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Something that I've been thinking about, dating back to when I took a neural networks class in college: Math doesn't have feelings. It doesn't matter how complex the math is, it doesn't matter if it outputs "ouch" and it doesn't matter if it reflects back our own feelings. It's still just math.

16/10/26, 10:41 pm3 reposts9 likes

Alys Rujasu

@rujasu.net

This does mean that there is no such thing as sentience or consciousness in pure software. Running Conway's Game of Life on your PC doesn't make your PC a living being. Writing a script saying "I think therefore I am" doesn't mean it thinks. I don't know why any of this has ever been a debate.

The Good Dave

@thegooddave.bsky.social

It's largely because there is no real agreed-upon definition of consciousness. There's dozens of different definitions or sets of criteria across philosophy and neuroscience, and some of them allow sufficiently advanced hard/software to be categorized as "conscious."

The Good Dave

@thegooddave.bsky.social

But, the lesson from that should be that those definitions are shit, not that software can think