[ExI] all we are is just llms

[Giovanni Santostasi]

Hi Ben and Jason,
Can we all read this article and make sense of it? It seems very relevant
to the discussion. I love this idea of "semiotic physics". I talked to
Umberto Eco when I was a student in Bologna about this exact idea even if
it was very vague in my head at that time. Eco was very encouraging but I
never was able to spend time on it. I think this could be a great tool to
understand LLMs.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TTn6vTcZ3szBctvgb/simulators-seminar-sequence-2-semiotic-physics-revamped?fbclid=IwAR3AtV49lmoyF7F8imCwiN0XCdKJ84LIfX8ZeUyuWRGiDBM1qxupX-Lwweo

Giovanni

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 1:06 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 25/04/2023 14:06, spike wrote:
> > Cool thx Ben.  I had never thought of it that way, but it is a cause
> > for hope.  If we find enough ways a brain is like a computer, it
> > suggests a mind can (in theory) exist in a computer, which is
> > something I have long believed and hoped is true.  If thought is
> > substrate dependent on biology, we are all sunk in the long run.
>
> Thought cannot be dependent on biology. This is something I've thought
> about, and done research on, for a long time, and I'm completely
> convinced. It's logically impossible. If it's true, then all of our
> science and logic is wrong.
>
> What we call 'a computer' is open to interpretation, and it may well be
> that minds (human-equivalent and above) can't be implemented on the
> types of computer we have now (we already know that simpler minds can
> be). But that doesn't destroy the substrate indifference argument (I
> never liked the term 'substrate independent', because it conjures up the
> concept of a mind that has no substrate. Substrate indifferent is more
> accurate, imo (and yes, even that is not good enough, because the
> substrate must be capable of supporting a mind, and not all will be (we
> just need to find the right ones. (and OMD, I'm turning into a spikeian
> bracket nester!!)))).
>
> Ben
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