Comment by larodi
16 hours ago
If we agree weights producing text may emerge consciousness, given large enough, then DBs must've gained it long ago. The whole idea of sentience "on the other side of the wire" is wrong, as there is neither wire, nor other side. We think there is, but the DB just expounds the query and repurposes this information into views, that we give notion and meaning to. LLMs are the same, do not be mistaken.
One other important thing to consider is that the human experience is thanks to the body, is in connection, and perhaps product of the body. The body is observable and perhaps humans may state that they feel the connection to it. LLMs have no notion of nothing, the machine does not know the result, and the result does not know the VM. Modern psychology more or less has settled around the idea that consciousness is a product of the body. Why and how does this construct come to realize a Self is then another mystery even if we know which parts of the hardware may be involved.
Whether it is the Holy Spirit or Life Force animating the human body is a completely different question also. Besides, the realization, the experience we have now with all life in 2026 is not something that can be easily explained or attuned to life 200 years ago and its terms and notions. So is also wrong to even attempt to.
> If we agree weights producing text may emerge consciousness, given large enough, then DBs must've gained it long ago.
If we agree that silicon can perform calculations, then beaches must have been working out log tables long ago.
Greg Egan wrote an entire (fabulous) book about exactly that, "Permutation City".
Diaspora is mind-blowing, yet highly improbable and speculative, even though carefully threaded to sound plausible on all levels. The whole introdus idea and simulation from VM perspective sounds incredible, but I don't think the body runs a simulation of anything. It is something else.
working out things,... is not calculating.
a la https://xkcd.com/505/
> Modern psychology more or less has settled around the idea that consciousness is a product of the body.
The kind of consciousness we know. Jumping to the conclusion that that's the only kind possible, or even stronger that the way ours evolved is the only way this could have happened, is completely invalid.
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