Reminded terribly of the online "rationalist" movement and their blind/unwitting re-creation of basic philosophical concepts that they invented their own jargon for without realizing they were rehashing debates from literal centuries earlier.

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That's almost certainly the case, and in that case conceivably some other thing could achieve volition in the future. Or could not. We're just rather putting the cart before the horse at this point.

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Volition. Solving large complex problems is computation. Selecting and prioritizing problems (or inventing then whole cloth) to then resolve is thought. Directing the self over time to define ones own tasks for ones own reasons to ones own ends.

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Like a simple program can alphabetize a list without “understanding” what alphabetization is. But in another sense people might say it “understands” alphabetization because it can do it. So the term is slippery even for simple programs?

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Just jumping into the conversation it feels like the argument isn’t about the capabilities of LLMs vs. simple programs like Eliza, but about what the words understand and think mean in this context?

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