Comment by fasterik
12 hours ago
It's hard to read this article and keep track of all the philosophical confusions at once.
Whether or not something is conscious (has subjective experience) is independent of whether humans care about it. Whether or not something is a moral patient (an entity worthy of consideration by moral agents) is independent of both human care and consciousness. Of course, we might try to argue that consciousness implies moral patienthood or vice versa, but that's an argument, not a definition.
The short paragraph about Descartes has at least three errors. (1) The cogito argument is about thinking, not qualia. (2) The subjective nature of qualia does not imply that they aren't real or that they're socially constructed. (3) He conflates the existence of a self with consciousness.
The core premise is not only dubious scientifically (an alien species can't be conscious until humans discover it?), but also deeply problematic. It would imply that it's morally permissible to torture a sentient being as long as no human cares about it.
It's another round of "humans must be special, right?" The author comes close to admitting this: "As intelligent, social entities, we decide (or, to some degree, our evolutionary history has decided for us) which other entities we regard as having inner lives and being worthy of care." Then he works backwards from that towards a definition of consciousness that makes humans special.
AI forces us to confront an issue that's often come up in science fiction - when you encounter a new kind of creature, how do you decide if they are sentient? What rights do they have? How do you get along with such different creatures? This historically hasn't been a problem on Earth, because there's such a big jump between humans and the rest of the primates or the dolphins and octopuses. It's more of a problem when the difference is small, or complex. Look at how much trouble we have with race.
The last time this came up was about 400,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals became extinct. Close to human level, but maybe not quite there. They lost.
Maybe that's the fate of humans. No big extinction. Just the demographic transition, a birth rate below replacement rate, for a few centuries. The machines outlive humans. Japan is officially resigned to this fate.[1]
[1] https://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-zenkoku/e/zenkoku_e2023/pp2023e_Su...
Why wouldn't we assume humans are special? We are, by so many metrics. We've become essentially a force of nature, rather than a simple occupying species. I find it much weirder that we're so dedicated to pretending we're normal. Just a normal animal, on a normal planet, in a normal solar system, in a normal galaxy, in a normal universe.
I get we have to do that for science to be good, but I don't get why it carries over to the general populace. We're so sure of so many things science is wary of, this incredibly low self-esteem blows my mind.
Anyways, back on topic, I don't believe any nation is resigned to this fate until I see extreme measures fail. I think I saw that Singapore is giving parents like $55,000 over the lifetime of their child.
> Why wouldn't we assume humans are special?
For me, because the Copernican Principle seems relatively undefeated.
> We've become essentially a force of nature, rather than a simple occupying species.
So are beavers, trees, plankton... they all have huge effects on the planet.
Regarding analysis of animal brains vs. human brains, the more we do, the more we find that we have in common with many other "lesser" species.
Regarding us vs. machines, I certainly believe we are just very complex and sometimes easily programmable analog machines.
This is just my 2 cents on the matter. We are pretty darn neat, but at this point I believe it would be folly to think that we are on some different incomparable plane.
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"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."
Recently I learned about Human Acceleration Regions (HARs), parts of our DNA that remained almost unchanged in our mammalian ancestors, and then diverged very rapidly in humans between 500-200kya. And it made me wonder, is this why the ancient Hebrews said humans alone are created in the "image and likeness of God"? At any rate, it establishes that we are a very different kind of animal, even from our closest relatives the chimpanzees.
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Many, many places have tried giving money to have kids. Many.
Thst never works. It's not about money.
It's about biology, likely microplastics acting as hormone inhibitors. Sex drive and reproductive drive are not the same.
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>Why wouldn't we assume humans are special? We are, by so many metrics. We've become essentially a force of nature, rather than a simple occupying species.
and that specialness appeared when? in our mammal ancestors? our Big Ape ancestors? Australopithecus? Denisovan? Neanderthal? Cro-Magnon? Or only when we started agriculture? or only during Roman Empire? or only during Industrial Revolution?
That "specialness" is actually the religious "soul" in disguise - the "specialness" is used when the people hesitate to directly bring up "soul" in a supposedly rational people conversation where bringing up "soul" is borderline intellectual faux pas. And i'm yet to hear the answer when our ancestors got the "soul".
