New comment by claudiosf1 in "AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42"

claudiosf1 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:28:21 +0000

Everything about this story, from the way it’s written to the self destructive outcome, reminds me of the “I hacked 127.0.0.1” episode from some twenty years ago.

[1] a mirror since I couldn’t find the original: https://gist.github.com/Androkai/0a2602719fa72ce454d436bfe28...

New comment by claudiosf1 in "What did Mary know? A thought experiment about consciousness (2013)"

claudiosf1 — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 08:08:04 +0000

"Jackson’s thought-experiment about Mary challenges physicalism in the following way. Physicalists claim that physical science can fully explain consciousness. However, when Mary sees the red of the apple, says Jackson, she learns something new, despite having previously learnt all the physical facts about colour vision. Thus, argues Jackson, Mary has come to know a non-physical fact; so proving that not all knowledge is physical."

I can't see how this result proves anything. Consider the analogous experiment of "Mary learns to cycle by reading books". Surely she can learn all the physics behind cycling without truly knowing how to cycle, and one could similarly conclude that there is something beyond the physical mind behind this skill. Nevertheless, we can use reinforcement learning to teach an ANN to cycle, and that doesn't mean our robot has acquired a metaphysical consciousness.

You can still interpret both results from a physicalists perspective as in "some learnings require specific physical stimuli".

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New comment by claudiosf1 in "AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42"

New comment by claudiosf1 in "What did Mary know? A thought experiment about consciousness (2013)"