Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #beingyou
Most recents (3)
1/ Excellent @guardian #BigIdea piece on agency, 'free will', and the point of feeling that one could have done otherwise by @philipcball - you certainly won't regret your decision to read it 👇🏽 theguardian.com/books/2023/jan…
2/ It's a terrific distillation of a very sensible view on these thorny issues. So much to agree with, e.g.: "There is no such world in which “everything is the same except my decision”. The decision is not somehow superimposed on the rest of the world, but emerges from it."
3/ Also: "our volitional neural circuits are genuine causes of things that happen. We don’t change the future (a meaningless concept), but rather we are a part of what creates it." - to which new work in causal emergence may be relevant arxiv.org/abs/2111.06518
1/25 Since it’s that time of the year, here’s some (maybe all) of the books I’ve read or listened to in 2022, roughly in chronological order 📚👇🏽
2/ Exact thinking in demented times, by Karl Sigmund. A fascinating, lyrical, vivid, and deeply researched history of the Vienna Circle. Takes a while, but repays handsomely. uk.bookshop.org/books/exact-th… 
3/ Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. How she conjures such a vivid and magical world with just words I have no idea. It is a world I did not want to leave. Read it, and then listen to Chiwetel Ejiofor read it to you. Wonderful. uk.bookshop.org/books/piranesi…
1/ A little late to the #LaMDA party, but here's my 2p for what it's worth 🧵. Basically, I agree with @GaryMarcus (& the vast majority of the AI/neuro community) that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that #LaMDA is conscious garymarcus.substack.com/p/nonsense-on-…
2/ #LaMDA is a highly impressive 'word sequence model' (h/t @rogerkmoore) which can give the impression of intelligent understanding, but it is a mistake to take this (variable) impression as evidence for actual intelligent understanding.
3/ In this sense, #LaMDA is fully in the tradition of previous chatbots, such as Eugene Goostman (b. 2014), for which grandiose claims were also made (both @GaryMarcus & I wrote about Goostman before, & the same points apply) neurobanter.com/2014/06/09/the…
