Flow Void

flowvoid.bsky.social

22 September 2026 16:28

(Incidentally, I read Ted Chiang's essay and found it persuasive, I see now that he cites your work so I'm delighted to have found the original source!)

David P. Reichert

david-p-reichert.bsky.social

12 August 2026 18:20

Many don't see how much AI has changed recently. Coding agents aren't just chatbots. We can’t deal with the challenges of AI if we don’t understand it. Here's a post to provide some evidence (Claude doing small ML experiments) and form intuitions. davidpreichert.substack.com/p/if-you-hav... 🧵..

Full understanding doesn't exist, and requiring it is unfair. Dissecting the many components of "consciousness" is essential. Which aspects are purely functional (e.g., self awareness) and which are inherently biological (perhaps pain?) are important questions. 4/

I think his statement that "We don’t need to fully understand the nature of consciousness to definitively say that certain things are not conscious" is weak. I think we do need to understand a substantial amount about consciousness, just not "fully"? 3/

His role-playing argument is very well stated, and I think it is a very good way to think about these systems. It can help us think about "agentic" systems in which the system is playing a role as a substitute for us. The constitution is a way of programming that role-playing proxy. 2/