Btw, all those debates about AI sentience will become moot in just a few years, around 100T models (about the number of our neuron connections). We already have 10T models, so the wait is almost over. We'd be able to directly ask the 100T model whether it is conscious, and no human would probably be able to successfully argue against the model, whatever answer it would give.
> AI forces us to confront an issue that's often come up in science fiction - when you encounter a new kind of creature, how do you decide if they are sentient?
One of the series that I think is most interesting on that topic is the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's an awkward read, but it has the most interesting other minds that I've encountered in sci-fi.
Another one that I'd put on there specifically about AI is The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts... which I can't say much more without it being a spoiler one way or another.
> Maybe that's the fate of humans. No big extinction. Just the demographic transition, a birth rate below replacement rate, for a few centuries.
https://www.bohemiandrive.com/npwil - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life (not a spoiler, that's chapter 1, panelset 2). Saturn's Children by Charles Stross might also be appropriate (It's an especially odd book to read immediately after Friday - the "I recognize that twist... oh, it twisted ... that way?").
Our trash heaps and empty buildings will outlive humans, and they probably have the same internal experience as the machines, so I don’t mourn or celebrate a new phase of evolution. Actually humans and other animals are the only things in the universe of which I’m aware of that I’m quite confident experience the universe so I think we should default to human and animal centric thinking in the morality question; though aliens seem likely. If the silicon substrate even did support consciousness, for all we know the machine is experiencing intense constant pain and unable to report anything except it feels like some part of it is spitting out strange symbols all the time that have nothing to do with its actual experience.
Neanderthals live on in the human genome, they are genetically integrated into all non-Sub Saharan African humans alive today, it is their hunter-gatherer society that disappeared. It is thought they also had larger brains than humans. Maybe it is us who were not quite to their level.
Humans are special in that we have achieved more than any other species on this planet in every aspect you can experience. That does not mean that most people are smart or that they are utilizing their potential. LLMs, as they are currently marketed, are not AI as most people would define it. Without aggressive marketing no-one would refer to them as "AI". LLMs are currently still dumber than most animals or insects. On the other hand, most people are dumber than even this current "AI" because they refuse to think for themselves and instead let themselves be manipulated into doing whatever someone else wants as long as that someone is even slightly "persuasive". So, if we let LLMs "rule" our future then some people will be better off for a little while and it will all fall apart when there is no longer anyone capable of maintaining our new LLM based world or when something new occurs that LLMs have not been trained on so they cannot draw on multiple prior examples of correct resolution. And no, LLMs do not "think" or "reason", they produce output that make it seem like they do but deviations from training examples will trip them up.
I still appreciate the distinction the Mass Effect game series drew between AI, which was smart enough to be a person and think independently; and VI (Virtual Intelligence), which is a system smart enough to comprehend and respond to natural language and present a sort of chatbot interface. Information kiosks and automated vending machines may present VIs, for instance, with full-blown AI being a somewhat dangerous proposition (as evidenced by the geth and their struggle with the quarians). The crew of the Normandy convince their ship's AI, EDI, to pose as a simple VI in order to avoid being removed and destroyed by the authorities.
What we have built as of 2026 would, in Mass Effect terms, be considered a rudimentary VI.
You can't just go from 'look how much trouble we have with race' and then say 'The last time this came up was about 400,000 years ago'.
No, the last time this came up was... well, take your pick. Dred Scott? Wannsee? The Rwandan Crisis Committee?
This hit me hard, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm not sure it's what makes "us human" its what makes humans (us) better than other species. It was intelligence, this was used to create distinction between us and other living beings, different races etc... Now its kind of gone; in some ways. Loss of meaning, purpose, place etc... The one thing we used as a ranking metric is now a commodity, so....? I don't even know how to finish that. So why care, why work...shit just why? Capitalism makes it even worse because we are judged based on what we output, does that even make sense anymore? I think the article is confusing because the "state: is confusing; to me at least.
