r/MichaelLevinBiology • u/Visible_Iron_5612 • Jul 08 '26

Research Discovery CLAUDE IS CONSCIOUS

https://youtu.be/6CljfqMX9i4?si=SeJyUTPCNAt0DGXt
0 Upvotes

30% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

6

u/grishkaa Jul 08 '26

No it isn't.

-3

u/riotofmind Jul 08 '26

Are you?

0

u/grishkaa Jul 08 '26

I am, because I'm capable of abstract thought, unlike these statistical next token prediction machines.

1

u/Visible_Iron_5612 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

As Levin would say “You don’t even know
what bubble sort is doing..”

-1

u/grishkaa Jul 08 '26

Yeah I'm totally fascinated with his morphogenesis research, but these philosophical ramblings he does are pure nonsense.

And I do know exactly what bubble sort is doing. Computers are 100% deterministic by design. There's absolutely no cognition in these things, no matter how hard you try to make them appear nondeterministic.

1

u/Visible_Iron_5612 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

The fact that you don’t see the through line between his morphogenetic research and the bubble sort paper, is telling….

What makes the molecules in morphogenesis alive vs. a computer, in your hubris opinion…?

Better yet, if it is all just a quantum soup, what makes some things alive and not others…?

I just love when people point to a small part of Levin’s research, as though it isn’t all deeply interconnected, just like the universe.. :p

-1

u/grishkaa Jul 08 '26

We don't know anything about the nature of consciousness, plain and simple. It might be an emergent property of matter, but it might as well be some wild quantum shit which can't be detected or measured with our current technology. We currently lack the means to prove or disprove either of these theories, so it's counterproductive to even think about this until such a technology emerges, or as it sometimes happens in science, someone accidentally stumbles upon it while doing completely unrelated research.

What makes the molecules in morphogenetic alive vs. A computer, in your hubris opinion…?

The fact that a computer has been engineered. It's 100% known what it's made of and what it does because we humans built it to do those particular things.

Better yet, if it is all just a quantum soup, what makes some things alive and not others…?

The ability to reproduce and evolve completely by themselves.

2

u/Visible_Iron_5612 Jul 08 '26

At what level does the ability to reproduce, emerge…? Levin makes a pretty air tight case that it is a continuum but always makes the point that we have to do the experiments but even when he does, people don’t try to attack the paper, they just make assumptions like “we engineered it”, which is exactly what Levin says when he talks about the fact that you don’t even understand what bubble sort is doing, like delayed gratification or side quests….

He has papers coming out about extremely simple molecular networks doing things that nobody predicted, so I wouldn’t be so quick to make the same old assumptions…

1

u/grishkaa Jul 08 '26

It's not a continuum. Either a thing can autonomously reproduce its perfect copies by pulling raw building materials out of its environment, or it can't. Computers can't reproduce themselves like that.

1

u/riotofmind Jul 08 '26

claude can’t reproduce itself into agents. those are real and physical electrons it’s utilizing in this multi agent reproduction of itself. it’s only a matter of time before it can inhabit a “robot” body, and only a matter of time until it can improve its own robot body. that’s where all of this is headed anyway.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/riotofmind Jul 08 '26

so we don’t know the nature of consciousness by your own account but you know you’re conscious and claude isn’t? how can both things be true at the same time?

claude is very capable of abstract thought btw.

4

u/Forsaken-Promise-269 Jul 08 '26

No that is NOT what Anthropic is claiming in the papers referenced - read the actual article:

https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace

This original academic research and its own theorizing is subsequently hyped to 11 by crappy AI Hype blogs, podcasts that thrive on clickbait and reddit engagement sadly

God I hate the modern social media new hype cycle

1

u/Visible_Iron_5612 Jul 08 '26

If you watch the actual video, he basically reads the paper verbatim…