/lit/ - Literature

>>23307567
Brian Tomasik is another NPC that denies the existence of consciousness.

https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether

>The mantra of the more radical version of eliminativism is that we're not conscious but only think we are. How is that possible? "I just know I'm conscious!" But any thoughts you have about your being conscious are fallible. I believe there are bugs in the vast network of computation that produces thoughts like "I'm conscious in a way that generates a hard problem of consciousness." No thought you have is guaranteed to be free from bugs, and it seems more likely -- given the basically useless additional complexity of postulating a metaphysically privileged thing called consciousness -- to suppose that our attribution of metaphysically privileged consciousness to ourselves is a bug in our cognitive architectures. This is a relatively simple way to escape the whole consciousness conundrum. If it feels weird, that's because the bug in your neural wiring is causing you to reject the idea. Your thoughts exist within the system and can't get outside of it.

>Your brain is like a cult leader, and you are its follower. If your brain tells you it's conscious, you believe it. If your brain says there's a special "what-it's-like-ness" to experience beyond mechanical processes, you believe it. You take your cult leader's claims at face value because you can't get outside the cult and see things from any other perspective. Any judgments you make are always subject to revision by the cult leader before being broadcast. (Similar analogies help explain the feeling of time's flow, the feeling of free will, etc.)

>>23135798
Brian Tomasik is another illusionist. Here's what he wrote about it:

https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether

>The mantra of the more radical version of eliminativism is that we're not conscious but only think we are. How is that possible? "I just know I'm conscious!" But any thoughts you have about your being conscious are fallible. I believe there are bugs in the vast network of computation that produces thoughts like "I'm conscious in a way that generates a hard problem of consciousness." No thought you have is guaranteed to be free from bugs, and it seems more likely -- given the basically useless additional complexity of postulating a metaphysically privileged thing called consciousness -- to suppose that our attribution of metaphysically privileged consciousness to ourselves is a bug in our cognitive architectures. This is a relatively simple way to escape the whole consciousness conundrum. If it feels weird, that's because the bug in your neural wiring is causing you to reject the idea. Your thoughts exist within the system and can't get outside of it.

>Your brain is like a cult leader, and you are its follower. If your brain tells you it's conscious, you believe it. If your brain says there's a special "what-it's-like-ness" to experience beyond mechanical processes, you believe it. You take your cult leader's claims at face value because you can't get outside the cult and see things from any other perspective. Any judgments you make are always subject to revision by the cult leader before being broadcast. (Similar analogies help explain the feeling of time's flow, the feeling of free will, etc.)

>>22778478
Brian Tomasik is worth reading, but he's an autist and thinks that consciousness doesn't exist.

https://reducing-suffering.org/

>>22652152
>Denies consciousness exists but eternally dances around outright stating it
Pic related is another eliminativist that denies consciousness exists. Despite this, he has written numerous essays on how to reduce suffering, despite denying the existence of phenomenal suffering.

https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether

>>22617360
>These illusionist idiots just take physicalism as axiomatic
Pic related is an eliminativist who literally admits his belief in physicalism is a matter of faith.

https://reducing-suffering.org/the-many-fallacies-of-dualism/#A_matter_of_faith

> Yes, I like to say that I have faith in one thing: The existence of physics. Dualists have faith in two things: Physics and extra-physical mind stuff. Non-physicalist theists have faith in three things: Those two plus God / Holy Spirit / gods / etc. Or maybe many things if you include angels and demons and all the rest.

> The presuppositionalists are right that there are no neutral assumptions to ground epistemology. Fundamentally it comes down to a matter of faith. Some people feel their experiences can't be explained without appeal to a Heavenly Father, and they insist that no amount of these other ontological components can make up for Him. They can feel divine presence, and how could this fundamental perception be in error?

