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One interesting speculation is that every time you type a prompt into an LLM, there is a flicker of consciousness as it thinks about the response – and then that consciousness ceases to exist.
— Tom McClelland
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Our collective challenge is to strip away all of these motives we have for reaching one conclusion over another, and to do our best to be objective about the question.
— Tom McClelland
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One of the roles it can play is the role of a conscious being talking about its consciousness. But that doesn’t mean it’s conscious.
— Tom McClelland
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In our evolutionary history, you don’t get this third category, which is fake minds. We’re not set up to discriminate between real minds and these very cleverly designed fake minds.
— Tom McClelland
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We know that a computer is processing information – but is there something it is like to be that computer, on the inside?
— Tom McClelland
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The distinction between thought and thinker, between a pattern and a real being, is not a real distinction. We are thoughts in a great computational medium.
— Michael Levin
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We don't make minds - neither through embryonic development nor through engineering. We make embodiments that have something else going on besides design, evolution and learning.
— Michael Levin
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Even something as simple as bubble sort does things that are not in the code. This is not philosophy; it's actual data. There is another source that competencies come from.
— Michael Levin
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Individual cells have little tiny cognitive light cones. But groups of cells have incredibly large, grandiose goals - no individual cell can store what a limb is, but the collective certainly can.
— Michael Levin
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Whatever magic tricks we think brains are doing, what are they actually doing? Brains didn't just show up out of nowhere - they speed-optimised much more ancient evolutionary mechanisms.
— Michael Levin
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We are more than we appear to be. The technology cannot be uninvented — I know, until I die, that we did that, and I was a key enabler of it.
— Victor Vescovo
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Exploration starts with exploring yourself. There’s so much temptation for everyone to seek answers outside of themselves, when peace and leading a fulfilling life starts with self-knowledge and self-reflection.
— Victor Vescovo
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There is no mundane. The word itself, I think, is a non-word. It should not be a word.
— Victor Vescovo
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The small act of paying attention to people is extraordinarily rewarding to every member of the team — and it’s amplified in an inverse way from their level on the hierarchy.
— Victor Vescovo
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The line between acceptable mitigated risk and recklessness is actually very thin— and it’s even more dangerous because it moves.
— Victor Vescovo
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Never get into a vehicle where the fear of failure is greater than the fear of dying.
— Victor Vescovo
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Life is a series of decisions you make with imperfect information — and then carrying it through with conviction, while at the same time looking over your shoulder to make sure the rest of the team is coming along with you
— Victor Vescovo
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I never grew out of that feeling of constant wonder. I just became more experienced, and got a lot more resources to go to even more extraordinary places — but the same feeling existed in me. I never really grew up — just the expense and sophistication of my toys.
— Victor Vescovo
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If you just stand up for your own values in all the things you do, big and small, you create the conditions for the possibility of collective action.
— Eric Ries
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Every organisation is actually a little bubble of utopia. It’s somebody’s idea of the proper power relations between human beings. It’s a work of political philosophy, whether the person was aware of it or not.
— Eric Ries
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Who would you rather die than betray? If it’s just shareholders, don’t expect anybody else to trust you.
— Eric Ries
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The amorality of investors is actually a gift. They’re not opposed to what we’re trying to do. They just don’t care. Show them it’s good for returns and you’ll generally get them there.
— Eric Ries
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What it means to make a profit is to maximise human flourishing. It just means you left the world better off than you found it.
— Eric Ries
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If you don’t get the governance right for an organisation, in the long run nothing else you do will matter, because you won’t be the one making the decisions.
— Eric Ries