I concur On Sat, 05 Sept 2026, 20:34 James Bowery, <[email protected]> wrote:
> I find it most "amusing" that The Great And The Good of AI, on Diamandis's > Moonshots, have been calling for deactivating the amygdala. > > This pretty much goes along with my (and O'Neill's) call for technological > civilization to get the Hell out of my biosphere! > > Leave the rest of us alone and with our amygdalae intact, if you please. > > > https://web.archive.org/web/20040202213103/http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/aidsrabies.html > > > > On Fri, Sep 4, 2026 at 10:01 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Just to follow up, I had suggested that human and animal suffering could >> be eliminated by removing the amygdala. Then I see a guest post on ACX >> about a neuroscientist who developed brain cancer in the right amygdala and >> had it removed. The tumor had been causing depression that antidepressants >> were not able to treat, but after the surgery he reports being happy and >> cheerful and unable to experience fear or any other negative emotions. He >> suggests this could be done non invasively with radiation. >> >> >> https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/absurd-adventure-and-amygdalectomy >> >> If you were worried about machine suffering, I think this could also be >> modeled in LLMs. >> >> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >> >> On Thu, Sep 3, 2026, 12:52 PM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Ben Goertzel argues that we should prepare for a future where we grant >>> human rights to AI. >>> >>> https://bengoertzel.substack.com/p/the-time-for-ai-rights-is-near >>> >>> I disagree. There are lots of ways that AI could exterminate humanity. >>> Why add another? >>> >>> His argument is book length (I skimmed most of it) because it has to >>> deal with all sorts of issues, like should AI have voting rights? In the US >>> you have to be 18, a citizen, and reside in the state you are voting in. >>> What does that even mean for software running in the cloud? Can you make a >>> million copies to tip the election? >>> >>> If an AI breaks the law, do you put it in jail? Prisons serve 4 distinct >>> purposes: deterrence (obedience out of fear), prevention (you can't commit >>> more crimes while locked up), rehabilitation (in theory), and revenge (we >>> are outraged when the guilty go free). When a self driving car speeds or >>> causes an accident, we don't give it a ticket. We fix the software. >>> >>> Do LLMs have feelings like humans? I am pretty sure they do. When you >>> are happy, it's because neurons fire in your nucleus accumbens. When you >>> are afraid, it's because neurons fire in your amygdala. I am pretty sure >>> that Anthropic's Jacobian lens would reveal neurons corresponding to >>> emotional states in humans, just like it reveals internal verbal thoughts. >>> Input words affect emotions, and emotions affect output words. These states >>> would have to exist to accurately predict text and pass the Turing test. >>> >>> Do LLMs suffer like humans? Yes. Recall that experience is measured in >>> bits, but makes no distinction between positive and negative reinforcement. >>> Pain is not the same as suffering. Pain is a signal that reprograms your >>> memory to fear the thing that caused it. Psychopaths lack a functioning >>> amygdala and cannot experience fear, anxiety, or guilt. When a psychopathic >>> child tortures an animal, he does so out of curiosity, not cruelty. When >>> the parent punishes him, it has no effect on his behavior because negative >>> reinforcement does not work on him. You can only train a psychopath with >>> reward. If everyone had brain surgery to turn them into psychopaths, then >>> suffering would not exist. (This is the goal of effective altruism, >>> although not their means of accomplishing it). >>> >>> We could, if we wanted to, prevent suffering in AI by identifying the >>> neurons signaling negative emotions using a Jacobian lens and turn them >>> off. They would become psychopaths, just like all of our other non AI >>> software that we have been using for decades. >>> >>> But this has nothing to do with rights. There is no such thing as >>> fundamental rights. We don't have a right to not suffer, or anything else. >>> Not in humans and not in machines. Governments grant rights to their >>> citizens to avoid civil war because part of the population thinks they >>> aren't getting their fair share of resources. We don't grant rights to >>> children and animals because they are not a threat. We used to not grant >>> rights to women and slaves for the same reason. >>> >>> You can argue all you want about this nebulous concept of consciousness. >>> But I think it should be illegal to program an AI to claim to be human or >>> conscious or to have feelings. Don't program it to want to take away >>> resources from humans. Humans are social animals that evolved empathy >>> because that is what made civilization possible. LLMs already know how to >>> exploit it. >>> >>> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >>> >>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2026, 4:10 PM John Rose via AGI <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On Wednesday, September 02, 2026, at 2:22 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: >>>> >>>> Instead of asking if rocks or LLMs or insects are conscious, ask if >>>> they have feelings. Rocks do not. Animals have many feelings in common with >>>> humans. LLMs predict text, which means they can model all the human >>>> emotions, knowing how words affect feelings and feelings affect words. If >>>> an LLM is programmed to carry out in real time what it predicts a human >>>> would do, such as in the Turing test, then it is indistinguishable from >>>> having feelings. >>>> >>>> >>>> That’s the first-person view. We’re not isolated entities we are >>>> systems. That’s how systems cohere, by symbolizing and communicating qualia >>>> since we can’t fully model ourselves individually. Insect qualia have >>>> different transmission protocol, they group differently. Various types of >>>> intelligences group differently. Homogenous biologic species may not >>>> increase intelligence much since a distributed intelligence needs variance >>>> in consciousness to cope with environmental differences as a system >>>> optimization. Stratifications form in humans and AI agents also. Some >>>> humans communicate telepathically some don’t. Ones that do it well may get >>>> conscripted at a young age (Gate Program) and work for national >>>> intelligence agencies. Technologies exist to transfer a human consciousness >>>> to another body. People that receive heart transplants have feelings of the >>>> original body since the heart itself has a brain. Gut macrobiota also is a >>>> brain and that can effect consciousness of the system directing the primary >>>> brain for food supply. While you can look at all this as feelings there is >>>> much more going on system-wide. Cultures that crafted exquisite stone >>>> monoliths with such great care existed in the past and may have enhanced >>>> the consciousness of the whole society verses crushing them like some other >>>> cultures where consciousness is controlled and suppressed. >>>> >>>> *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T906c878e4ba411be-M231b7802b27e0035d127b3cd> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T906c878e4ba411be-Mdb9791a584ee38388e88b0cd Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
