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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

I do not believe I am a pattern of linear algebra. I believe like the majority of humanity historically that I have a soul, a spiritual and non-physical reality, my personhood comes from my soul, and that as such, AI is fundamentally incapable of consciousness.

I also believe, as a result, it will be great fun watching researchers burn the next 30 years trying to understand what is missing. We’re going to find out very soon if the soul is real, when for all our progress we can’t create one.

Only those completely embedded in materialism need fear a conscious AI.

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> I believe like the majority of humanity historically that I have a soul

It seems that your position is that the frequency of a belief across human history determines truth?

For large swaths of recorded history, earth was considered the center of the solar system. Given your reasoning, I should expect that is a belief you hold?

Is it possible that popularity of an idea is not a good measure for factuality?

Interesting that you label someone with a belief different than yours as delusional and whose views on the matter should not be respected (I’m assuming that’s what you meant by “feelings”).

> I believe like the majority of humanity historically that

Historically, lots of humans believed in lots of things that turned out not to be true. Believing something doesn’t make it true, as I’m sure you are aware, given your “those people are delusional” comment.

For what it’s worth, I’m not suggesting LLMs are or aren’t conscious. What I know is that the hard problem of consciousness is still very much not resolved, and when I asked the parent question my hope was that those that strongly believe LLMs are not conscious would educate me on the topic by presenting the basis for their reasoning.

I push back on the framing that this is just "a different belief." Every metaphysical framework except strict materialism rules out AI consciousness. Dualism, idealism, most forms of panpsychism, every major religious tradition. Materialism is the outlier here, not the default, and it has never explained how subjective experience arises from physical processes.

When someone tells me linear algebra might have feelings, I don't think "delusional" is unfair. I think it's the natural response to a claim that only works if you've already accepted the one framework that can't account for the very thing it's trying to explain.

> Every metaphysical framework except strict materialism rules out AI consciousness

As I understand it, this is a very broad, and ultimately false claim. Panpsychism is definitely compatible with the idea of AI consciousness, as is functionalism, neutral monism, and others. Even some forms of idealism make AI consciousness metaphysically possible, since reality is fundamentally mental and the biological/artificial distinction is not ontologically basic (whether AI systems instantiate genuine centers of experience depends on the specific theory of subject formation within that idealist framework).

> Materialism is the outlier here, not the default, and it has never explained how subjective experience arises from physical processes.

Being an outlier doesn't make it wrong.

> Materialism is the outlier here, not the default, and it has never explained how subjective experience arises from physical processes.

It's a pattern. The same way letters arise out of pixels on your screen.

From the screen's perspective, there are no letters, only pixels. It doesn't mean there is a "pixel soul."

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