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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

This is potentially huge. LLMs have shown how they can encompass patterns unknown to its creators and effectively use it. If for some reason, we can actually start seeing something resembling higher thought patterns in animals, that can up end society.

But still, we already had lots of evidence how some animals like cetacean and primate are potentially sentient. Many people just don't want to admit it and we can't convince them that human isn't anything special. In the end this may just be another piece of proof on a pile that get ignored.

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> Many people just don't want to admit it and we can't convince them that human isn't anything special.

Cant we then just wait for animals to develop an ai that translates to our languages?

Give the monkeys a few hundred years after the genetic experiments make them super-intelligent and they take over the world and yeah … probably …

Depends on how we define monkeys, years, genetics, intelligence, and world. Pick one, change its meaning and then let's revisit this.

Their fairy tale books says animals exist for humans, so good luck changing their minds.

Genesis 9:3 "Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything."

So, uh... other humans live and move about, too. Behold, a meal!

And on whence the LORD sayeth 'no....I didn't mean like that!!!' but it wasth too lateth.

For man was already eating others of mankind out!

You’re assuming minds exist, which many consider a fairy tale.

Also engaging in mind reading, a supernatural, pseudo-scientific (tsk!) claim.

To be fair the Hebrew version use the word "remesh" which is not clearly translated to "everything that moves", but more to "invertebrates" or "insects" (I do not know what the author of Genesis actually meant, but the point is that it is not a clear translation).

Additionally, in Genesis 1:24-26, remesh is listed among other types of animals such as beasts of the land and birds of the sky, so it is pretty clear that it is not meant as all animals. In these phrases remesh appears in the English translation as "creeping thing".

https://biblehub.com/hebrew/remes_7431.htm

Not sure that Gen 1:24-26 is listing 'remesh' as it's own category of life or just being poetic. I'm not a Hebrew scholar though, just using interlinear.

It is wholly consistent to believe that your actual parrots are also statistical parrots. That's not the same thing as "can't be convinced".

I've actually stopped believing in my own sentience.

What does that even mean?

We live in Skinner boxes.

LLM-induced psychosis. The new health hazard in the town.

Not OP, but same here. I feel I am a sentient person only when fully concentrated. But when relaxed, it's stochastic autopilot, both in speech and actions

I believe I've seen an article touching this topic here, long before GPT. Will link if I find it

I think you're confusing sentience with thinking intelligence

Sentience is usually defined as the ability to perceive/feel things.

One way to see this is that sentience and language processing are just two aspects available to us in consciousness.

We are also not identical to our thoughts or feelings, but most people never pause to contemplate this.

I suspect the autopilot you describe is really closer to our default state, but it’s easier to notice when in a calm state and the “me-ness” of actions/thoughts doesn’t feel so strong.

What's really interesting is that most of us feel we're our "best selves" when we reach a state of flow. We're in the zone. We're totally non-self-conscious.

The only description I've ever seen of consciousness that makes any sense is that it's a kind of condition monitoring system for our minds, a cross-check evolved to catch some of the cognitive mistakes that the main machinery of our minds tend to make from time to time. And because our whole brain is linked into this system, including itself, we get that infinite regress of omphaloskepsis that we call "consciousness."

Personally, I feel I'm at my most "conscious" when I'm in a flow state. I'm laser focused on one thing, but I'm actively thinking about that thing very hard!

I don't do a lot of metacognition (thinking about my thinking) while I'm in a flow state, which maybe was your point. But I can think about my prior flow state thinking after the fact, and I'm aware of how much my mind was working, and what that felt like.

Hows this for a definition. Its not a definition of consciousness per se, but its a definition of the specific consciousness "you" in the general case: you are whatever you get in return when you ask yourself who you are. Consciousness thus defined exists entirely within the communicative medium.

In other words, consciousness is an emergent phenomena that happens in a system of sending messages when eventually an agent starts sending messages to itself. "you" are the voices in your head not attributed to anyone else.

edit: found it, it was about GPT actually

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who...

What you're describing is a lack of volition ("free will"), not sentience. Even on autopilot, you still perceive things, meaning sensations and things constantly appear in your mindscape, right? That is sentience.

self-explanatory that they aren't able to tell you

I don't think it's meaningful to say that something capable of stopping belief in it's own sentience does not possess sentience, at least not without some creature linguistic torture of the definition of sentience.

I do, however, appreciate your point and agree with the spirit of your post, if not the exact content.

I definitely feel like I am two 'selves' - one of which is capable of rational thought, foresight, rational modeling of the world around me, etc. That self is probably running things 25% of the time. The other self is emotional, understands the world intuitively for all of the benefits and drawbacks that carries, and seeks short term satisfaction of needs above all else.

I don't mean this in a hand-wavey new age holistic way, I mean it in a very concrete sense. I can detect that change in myself when I switch from the 'monkey pilot' to the 'human pilot'. Mindfulness and concentration is required to bring the human back. I think I have below average executive functioning skills, and I spend a lot of my 'human pilot' time thinking about how I can stay in this mode longer but it's not trivial to make that happen.

