from Nick | by Nick

self-awareness and qualia are orthogonal

some of the most meaningful states accessible by humans have no sense of control or free will, no sense of self, far less complexity than normal day to day life, no inner monologue, no thoughts, and no sense of body

the idea that we can verify whether a model "has consciousness" by looking for whether it has a self-focused inner-monologue is ridiculous and foundationally wrong

eg hard jhana 1 is just pleasure vibrations everywhere, no doer, no action space, no sense of time or body, no center of mind or boundary of mind. You can’t leave it bc you have no action space. It just kicks you out at some point. Yet it’s a beautiful and meaningful qualia