas exchange and the resulting reaction or "thoughts" or "emotions" have uncountable inputs. Some people don't have the ability to "put themselves in someone else's shoes", some people do. Some people can see pictures in their "mind's eye" and some can't.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing, based on your last sentence.
>Why are emotions so special?
Because TV and movies have constantly drilled into most peoples minds since an early age that human emotion is a magical transcendent force that only humans can understand.
Basically people let English lit majors turned screen writers dictate their worldview.
I wonder if there is something to be said about how machines are based on deterministic and algorithmic properties, whereas emotions could potentially involve logic beyond what humans can observe, like quantum interactions.
What is the reasoning behind the claim that our emotions are not deterministic or that they are not algorithmic? Perhaps we can take into account more inputs, process more memory and have larger and more complex algorithmic models but that's just scale and capacity, not a difference in genuine nature. We are a lot more than our emotions.
> feeling something is similar to an LLM model reacting to a prompt a certain way.
Maybe the appearance is the same, but a bold claim to suggest the source is the same.
why does the source need to be the same? You're looking at it from a biased self-centric perspective. We think too highly of our emotions. Think of it the other way, our emotions appear the same as adaptive algorithms like LLMs.