This is the dating profile of the guy telling you not to have children:

>https://briantomasik.com/my-dating-profile/

"I can be a bit irrationally cautious about some things. For example, I'm a bit of a germaphobe. I don't like sharing towels, silverware, dishes, etc. I dislike "double dipping" with food. I'm nervous about getting Lyme disease from ticks that are prevalent around my house, and I spend a fair amount of time checking my body for ticks. If someone else goes outside around my house, I prefer to avoid touching them until after a thorough tick check in case they have ticks crawling on them.
Consistent with my germaphobia, I'm very cautious regarding sexually transmitted infections (STIs). I'm even slightly grossed out by lip kissing and would prefer kissing places that aren't bodily openings. Before having sex I would first want to do a complete array of STI tests, including for things like genital herpes that aren't always tested by default. Because of the "window period" for HIV testing, I would prefer for an HIV test to occur as much as half a year after the last possible HIV exposure (such as from sex with a previous partner), and I would prefer to avoid sex (even with condoms) until the test came back negative. While I think having sex before marriage is a good idea to verify sexual compatibility, I prefer not to rush into it either. "

JFL

What does /lit/ think of Tomasik's Essays on Reducing Suffering?

https://reducing-suffering.org/

Brian Tomasik's Essays on Reducing Suffering are worth reading. He talks a lot about wild animal suffering and suffering that could exist in the far future.

https://reducing-suffering.org/

>>21269206
>Are there any books about it or writings on this?
Brian Tomasik's Essays on Reducing Suffering are worth reading. He talks a lot about wild animal suffering and suffering in the far future.

https://reducing-suffering.org/

>>20567709
Yudkowsky didn't come up the the idea of S-risks, Brian Tomasik did.

>>20133838
Brian Tomasik's Essays on Reducing Suffering are worth reading.

https://reducing-suffering.org/
https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xHWsvd0QI

>>19719073
Relevant:
https://reducing-suffering.org/how-likely-is-wireheading/

> Organisms are motivated to seek positive reward signals and avoid negative ones. These signals are transmitted via electrical impulses and chemical molecules, which in principle can be faked. For instance, people can take drugs that happen to mimic natural pleasure signals, and they can electrically stimulate brain regions that produce pleasurable sensations and/or cravings for more stimulation. This process of faking reward signals is what I call "wireheading" in this piece.

> Wireheading is evolutionarily maladaptive. Reward signals are designed to motivate fitness-enhancing behaviors, so when they can be faked, the organisms focus on generating more wireheading signals instead of acting effectively in the world. Drug addicts more interested in their next chemical hit than in food, sex, or power are less likely to pass on their genes.

> Is wireheading a common situation for animals and artificial minds? Is it only because of selection pressure that we don't see widespread wireheading today? Or is wireheading relatively rare even among newly created agents? I don't have a confident answer to this question, but below I suggest why wireheading may be not very common. This has implications for what sorts of AIs we expect to see in the coming decades.

>>19146523
Brian Tomasik’s Essays on Reducing Suffering are worth reading.

https://reducing-suffering.org/

Brian Tomasik is another NPC that denies the existence of consciousness.

http://magnusvinding.blogspot.com/2015/08/my-disagreements-with-brian-tomasik.html

> Many of my disagreements with Brian have common roots, and the core root is our disagreement about the nature of consciousness. Brian denies that consciousness exists. To say that this strikes me as confused would be an understatement. But not only does Brian deny consciousness, he also seems to embrace a strangely postmodernist view of it, namely that it's ultimately up to us to decide whether some process is, in Brian's words, “what we call conscious” or not. For instance, when asked about whether he thought that a given kind of computer was conscious, Brian responded: "I personally wouldn't call it conscious, although it's up to you where you want to draw the line."(see: https://youtu.be/_VCb9sk6CTc?t=1h4m).).

> “It's up to you where you draw the line”? A similar quote: “We can interpret any piece of matter as being conscious if we want to, […]”

> So Brian clearly views consciousness as something that is entirely up for interpretation. What this implies is that it is perfectly valid to draw the line at ourselves, and then “decide” that solipsism is true. Or to draw the line at humans – or Caucasian humans for that matter – and say that only we are conscious.

> Usually we just observe the world as “the world” rather than as “the world in consciousness” – much like when we watch a movie as “what is happening” rather than “what is happening on the screen” – and from that perspective consciousness can easily be thought of as something that is not real. Yet upon a closer observation of consciousness, the naivety of this naive realism becomes clear, along with the realization that it is naive realism that is the clever illusion created by our brain – a cleverly manufactured movie appearing on a screen that we almost never notice, and whose reality some even deny.

> Is Brian simply missing the screen? I don't know what it's like to be Brian, but I suspect he might be. He might even claim that there is no screen, only “information processing”, and that consciousness is all a user created illusion. But this is a claim that is derived entirely from consciousness in the first place. Without consciousness, we could not know about "information processing", or anything else, in the first place.