Does ChatGPT have choices?
I "can't help myself", so here goes:
I've been reading Sopolsky's "Behave" which paves the runway (or exit
ramp) for his recent "Determined". His deep background in
neuroendocrinology leads to some very compelling arguments which pretty
much degenerate to:
"do you believe in causality? if so, then where do you suppose the
spirit or soul intervene to break the chain dominoes that have been set
up by everything that you are and has happened to you up to that instant?"
He does a fancy little mocking dance, three card monte style, of
homunculii he contrives for the purpose of debunking any fanciful
regression/recursion escape plans you might have in that direction.
To hear him tell it we (as are all AIs/LLMs/etc) essentially giant
pachinko machines:
:
His arguments on the topic seem unassailable in spite of my own deep and
abiding sense of "choice" at many levels. It also doesn't help my
cognitive dissonance that he speaks entirely colloquially using many
words we all associate with choice... he speaks _as if_ he makes
choices and others do as well even if he seems to ignore the specific
word, choice.
I like the conceit of: "the universe is deterministic but not prestateable"
I guess this is why they call it "the HARD problem of consciousness"?
For those of you who read this far, it would seem you "couldn't help
yourself" or as my mother used to quip "you must not have had anything
better to do", and for those who have not, the same goes for hitting
<next> or <delete> (or having set up a spam-filter at an earlier time to
avoid repeating the "decision" personally)...
PS re: Breaking Bad
I've only dropped a few Pachinko balls in my life, but I couldn't help
agonizing over the trajectory of each one, feeling as if at every bounce
they were at risk of "breaking bad" (or "good")... since many here are
at least part-time simulants (as Glen I believe refers to himself), even
the most aggressive attempts at introducing "random" (noise, annealing,
etc.) either degenerate to "pseudo-random" or engage with a physical
system (e.g. sample a pixel-value from a webcam trained on a lava lamp)
which of course is deterministic if arbitrarily complex.
Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)
Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:
GPT:
The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking
Bad" and the concept of free will involves a comparison with using the
"step" command in GDB (GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by
programmers to debug code. The "step" command in GDB allows the user
to execute program code one line at a time, observing the behavior and
state of the program at each step.
In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a
life of crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's
descent into this life is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each
step represents a decision or action taken by Walter, leading him
deeper into the criminal world. Just as a programmer observes the
progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the viewer
observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.
The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be
individual conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression,
much like the sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises
questions about free will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in
the FRIAM group about whether free will is an illusion, especially in
the context of strong compulsions or character traits that might limit
one's range of choices.
____________________________________________
CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.gue...@simtable.com
Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu
mobile: (505)577-5828
On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:20 PM Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com> wrote:
GNU Debugger?
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:11 PM Marcus Daniels
<mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:
Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs
downhill. Watching him go deeper and deeper was like
repeating “step” in GDB.
*From:*Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen
Fromm
*Sent:* Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
*To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject:* [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will
Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring
FRIAM topic I was thinking about it and found this SCIAM
article that argues that human beings do have the power to
make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/
On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and
elsewhere clearly demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably
takes away our free will and replaces it by a strong
compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how
devastating the consequences are.
Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure,
Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" that true character
is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure.
Could you say that a strong character or personality reduce
our free will too, because they restrict our choices and
decisions?
-J.
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