iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

idk I'm a dualist every Tuesday

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I actually selected for philosophers of mind specifically

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Mental functionalism is the plurality view among professional philosophers, who believe it for deeply secular reasons

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I'd really like public intellectuals to talk more seriously about mainstream beliefs in philosophy of mind

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Would be curious how you'd respond to this. I'm assuming in this second part that physicalism is correct.

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Well I argue for this all in the post

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My goal with this series is to basically be the intro to philosophy of mind I wish my 18 year old self had. Among other things I spent too much time assuming only carbon-based stuff could think without noticing the obvious problem with the pattern we see

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You'd agree that the human brain thinks right? If another process can do the same information processing as the brain, it can think. That's my argument in part 2

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I didn't say information processing is sufficient for thinking?

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I tried my best to argue against the idea that consciousness is required for thought or understanding in Part 1 but yeah I note in both parts that some religious people will just jump ship on #1

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 16h

Part 2 relies on the assumption that "Human brains can think and thinking and understanding are about processing information" the claim is that I don't need more than those 2 to demonstrate that computers can think in principle

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Will write it up more in Part 3 it's a bit vague

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 16h

Very long post, I'm trying to argue for all 4 premises in a complete way

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 18h

Here's Part 2 of why AI models can think and understand, where I bring together a lot of classic functionalist arguments that computers running programs can in principle do anything the brain does. Part 3 will be about AI models specifically blog.andymasley.com/p/why-i-beli...

blog.andymasley.com

Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 2 of 3

Why computers can in principle produce thinking and understanding

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Reposted by Andy Masley

Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I haven't seen any of the usual suspects shit talking the openai dump, they're just ignoring it entirely, so perhaps flooding the zone was useful rhetorically.

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I mean I'd recommend the post!

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This is for the most part what the DC scene is actually like already

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Think I'm gonna start an east coast thought-faction of EA called The Empiricists where we all have incredibly strong personal/professional boundaries and base all our opinions on Peirce and Quine

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I don't really make this argument about data centers. Their energy and water usage will go up even as models get more efficient

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Ultimately I do share the goal of wanting people to be more worried about AI than they are, but a key problem here is that if we're getting them riled up about the wrong issues they can leave thinking that if those less significant issues are solved it's not bad anymore bsky.app/profile/benj...

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Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

For each of these it's important to look at what concrete claims are being made by the reports. For example, the UNU report makes a bunch of bizarre comparisons between the energy used by AI and the energy used by spam filters for emails bsky.app/profile/benj...

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Yeah perfect example. A lot of serious people seem to talk about introspection as if it’s not another mental process taking in uncertain input

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I think videos 5-8 go too fast so gonna add a lot more detail there

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The math behind how AI works - YouTube

I'm starting a new YouTube channel to host video explainers for concepts related to AI that I'm using AI to create, tweaking with my specific style and what I like in explainer videos. This first one is on the math you need to understand AI www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

youtube.com

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I hate to be a booster but I am truly, truly in awe of watching the models work on my slides and physics animations. It is unbelievable. Something I used to be especially good at compared to almost everyone else in my specific scene on YouTube, now totally swamped. Excited and shaken.

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I will finish what you started

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fwiw I find that whenever we disagree, I actually mostly agree with you and am softening language or entertaining arguments I don't actually agree with to make a post more accessible and intuitive for a more general audience

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To be clear I'm talking here about unrelated dumb interactions I've had outside of my blog. My blog makes much more contentious claims that would merit "That's not evidence AI is conscious" from smart people

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idk like in the sense that a red apple is evidence that all crows are black ya

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fwiw this is mostly happening on separate one-off posts with clear meanings

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