Post #1302790

2026-03-27 15:30 UTC

Consciousness (the fact of experience) doesn't necessarily need to be linked to intelligence. It might be but it doesn't have to. An LLM is almost definitely more intelligent than an insect but it most likely is like nothing to be an LLM but it probably is like something to be an insect.

Replies (1)

@partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2026-03-27 16:16

Isn’t it kind of eery that you can only suppose it must be “like something” to be an insect, from the very precise bias of being human? We’re projecting the idea that “it’s like something to be something [as a human]” only the experience of other things. How would we describe what it’s like? Would something poetic suffice, such as “it’s like being a leaf in the wind, and with weak preference of where you blow but no memory of where you’ve been.” … but, all of that is human concepts, human experience decomposed into a subset of more human experiences (really weird, the recursive nature of experience and concepts). I think the idea of “what it’s **like**…” has some interesting flaws when applied to nonhumans. It kind of presupposes that insects are lesser, in a way. As though we can conceptualize what it’s kind to be them, merely by understanding a stricter subset of what it’s like to be human.

Open ##1302793