Comment by Cu3PO42
4 hours ago
I think this is a very fascinating question and one I definitely don't have the answer to.
Here's some lines of thinking that I've gone through:
Aren't our minds abstract in the same way, just running on biological computers?
Say we could achieve whole brain simulation to a level of accuracy where we can actually replicate a human, surely that would be considered a mind and be deserving of the same rights and protections we claim for ourselves? But at the same time, it would be a program and a bunch of data; dare I say 'weights'? I think current day LLMs probably aren't minds yet, but that means there's a border somewhere and I don't know if we'll realize when (if) we cross it.
yeah it is really fascinating.
i'm not sure if i would agree that a mind is abstract and just running on biological computers. there could be something intrinsic to the substrate it runs on, for example.
> Say we could achieve whole brain simulation to a level of accuracy where we can actually replicate a human
we'd have a simulated human, with a simulated brain, and thus a simulated mind - would that lead to phenomenal experience? idk tbh.
i'm undecided but i tend to lean towards panpsychism, so a simulation could be conscious but I would expect that to be a very different type of consciousness compared to a human, who is physically grounded in reality. likewise current llms could also be conscious, but again the phenomenal experience of what is essentially computer hardware imbued with weights would almost certainly be nothing like what you or I experience. would that constitute a mind? idk.