Opinionhaver

Isn’t human intelligence exactly what most people mean by "general intelligence"? It becomes ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) once its capabilities surpass those of humans - which I’d argue would happen almost immediately.

By "those things," you're referring to God or the entity running the simulation? Whether it's a reasonable belief isn’t really relevant from the perspective of the theory itself. You’re still going to encounter people who hold such beliefs - and if you want to change their minds, the better approach is to identify and challenge their underlying beliefs, rather than the ones built on top of them.

Belief in a God or a creator is a foundational belief - being against abortion isn’t. That view only logically follows from the prior belief.

I don't see how this is relevant to my theory but yeah, sure.

Well, that’s not a direct quote from me, but yes - some people assume the universe was created by something. For some, that’s the person running the simulation; for others, it’s the biblical God as described in the Bible, or atleast their interpretation of it.

Personally, I consider it synonymous with “creator,” but even if someone believes in a biblical God, that’s beside the point. While the idea of a biblical God is an entirely unconvincing concept to me, I still give it - or something like it - a greater-than-zero chance of actually existing. I can’t prove otherwise.

Another example of a belief like that would be belief in the physical world around you. You could be dreaming - or in a simulation.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a valid question - and the idea that something created it isn’t entirely unthinkable. The point is that you can’t prove or disprove it. Not believing in God is just as much a foundational belief as believing in one. Much of what you think about the world is built on these core beliefs - the kind that, if proven wrong, would effectively collapse your entire worldview.

I 100% agree with the first point, but I’d make a slight correction to the second: it’s debatable whether an LLM can truly use what we call “logic,” but it’s undeniable that its output is far more logical than that of not only the average Lemmy user, but the vast majority of social media users in general.

I have everyone else's avatars hidden anyway so wouldn't make much sense to set one for myself. I just don't see the appeal.

A theory I’ve been working on lately is that our worldview rests on certain foundational beliefs - beliefs that can’t be objectively proven or disproven. We don’t arrive at them through reason alone but end up adopting the one that feels intuitively true to us, almost as if it chooses us rather than the other way around. One example is the belief in whether or not a god exists. That question sits at the root of a person’s worldview, and everything else tends to flow logically from it. You can’t meaningfully claim to believe in God and then live as if He doesn’t exist - the structure has to be internally consistent.

That’s why I find it mostly futile to argue about downstream issues like abortion with someone whose core belief system is fundamentally different. It’s like chipping away at the chimney when the foundation is what really holds everything up. If the foundation shifts, the rest tends to collapse on its own.

So in other words: even if we agree on the facts, we may still arrive at different conclusions because of our beliefs. When it comes to knowledge, there’s only one thing I see as undeniably true - and you probably agree with me on this: my consciousness, the fact of subjective experience. Everything else is up for debate - and I truly mean everything.

Modern Wisdom, Making Sense, The Joe Rogan Experience and The Jordan Harbinger Show.

That’s exactly what a Boltzmann’s brain would say.

Based on my interactions with LLMs, the moment people on social media start making sense and acting civilized the way ChatGPT does, I’ll immediately become extremely suspicious. Right now, I’m not worried one bit.

Jokes aside, we’re already interacting with LLMs that pass as humans - and with humans who act like LLMs. In that sense, I don’t see a huge difference. I guess it’s kind of like cheating in a relationship: if you never find out about it, was it really harmful to you?