Oct 10, 2026, 6:07 PM

@poleguy The hard problem is that I know that I am conscious, but my knowledge is subjective, and hence does not usefully constitute proof. Proving that something is conscious is an unsolved problem.

LLMs actually draw this into sharp relief, because we "know" they are not conscious, but they are perfectly capable of pretending to be: they are perfect philosophical zombies.

We could once say that we know other humans are conscious because their description of their felt experience matches ours. But that doesn't work anymore because LLMs.

We truly live in philosophically interesting times. Pretending otherwise is silly.

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