I think my 'human pilot' is definitely sentient. My 'monkey pilot' might not be depending on the definition.

I applaud you for your honesty, introspection, and open mindedness.

If anything, LLMs have exposed our inconsistency in how we ground sentience, consciousness, and subjective experience. At times we thought we were talking about the same things, but we've clearly have been tossing terms about.

LLMs have, at least/last, given us the opportunity to reexamine important social ontologies. Better late than never.

If you weren't sentient, you couldn't believe or disbelieve anything. Or perform any other mental action. Read Descartes.

I've read Descartes. ChatGPT believes things and performs mental actions as well.

I can't read Descartes as I am insentient.

Lots of animals exhibit clear sentience, it's sapience that we're unsure of.

Just move the bar of human specialness every time we "discover" humans aren't that much different than everything else. Wars will be fought over this.

I am not sure about wars, but there will always be a backlash as the margin for human "exceptionalism" gets tighter.

We still have surprisingly widespread belief in outdated ideas like young earth creationism or a literally flat Earth. Evolution is rejected by broad swathes of the American population despite even the Catholic church having incorporated it into its mythology. I think if anything the backlash is a constant, true believers have no problem already living in a parallel reality that denies our own.

Why would we fight wars over whether specific animals are sapient? We have no trouble killing, imprisoning and torturing humans. Sapience is a philosophical distinction, not a practical one.

Currently we tolerate the enslavement of animals but that becomes harder and harder to the point that some people might want to fight others on their behalf.

That's not a hypothetical. The Animal Liberation Front exists. But that's a small group of people that mostly attacks labs and farms. That's a very different scale and mode than a literal war.

Currently we tolerate the enslavement of humans but contrary to popular narratives about the US Civil War, we haven't fought any wars specifically to end slavery of other humans. We have had successful "slave rebellions" (e.g. Haiti, which continues to pay the debt imposed by their former slave masters for "damages and economic losses" to this day) but anti-slavery sentiments among those not in the demographic directly suffering from slavery never went quite that far. The anti-colonialist coup in Portugal was fueled more by the military's resentment over the forever-war required to suppress the colonies than any sympathy for their cause of liberation. The US Civil War was a reaction to the attempted secession of its then-member states rather than specifically their stance on slavery.

It's plausible that we'd see acts we'd consider terrorism in the name of animal liberation (arguably some of the ALF's past actions fit into this category) much like we have seen with other liberation movements. But as this is a struggle entirely led by those not themselves in the group of the oppressed, the dynamics are different from most civil rights struggles. Arguably even the abolition of formal slavery in most countries had less to do with zealous support from non-slaves and more with economic factors making slavery less appealing. And even then the countries only got away with slavery in their own mainland while still happily continuing to benefit from overseas slavery, much like we now mostly hide animal suffering in farms, closed trucks and meat processing factories rather than back alleys and town squares.

Actually it is spot on and very practical. All of those examples you give are typically preceded by a strong 'dehumanization' phase, which allows us to overcome the inhibitions that we have ingrained against doing those things to humans.

Sure, but dehumanization is explicitly used to other specific out-groups of humans. Extending our understanding of sapience to other animals than humans would do the opposite of dehumanization. I don't think we'll see a future pan-sapientist Zimbabwe invade Botswana to liberate their zebras or anything like that. Empathy is generally easier as a tool for peace than war.

Well there are humans too of which sapience we are not very convinced, so this overlap is gonna be a drag.

Reminds me of that quote about the overlap in intellect between the smartest bears and the dumbest campers being larger than you'd think.

Do you have some operational definitions of those words? Sentience means having conscious feelings and sapience means rational thinking?

"Sentient" is more about senses. There seems to be a bit of disagreement and overlap, and the way they throw the murky "conscious" into the definitions doesn't help.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sentient:

Adjective

sentient (comparative more sentient, superlative most sentient)

1. Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.

2. Able to consciously perceive through the use of sense faculties.

3. (loosely, chiefly science fiction) Possessing human-like awareness and intelligence. Synonyms: sapient; see also Thesaurus:self-aware

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sapient:

Adjective

sapient (comparative more sapient, superlative most sapient)

1. Attempting to appear wise or discerning.

2. (dated) Possessing wisdom and discernment; wise, learned.

3. (chiefly science fiction) Of a species or life-form, possessing intelligence or self-awareness. Synonyms: sentient; see also Thesaurus:self-aware

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sentient:

adjective

1. having the power of perception by the senses; conscious.

2. characterized by sensation and consciousness.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sapient:

adjective

1. having or showing great wisdom or sound judgment.

2. having or showing self-awareness

Humans are making conclusions about animals with ignorance or neglect. Most probably because it is convenient to not give them a higher status.

It's easier to eat a creature that you don't think of as "sentient" or "sapient" (or "cute")… Although, if it's delicious enough, many humans will overlook even those and sometimes will even pay exorbitant sums of money for the privilege of eating something "rare".

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