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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

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andrewstuart·

It’s software.

Software is a computer program, by definition not sentient.

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If humans are sentient, are molecules in their body sentient?

There are around ~22,000 proteins types in their body, yet we are billions, all different.

No, molecules are not sentient.

That's my point, I made a tongue in cheek parallel between molecules and software.

Neither are sentient, yet humans think they are sentient, so why wouldn't it be the case for a system made with software?

What’s your source on this?

me? all of science? basic reasoning and logic?

> No, molecules are not sentient.

Have you ever heard about panpsychism?

Yes, but I don't think it's the case.

Did you just watch Ghost in the shell?

Molecules aren't sentient, but proteins definitely are. /s

I like this answer!

And thinking about it, the way protein folding is giving them new properties, must make us think more carefully than "Software is a computer program, by definition not sentient."

We know sentience doesn't extend to all coupled computations. For example, human sentience doesn't extend to our balance system, or the system controlling our heartbeats, or the system that filters and manipulates vision data in the early stages. Or, the system that decides how to compose sentences, we aren't aware ourselves how that process works or we could have programmed it, instead that is a non-sentient subsystem.

The parts our sentience does are easy to program and already solved, for example arithmetics.

This is quite a bad definition of sentience.

Why?

And what definition is that exactly?

We got ourselves a real life Bruce Maddox here

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