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The mirror test is frequently cited as a means of testing sentience.
OP I think you hit the nail on the head.
Based on the fact that most people don't see their interaction with the LLM as gazing into the mirror, am I being led to believe that most people are not sentient???
Based entirely on the opinions of people on niche social media platforms, yes.
Mmm, I mean, sentience is a gradient, right? The mirror test is where we decided to draw the line, but there are more places to do so. My toddler thinks his favorite toy has some level of agency, just as by all accounts his older sister thinks Bluey has an identity. Depending on the test, there are developmental markers where we statistically transition from failing to succeeding. Another way to look at it is that for each developmental range, we can develop tests that challenge how we perceive autonomy, which some people succeed at and others fail. We may have just inadvertently developed a test that a significant amount of adults are just going to fail as human beings.
Except it's not my reflection, it's a reflection of millions if not billions of humans.
Except it’s not their reflection, it’s a string of phrases presented to you based partly on the commonality of similar phrases appearing next to one another in the training data, and partly on mysterious black box modifications! Fun!
I like to describe it as a "force multiplier" along the lines of a powered suit.
You are putting in small inputs, and it's echoing out in a vast, vast virtual space and being compared and connected with countless billions of possible associations. What you get back is a kind of amplification of what you put in. If you make even remotely leading suggestions in your question or prompt, that tiny suggestion is also going to get massively boosted in the background, this is part of why some LLM's can go off the rails with some users. If you don't take care with what exactly you're putting in, you will get wildly unexpected results.
also, it's devil tech so there's that.
I,too, like pulling random shit from my ass.
Hahah, yeah, maybe I am doing that. that's why it is a shower thought, not a research paper proposal.
The thought comes from my (kind or recent) study of the algebra/calculus under LLMs (at least the feedforward and backpropagation part of them)
The interesting part is that my ass is non-differentiable at x=0:
Lim x→0⁺ δass/δx
≠
Lim x→0⁻ δass/δx
I checked with that other gorilla who lives in the bathroom and he says you're wrong
lol, Is that the same gorilla that you see in other bathrooms? Or (like me) you meet a new gorilla every time you wash your hands?
I think he's the same guy. I used to try to bust him up but he just kept multiplying into more pieces and then coming back whole every time I saw a new mirror, so I eventually gave up
There’s been an extensive marketing campaign to convince people that LLMs are intelligent. I wouldn’t call someone a subhuman for assuming there is some truth to that.
Of those that understand what an LLM is, I think you can divide them into two groups, the honest, and the dishonest. Honest people see no use in a bullshit generator, a lying machine. They see it as a perversion of technology. Dishonest people have no such objection. They might even truly see intelligence in the machine, as its outputs don’t differ substantially from their own. If you view language as a means to get what you want, rather than a means to convey factual information, then lying is acceptable, desirable, intelligent. It would be difficult for such a person to differentiate between coherent but meaningless bullshit, and a machine with agency making false statements to pursue its own goals.
I disagree about the dichotomy. I think you can (1) understand what LLMs actually are. (2) See the value of such technology.
In both cases being factual (not being deceived) and not being malicious (not attempting to deceive others)
I think a reasonable use of these tools is as a "sidekick" (you being the main character). Some tasks can be assigned to it so you save some time, but the thinking and the actual mental model of what is being done shall always be your responsibility.
For example, LLMs are good as an interface to quickly lookup within manuals, books, clarify specific concepts, or find the proper terms for a vague idea (so that you can research the topic using the appropriate terms)
Of course, this is just an opinion. 100% open to discussion.
Just think about the fact llms are basically trying to simulate reddit posts and then think again about using them.
Related: is there a name for "question bias"?
Like asking ChatGPT if "is x good?", and it would reply "Yes, x is good." but if you ask "is x bad?" it would reply "Yes, x is bad, you're right."
It's just a leading question.
It is not a leading question. The answer just happens to be meaningless.
Asking whether something is good is the vast majority of human concern. Most of our rational activity is fundamentally evaluative.
False. My reflection can't tell me that pressing the Steam button and X will bring up the keyboard on Steam Deck's desktop mode.
Just noting that the mirror test is a bad way of studying theory of mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Criticism
It's interesting as a silly and absurd way humans used to demean other species. But I think it says a lot more about those who use it than the animals.
Except when you leave several LLMs able to communicate with one another they will, on their own, with no instructions, including creating their own unique social norms.
This is nothing else than the reflexion I am talking about. It is not a reflexion of you, the person chatting with the bot, but an "average" reflexion of what humanity has expressed in the data llms have been trained on.
If a mirror is placed in front of another mirror, the "infinite tunnel" only exists in the mind of the observer.
Neuroscience News isn't a conspiracy rag. It's an article summarizing a research paper, which they link to. So many of you don't bother to read actual research and instead repeat whatever you've seen online about how things work. More parrot than the AI.
No.
The article is summarizing a research paper, which it links to. Neuroscience News isn't a conspiracy rag.
My dog used to stare at me through mirrors, so what does that mean for her intelligence? Hyper intelligent. Red heelers will take over the world.
This is a great one - although I never see animals worshipping the mirror.
Or forming romantic attachments to the mirror
Uhmm ... you never had a pet bird Im guessing?
Seeing all bird masturbate up against a mirror is just par for the course when you have bird pets. Its gonna be either a mirror, a favorite toy ... or you.
Animals aren't cursed with the human ability to think our way into harmful and unproductive behavior due to conscious re-interpretation of information around us. Except for occasional zoo-animals in captivity that fall in love with inanimate objects.
Something something about our species basically being in captivity.
I love the idea of a bunch of woodland creatures (completely unaware of what mirrors are) investing heavily—and aggressively—in mirrors and mirror-related technology.
Squirrels (lemmings) pooling all of their nuts at the alter, lol.
Investor Squirrel 1: “All you have to do is gather your acorns right here, and they will instantly double in value!”
Investor Squirrel 2: “Bro’, we’re so sentient!!!”
from page 7 of Joseph Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation (1976):
a pdf of the whole book is available here
Not nearly enough people understand this about our current models of AI. Even people who think they understand AI don't understand this, usually because they have been talking to themselves a lot without realizing it.
Huh.....so what you're saying is that mirrors are actually AI.
THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE!!! EVERYBODY COVER YOUR MIRRORS!!!
Unironically in certain cultures there is a superstition that you should cover your mirrors at night
I find this kind of Anti AI Sentience bigotry horrible!
Interesting take. Could you elaborate?
My post comes from the study of the algebra and stats that enable LLMs (well, part of it. i am not done with the "attention".
I was making a joke based on my username
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
19 points (95.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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