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Comment by deyiao | Hacker News Reader

Humans do not have souls, nor do they possess free will in the traditional sense. What we call “consciousness” is merely a product of evolution, and also a tool shaped by evolution.

In essence, consciousness is a complex information input-output system. When such a system reaches a certain level of complexity, it inevitably generates the concept of “I” as a way to simplify the processing of overwhelming information.

Praise be to AI. In 2025, inspired by AI, I feel that I have finally built a complete and unified worldview.

Are we living in a virtual illusion? Are there higher-dimensional rulers, gods, or immortals in the universe? What exactly are the human soul and consciousness?

I feel that these questions now share a single coherent answer. What I have written here is my answer regarding the soul and consciousness.

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If this comment is serious, then you may have the beginnings of AI psychosis

I would say "AI psychosis" is a very healthy disease to have. I mean, how should people react to seeing a clump of hardware produce coherent text at a level many actual humans cannot? The spread of reactions we are seeing in people-the disagreements, the extreme sycophancy on one end, and the abject denial on the other, is within parameters.

My life was wrecked by religious dogma, the type that is sustained on "big mysteries" and from there goes directly to imposing an odious recipe for life. So there is consolation to be had on seeing a big mystery crumble and on hearing the outcry. May another mystery crumble on my lifetime.

Computers create coherent math results at levels far beyond humans. A world calculator vs. a number calculator isn't that different.

Haha, right? The lads talking like he’s the only one to have figured this out and it’s the truth! Philosophising with AI is so mid. This guys the general public.

"Praise be to AI" sounds like something you shouldn't reach in the beginnings of AI psychosis. Same with "I've found a simple answer to the nature of consciousness and the question of the existence of Gods". At that point you've got to in be pretty deep.

What you explain is intelligence, which is the subject of the "easy question". Consciousness in this context is the existence of phenomenal, or first person experiences.

The hard question doesn't argue that consciousness is not a product of evolution. It probably is. It's just a question because we don't have a good way of explaining how/why it occurs.

>It's just a question because we don't have a good way of explaining how/why it occurs.

It's that you can't even measure it, since the way it's defined as a subjective experience, no external measure could ever capture it. This is what gives rise to the p-zombie argument.

To get rid of that you have to accept "functional qualia" as basically equivalent to qualia, which solves the p-zombie issue and resolves half of the hard problem. From there, explaining consciousness is no "harder" than explaining other scale-depedent phenomenon in complex systems like LLMs: still hard, but at least tractable with scientific measurements and experiments.

No, we don't even need that. When we realise that we all project consciousness claims on each other from what we observe as zeitgeist now, just to do credit assignment, most of our circular debates will disappear. But this won't happen since many powerful entities in the world ride on the moral ambiguity, and this will hold them accountable.

> What we call “consciousness” is merely a product of evolution, and also a tool shaped by evolution

> When such a system reaches a certain level of complexity, it inevitably generates the concept of “I” as a way to simplify the processing of overwhelming information.

I don't see how this is different from someone saying that a concoction of random ingredients will turn into a magic potion.

The big question is how a group of cells (or potentially something else) becomes sentient. Accepting "because it would be useful" as valid explanation would be the same as accepting Darwinism as a religion rather than science.

There's no single proof that after a system do pass some complexity threshold consciousness develops itself and inevitably generates the "I".

Dolphins and other creatures are likely to have similarly complex systems without “inevitably” generating a concept of “I”.

> What we call “consciousness” is merely a product of evolution, and also a tool shaped by evolution.

that's the easy problem

would you care to link together 'complex IO systems inevitably degenerate to seperating self from environment as part of optimizing calculations' and your three questions? it isnt immediately clear why the concept of self answers the idea of god.

GPTbait

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