Comment by in-silico
1 month ago
Hacker News gets a lot less creepy/sad/interesting when you ignore the first-person pronouns and remember they're just biomolecular machines. It's a scaled up version of E. coli. Useful, sure, but there's no reason to ascribe emotions to it. It's just chemical chain reactions.
The only thing I know for sure is that I exist. Given that I exist, it makes sense to me that others of the same rough form as me also exist. My parents, friends, etc. Extrapolating further, it also makes sense to assume (pre-ai, bots) that most comments have a human consciousness behind them. Yes, humans are machines, but we're not just machines. So kindly sod off with that kind of comment.
"Yes, LLMs are machines, but we're not just machines. So kindly sod off with that kind of comment."
Makes zero sense. “Emotion” is a property of these “biomolecular machines”, by its definition.
But if you weren't one of them, would you be able to tell that they had emotions (and not just simulations of emotions) by looking at them from the outside?
If I wasn’t one of them I wouldn’t care. It’s like caring about trees having branches. They just do. The trees probably care a great deal about their branches though, like I care a great deal about my emotions.
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