alt Hacker News> On what basis could you possibly make this claim?
People with absent qualia have been asked, e.g. Knut Nordby: https://www.consc.net/misc/achromat.html
"Although I have acquired a thorough theoretical knowledge of the physics of colours and the physiology of the colour receptor mechanisms, nothing of this can help me to understand the true nature of colours. From the history of art I have also learned about the meanings often attributed to colours and how colours have been used at different times, but this too does not give me an understanding of the essential character or quality of colours."
Knut Nordby was in the same position as an LLM as far as colours are concerned. He learned all he could but words didn't give him any idea of *what it's like to see them". LLMs have access to everything that's written about colours, but that didn't help Nordby.
Nordby's no longer around to ask about image files, but how do you think reading thems would help? He might then have been able to say, e.g. "This pixel is orange," but he still wouldn't have known what it's like to see orange. The same applies to a multimodal LLM.
I'm not claiming that any particular disabled person has managed to achieve it. I'm asking on what basis you claim it to be categorically impossible.
You've claimed that black swans are impossible, I've asked how you arrived at that conclusion, and your answer is that you looked and don't see any.
You're here claiming that what submarines do is somehow fundamentally different than swimming and that we know this because they don't have legs. You need legs to swim. And I'm questioning the soundness of your reasoning and you're pointing to cripples without legs who can't swim as evidence. It doesn't make any sense.
> He might then have been able to say, e.g. "This pixel is orange," but he still wouldn't have known what it's like to see orange. The same applies to a multimodal LLM.
How is a multimodal LLM taking in RGB data fundamentally different than what your eyes are doing? That is the core question that you keep dodging.