I can't stand this. Most people who suck aren't an onion. They just suck. Or there is a nice layer under that, and then beneath that a core of suck.

> Don't know how to operate a power hammer? don't care, any problems it causes are still your fault.

> Don't know how to operate a power hammer? don't care, any problems it causes are still your fault.

It's more of a theoretical corpus for the sake of this discussion. Just think of it as "all math humans have discovered/invented".

> Are all theorems or axioms useful?

Definitively no! Check out the first incompleteness theorem proof by diagonalization. The whole proof is based around generating new "facts" that are completely useless and uninteresting, outside of their utility in the proof itself.

It's actually a great question: to what extent do the incompleteness theorems actually apply to stuff that isn't silly and useless! The same goes for a couple similar proofs in other domains. An important one in Computer Science is Turing's proof that the halting problem can't be solved. There's at least one other important proof that is similar but I can't remember it at the moment.

To massively oversimplify, they can be boiled down to variations of:

> This statement is false.

Which proves that allowing self-referential statements can create a statement that isn't true or false. But they all raise the question: how often does this actually happen with statements we actually care about?

There may be a finite point at which we've proven and codified everything but the most inane meta-meta-meta-maths though.

Geocities and vBulletin users!

> I asked below as well, but how does the observer effect work as a physical system?

Just to be sure - the observer effect doesn't refer to a human observer, but rather to any measurement of a quantum system.

It is unsatisfying that quantum mechanics posits that particle states are fundamentally probabilistic. It's possible that in some sense there is an underlying order such as string theory that is impossible to test or verify. In that case, it would make sense to consider string theory as metaphysics. A fun exercise, but not scientific and not useful for understanding the world. By definition it would not be helpful in predicting or modeling the world, otherwise that would serve as a way of testing the theory.

More on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism

And now we are finding that cetaceans have language more complex than out own :)

Agreed with you on all points!

I'm totally onboard with that as a plausible argument, but I think the architectural limitations with respect to consciousness are very deliberate rather than some lack of technology. We've invested huge sums of money and human effort to create tools with explicit goals that are completely at odds with consciousness or AGI. If we had invested similarly with the clear goal of creating something with agency, self-determination, neuroplasticity, etc. instead of controllability, repeatability, reliability, I think we would be there already.

If the brain isn't just a physical system, then we may as well give up. There's certainly no point discussing it, as any assertions will be untestable and one persons elaborate and well thought out theory will be just as valid and predictive as the next persons "consciousness is created by invisible purple unicorns" theory.

So if we are going to discuss it, we should start from the assumption that there is no magic or witchcraft or religion involved.

This is a simple and intentional design choice though. Biological lifeforms are always on and always receiving sensory input. LLMs don't functionally exist out side of when we decide to run them. An always on agent with a looping prompt of "if you aren't doing anything else, ruminate" overcomes this limitation.