So if a human loses their memory and their neutral plasticity (with age for example), then they are no longer capable of experiencing suffering?
I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering.
Just because you don't remember the suffering doesn't mean you didn't experience it in the moment. Suffering does not suddenly become okay if your mind and body are going to forget it. "It's okay to torture someone if their mind and body both won't remember it afterwards" sure is a take.
From what I understand, there's 3 parts to modern anesthesia: Blocking pain signals, preventing the formation of memories, and inducing paralysis of the major muscle groups. If the former is dialed in too weakly, it's possible that the patient is feeling pain, unable to do anything about it, but won't remember it at all when they wake up.
(Looking it up now, it seems that making the patient unconscious is perhaps the same drug that prevents memory formation... I realize now I understand this less well than I thought I did.)
That's an interesting point... but I'd argue it falls into the same category as qualia. It's basically this: if the state returns to a previous configuration, the qualia in that time did not exist.
Being about qualia means it is probably unanswerable.
A LLM never has and, in their current architecture, never can/could experience suffering or real change of state.
The general and expected case for humans is that capacity. A human my indeed lose capacity, e.g. being braindead and in severe cases we do indeed say that they are not conscious or able to suffer (different argument: some would of course say that is suffering in and of itself)
Sure, there are such cases. But in the general case, it seems to be that memory and ability to change specifically are not necessary and are not sufficient for consciousness, so we shouldn't judge machines on that basis
It's also a rhetorical move I've seen several times here...
Not sure if it's a product of LessWrong or Slate Star Codex or something. I kinda suspect it might be LW, given how it superficially resembles an unanswerable philosophical paradox but in reality is about as challenging as a question posed in a 200 level philosophy course like introduction to ethics.