[ExI] Douglas Hofstadter, LLMs and self-referentiality

[Jason Resch]

This conversation thread sparked a discussion between me and an AI
concerning my own thoughts and ideas about consciousness. The AI summarized
my writings and theoreis into a relatively compact paper, which I have just
uploaded here: https://philpapers.org/rec/RESEHA

In summary, it uses concepts from computer science to answer many enduring
philosophical riddles, including Mary's room, Nagel's bat, Searle's Chinese
Room, unconscious cognition, mental causation, deliberative free will,
distributed minds, split brains, blindsight, and where consciousness
begins, what constitutes a mind, and more.

Jason

On Thu, Sep 3, 2026 at 8:11 AM MB via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> La!  I remember FORTRAN (and COBOL, alas), punch cards, and assembly
> language (not really, it's been too long), but I was doing that before
> Monty Python and D&D. Did anyone else have to deal with "encounter groups"?
>
> By the time Python and D&D came along I was drifting into "back to the
> land" granola world.  Sheesh is right.
>
> MB
>
>
>
> spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf
> Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> > ...
> >
> >> ...Back in the mid-90s when I was at college, I sometimes posted to
> Usenet from my Computer Science account.  At one point, I found a thread
> where someone was claiming to be me, but saying things I disagreed with...
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> > I confess:  I did it.
> >
> > Well, not really, but when I was in college (a long time before you were
> Adrian) we used to do crap like that.  Back in those days, only a few
> students used the computer in any way, and we who did all knew each other.
> Back then, seldom could one find a computer user who was unable to recite
> hours of Monte Python routines by memory, who had not written code at the
> assembly level, who didn't play Dungeons and Dragons, who had not
> personally used punch cards (eeeesh) and whose code did not have a harsh
> FORTRAN accent.  Practical jokes were mandatory to be part of the club.  As
> far as I know, there was never any malice intended, but hilarity ensued
> regularly.  Back then, the computer was both a tool and a toy.  Now of
> course it is primarily a toy.
> >
> > spike
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > extropy-chat mailing list
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >
> _______________________________________________
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