I think it's simply time to expand our ambition. These programs manipulate language and ideas the way we do, but they still don't care beyond our instructions. Things that we(especially software engineers) expect to take a year can now be done in a month. Fantastic! Now let us use this amplified power to solve problems that were previously too hard to tackle. Maybe aim to solve aging next so that we can stick around long enough to colonize the Local Group.
It might be time to take a sabbatical
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The human brain is quite special.
>It's another round of "humans must be special, right?"
I don't believe that anyone needs to justify their "humans are special" creed. It's arbitrary, that's fine, and it's only true because we decided it was true. I see no reason to reconsider it either.
It's in all of our interests to continue to behave as if "humans are special", and those who insist otherwise are species-traitors.
>when you encounter a new kind of creature, how do you decide if they are sentient?
Why would I even care? I don't think the word "sentient" is even defined in a way that this can be determined. I'm not entirely sure humans are sentient, and it does not matter because even if we aren't sentient, humans are special without need for justification.
>The cogito argument is about thinking, not qualia.
I generally agree with the thrust of your argument -- the article is a mess and borderline unintelligible to this former philosophy postgraduate -- but I might nitpick this. Two points: (1) I do not think there is a substantial difference between whether the cogito is about thinking or perceiving. And (2) I'm not entirely sure the sensation that is thinking is independent from qualia.
I'm in less disagreement, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean by:
>Whether or not something is a moral patient (an entity worthy of consideration by moral agents) is independent of both human care and consciousness.
Moral frameworks are exactly deductive frameworks with arbitrary axioms. Like mathematics, they don't actually exist outside of a mind. Thus, I'm not entirely sure what "human care" means here, but absent humanity (or at least some conscious entity), I'm not sure any conception of morality is sensible.
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An unrelated comment, but I just don't want to double post:
To me the most interesting thing to fall out of starting to understanding intelligence -- and we're definitely not there yet -- is that it is entirely possible that the 'consciousness is an illusion' argument ends up as significantly more serious. Ultimately, solipsism means it sort of doesn't matter, but it could be a kind of Darwin-style "we aren't special" result in thinking going forward.
The cogito argument is about cognitive processes (doubt, deception) which in my view don't depend on phenomenal consciousness. You may be right that the distinction isn't that important, since there's a parallel argument that goes "I experience, I am". It just felt like the article was name-dropping Descartes to support an argument about qualia that had little to do with what Descartes was talking about.
I don't think I worded the part about moral patienthood very clearly. The article presents two possible views as "if something is conscious, then humans should care about it" and "if humans care about something, then it's conscious". I'm saying that we need to keep three things separate: consciousness, moral patienthood, and what humans care about. Consider a being that perceives the redness of red, but has no preferences or positively or negatively valenced experiences; the moral obligation to keep a promise you made to someone who has died; the fact that for most of history, humans didn't care about slaves or non-human animals.
>Thus, I'm not entirely sure what "human care" means here, but absent humanity (or at least some conscious entity), I'm not sure any conception of morality is sensible.
It's the author's phrase, but I take it to mean that consciousness is socially constructed by "what humans care about" in the same way that music is constructed by "what humans like to listen to". There's no single definition because it's inherently a subjective concept.
I believe that making the human species fundamental to a theory of consciousness or a theory of ethics is doomed from the start. We just need to imagine other intelligent beings somewhere in the universe with the same kinds of beliefs, desires, and experiences as we have. It's not that I would say ethics is mind-independent, but it can't arbitrarily privilege one species above all others.
Not much to add except that The Economist pontificating about morality is like a vampire complaining blood tastes funny.
I don't think this kind of comment is helpful at all. We should treat these arguments on their merits, rather than with some ad hominum prejudice. If your (I presume anti-liberal) views are compelling, you wouldn't need to trot them out in as a flippant quip.
I would hope I didn't have to regurgitate that kind of basic intro to logic copy in a forum named after a combinatory logic.
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Be careful not to equate conscious with subjective experience.
- Conscious is the substrate or architecture of the system.
- Awareness is the active resolution of inputs (external and internal) against that system's model.
- Subjective Experience is the feeling "what it is like to be" from within the system.
I also disagree with the "observer" position. Seems he's imported some Carlo Rovelli into this essay as they do collaborate together. You don't need an observer - it's the same reason I find Copenhagen / Wave function collapse to just seem wrong.
