alt Hacker NewsNot fundamental to existence but fundamental to consciousness.
Theoretically the person sitting next to you could be a zombie, no qualia, the lights are off, he's just having a conversation with you with nothing going on behind the scenes. And there's no way to tell, except that it's reasonable to extrapolate that since you feel something, he probably does too.
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amanaplanacanal • yesterday at 11:13 AM
This is exactly my take also. Qualia and consciousness are the same thing. I have it, other humans appear to have it, other mammals appear to have it, LLMs don't.
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My argument is that qualia are actually cognitive artefacts bound up with language, not the base elements of "what it is to be" you or me, which is how people often speak of them, so the p-zombie concept is a bit nonsensical to me.