Search Ideas

Whether the above idea (#4751) is refuted or not, there are no viable alternative solutions to the "PROBLEM" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

The above idea (#4751) is the only solution to the "PROBLEM" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

The above idea (#4751) is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

This idea (#4751) is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

Assumption A1: Only programs that are people can, while running, constitute qualia/experience/subjectivity/consciousness.

This is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternative solutions).

This is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternatives solutions).

To clarify and add on to #4805: No, we couldn't program an LLM (on its own) to do random variation in the sense constituting evolution, because all of the randomly chosen changes to its outputs are still implicit from its current knowledge (training data + design from programmers). There is also no means of criticism that are not also implicit: any niche or criterion it generates, then seeks to satisfy, was derived again from its existing knowledge. It is a closed system (whether or not we have run it such as to reveal everything it implies!).

#4806 is saying: variations of knowledge being agnostic to that knowledge's meaning means they are not implicit from it, else implicit doesn't mean anything. So #4806 is only really asking if what matters is the source of knowledge, and that isn't really a criticism of #4805.
Criticism #4875 applies to #4806, as shown.

Yes, everything is not implied by everything else, so I think what we must mean by implicit is: can be deduced from/assembled using available transformations.

For knowledge to be truly novel in the sense of having come from creativity, it must not be deducible. Ambient, unjustified substrate is "taken from the environment" and filtered by selection. What survives can be increasingly truth-containing.

Mutations to a substrate, meaning blind mutations, not specific or designed, must not be implicit from the substrate; the result of their application cannot be deduced in any way... Otherwise the knowledge they might contain would already have been present...

Assumption A1: Only programs that are people, while running, can constitute qualia/experience/subjectivity/consciousness.

Even if variations are agnostic to any meaning or context of the knowledge, why are they still not implicit? Anything is implicit from anything else, if implicit just means: follows from when a given change is applied... The whole question is where the change is coming from... (?)

But an AI programmed to make random variations to its conjectures (English or otherwise) can only do so by choosing from an existing set of variations. Again, that knowledge is pre-existing. True evolution must involve variations to the substrate on which the knowledge is based; variations must be agnostic to the semantics of whatever they are acting upon, else they are already implicit from it, in which case their application does not constitute a truly novel conjecture (in the sense defining creativity).

If only some of the criteria are stored, and the rest are random, is it still evolution? Is evolution only happening if there is random variation? But we could program an LLM to do that as well...

If only some of the criteria are stored, is it still evolution? Then evolution is only the random part of the variation?

If only some of the criteria are stored, is it still evolution? Then evolution is only the random part of the variation?

Whatever new "explanations" it creates are derivable from (and by?) the knowledge in the training data. It isn't evolution if all of the variations and selection criteria are stored ahead of time. That's just a search process, as in the case of Move 37 per AlphaGo.

only people can create explanatory knowledge

How is an LLM not creating new explanatory knowledge (even if worse than the existing, by any measure), by varying some existing written explanation? It could even vary and select by some criterion of its "choice", thus realizing Popperian epistemology.

A person could create the same knowledge that biological evolution does, if only by simulating it. But it could still be true that only people can create explanatory knowledge. (That they can create all possible explanatory knowledge is Deutsch's criterion for personhood.)

"No unconscious creativity" seems the simpler option. But here we arrive again at biological evolution, which is unconscious, yet is creating knowledge. Does this serve as a distinction between explanatory knowledge and non? Explanatory knowledge can only be created by a conscious process?

Either there is no unconscious creativity, or only evolutionary/creative epochs with certain properties are conscious. The most obvious candidate for the property is complexity (in the sense of sophistication): only programs (existing knowledge) of a certain sophistication, once subjected to the evolutionary process, necessitates consciousness. Complex problem solving seems to require consciousness. Meanwhile, we do not seem to be conscious of "simpler" creative tasks, like... Like what? What is a "simple" creative task? What is an example of a creative task we perform unconsciously? How could we determine it was an act of creation (new knowledge), and not an act of deductive inference of the kind characterizing AI?

This suggests that all experience is determined by what programs are being subjected to evolution at any given time, the niches that are being adapted to. But why is not all creativity in the mind conscious? (All consciousness might necessarily be creativity).

But if the evolution is the defining feature of personhood, and the evolution is non-computational, then the personhood is non-computational. And consciousness would then not be a software property.

It could be simulated, but maybe it's very hard/intractable to do so. Maybe personhood harnesses physics to do the evolving, like a windmill harnesses the wind. Programs implemented such that the laws of physics cause them to evolve (unboundedly)?

Programs could be evolved non-computationally. But that process could itself still be simulated, per the Church-Turing-Deutsch Thesis.