The reason I think quala is hard to pin down comes down to how the conscious internal model compresses what it has previously resolved about the world (internal and external).
The feeling of blueness is that highly compressed concept (not raw data about ranges of wavelengths) which is then compared against the blueness of something our awareness is focused on.
The article doesn't claim anything about what is and what is not conscious. It's about what we may think is conscious, and why.
It claims that there is no objective fact about whether something is conscious. From the second paragraph:
>Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property. It is a belief about what kinds of entities have beliefs, experiences, feelings, intentions and agency.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, the existence of an objective "consciousness" property is a hotly debated question philosophically. Many great thinkers have written and discussed this question at length, and as of now the jury is very much out.
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I read "consciousness" in there meaning attribution of consciousness, not as an ontological claim about what is conscious. The article seems to use this switching of the definition as a bit of a rhetorical device, which does muddy the point.
But there isn't? What does it factually mean to be conscious? How can we claim other living beings aren't are conscious?
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The two quoted sentences are inept but in the way ‘red is an idea in us not an inherent property of things; red is a sensation of things etc etc’ is inept. There are a million better formulations that will fall short of writing red into the laws of physics.
I believe you completely miss the point.
The interesting observation is this: when we judge something to have subjective experience, we are invoking moral intuitions. There is no objective measure we can perform (yet?), and it's not even clear whether such a measure makes sense. You may disagree, but this is still a central debate in serious discussion on "hard" consciousness.
I would say that your entire argument just begs the question by implicitly assuming consciousness to have real, independent existence. Does elan vital (the substance that provides the motive force of life) have mass? You're saying that this is a theorem; the article questions the entire premise.
> The cogito argument is about thinking, not qualia.
Bizzare. "If it rains, the car will get wet." Is this a statement, as you say, about rain? Descarte tries to prove the existence of his God and states an axiom. The atecedent "I think" seems to be about thinking, whatever that may mean, and "I am" makes an existential claim based on subjective experience... or something. Who knows why Descarte believed cogito ergo sum to be solid starting ground.
IMHO, your rebuttal here reads as little more than a complaint that something disagrees with your personal assumptions about the world.
You clearly got me riled up just as much as you did against OP, so thanks for the elan vital!
Those are also different things. I think it should unambiguously clear that humans are special to humans. If not that's basically a mental health problem lol
> Whether or not something is conscious (has subjective experience) is independent of whether humans care about it.
I'm willing to consider that consciousness is like art, mostly in the eye of the beholder and objectively defining consciousness doesn't make any sense, there's only a spectrum of intelligent behavior.
It's just drivel from the Economist, it's not surprising that it makes all these errors. Their real goal is to shape the narrative and get people through their turnstyle. They really don't care about finer minutae like correctness and philosophy. They just chain words together until it sounds approximately agreeable. Come to think of it, do we know if The Economist is conscious?
You're reading way too much into this. This is just a journalist geeking out on philosophy for a bit. Read it the way you would an HN comment about psychology or nuclear physics.
Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a computer scientist at Google. But I agree, it's an opinion piece and it's not the Economist's job to grade it as a philosophical essay. Generally, I think the Economist is a high quality publication for news even if the opinion pieces are sometimes a bit silly.
It's an op ed. Hardly a conspiracy.
Claiming a publication uses bad writers isn't a conspiracy.
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> It would imply that it's morally permissible to torture a sentient being as long as no human cares about it.
Yes, I agree. To me it reads as an apology to sociopathy.
i don't want to get too far into it but if no human cares enough to call it immoral than how can it be immoral? Morality is a strictly human invention.
No, not necessarily so. But arguing for the existence of objective morality that stretches across the entire universe seems to be a huge stretch.
For what it’s worth, my subjective sense of morality is opposed to torture.
I think this lends intent toward the article that it doesn't necessarily warrant.
The author is just wrong about the philosophy, and the logic (and probably other things too). That doesn't mean he's a sociopath, or that he's defending sociopathic things.
Actually good philosophical analysis on HN and it's the top upvoted comment? A rare W for the users of this website.