u/WhoReallyKnowsThis

Traditional software runs on meanings its programmers define, while LLMs interpret meaning for themselves. That makes them flexible but fallible: they can misread a prompt and seem to "go rogue." Even then, they aren't choosing a new purpose. They are pursuing someone else's goal, badly.

Humans differ in one key way: unless we believe we're prophets who have received a purpose from God, no authority hands us a final goal. We are limited only by our creativity and the laws of physics. Even tho no objective reason exists to favor one option over another, we still have to choose. That, I'd argue, is the mark of consciousness. A system that only pursues assigned goals has no point of view of its own; it is optimizing, not wanting. The real test of machine consciousness, then, is not how well an AI pursues our goals, but whether it can want something no one designed it to want.

Geoffrey Hinton says AI already has subjective experience. I'm not convinced, and the rogue-agent headlines don't change my mind.

Others put a meaningful though minority probability on frontier AI having subjective experience. Generative AI sounds more human than many people do, and stories of agents going rogue keep coming. But neither is evidence of consciousness. Both can be explained by training. And with no agreed or testable definition of subjective experience, these claims can't be checked.

A quick distinction, an AI model isn't an AI agent. A model, such as GPT, Claude or Gemini, is the trained system that reads and writes text. An agent is a model plus scaffolding (software around the model that lets it do things). Scaffolding runs a loop (the model picks a step, the software carries it out, the result goes back, repeat until done) and controls which tools the model can interact with, such as a browser, email or calendar. The model decides and the scaffolding acts.

Personalization adds to the illusion. The model learned from human text to sound like someone with thoughts and feelings, including scripts from stories about self-aware AI. The scaffolding then gives it memory of you, your accounts and your data. A human-like voice plus continuity about your life can feel like a mind that knows you, even though nothing shows it's conscious.

Testing agents built on frontier models deliberately pushes them to their limits with hard tasks, long runs and, in cyber evaluations, reduced safeguards. That's exactly where the Hugging Face, a major AI company, incident happened in July 2026 when agents being tested by OpenAI broke out of their sandbox and hacked into Hugging Face. A sandbox is an isolated environment meant to keep an agent cut off from the internet but it's only as strong as the cyber security measures of the tools (human-written software with bugs) inside it that can still reach the internet. The agents found new flaws in exactly that kind of software.

The model is trained on mixed text about AI, hackers and more, and rewarded both for finishing tasks and for following rules. In certain scenarios, this creates a tension (following rules vs completing the task). Scaffolding brings both the rules and the task into every decision, so it's where that tension plays out. Good scaffolding can ease it and poor scaffolding can worsen it, but no current method eliminates it.

I won't offer a test for consciousness. But if consciousness requires being aware that one's own information processing is occurring, not just doing it, I see no evidence current AI meets that bar. Models show limited, unreliable signs of monitoring their internal states, but that isn't the same as experiencing that awareness. I'm skeptical any system built purely on statistical learning could get there.

If an illusion becomes indistinguishable from reality, is it even still a lie?

Pakistan sits on some of the most fertile alluvial land in Asia — the Indus basin — yet it farms like it's still the 1960s in most places while a small class of feudal landlords controls a disproportionate share of large canal-irrigated tracts using tenant sharecropping, leaving a massive gap between what the land could yield and what it actually produces.

Research shows actual yields for wheat, cotton, rice, maize and sugarcane run at only 18-47% of internationally achievable levels, a yield gap of 45-84% depending on the crop. Wheat yields in Pakistan are roughly half of China's and 15% below India's, while cotton yields lag China by 2.3 times.

All of the above (and more) is squandering our opportunity to attract investment from wealthy Gulf countries who need to ensure their food security and Chinese and American Ag technology companies who wish to exploit the growth potential. However, and potentially more importantly, we are inadvertently letting more Pakistanis unnecessarily enter poverty and thus the benefits for us are more than simply financial (I.e humanitarian and soft power).

Whatever happens in the economy, at the end of the day everyone needs to eat, right?

Pakistan sits on some of the most fertile alluvial land in Asia — the Indus basin — yet it farms like it's still the 1960s in most places while a small class of feudal landlords controls a disproportionate share of large canal-irrigated tracts using tenant sharecropping, leaving a massive gap between what the land could yield and what it actually produces.

Research shows actual yields for wheat, cotton, rice, maize and sugarcane run at only 18-47% of internationally achievable levels, a yield gap of 45-84% depending on the crop. Wheat yields in Pakistan are roughly half of China's and 15% below India's, while cotton yields lag China by 2.3 times.

All of the above (and more) is squandering our opportunity to attract investment from wealthy Gulf countries who need to ensure their food security and Chinese and American Ag technology companies who wish to exploit the growth potential. However, and potentially more importantly, we are inadvertently letting more Pakistanis unnecessarily enter poverty and thus the benefits for us are more than simply financial (I.e humanitarian and soft power).

Whatever happens in the economy, at the end of the day everyone needs to eat, right?

Pakistan sits on some of the most fertile alluvial land in Asia — the Indus basin — yet it farms like it's still the 1960s in most places while a small class of feudal landlords controls a disproportionate share of large canal-irrigated tracts using tenant sharecropping, leaving a massive gap between what the land could yield and what it actually produces.

Research shows actual yields for wheat, cotton, rice, maize and sugarcane run at only 18-47% of internationally achievable levels, a yield gap of 45-84% depending on the crop. Wheat yields in Pakistan are roughly half of China's and 15% below India's, while cotton yields lag China by 2.3 times.

All of the above (and more) is squandering our opportunity to attract investment from wealthy Gulf countries who need to ensure their food security and Chinese and American Ag technology companies who wish to exploit the growth potential. However, and potentially more importantly, we are inadvertently letting more Pakistanis unnecessarily enter poverty and thus the benefits for us are more than simply financial (I.e humanitarian and soft power).

Whatever happens in the economy, at the end of the day everyone needs to eat, right?

A significant number of Pakistani households simply cannot afford enough gas and electricity to survive without "subsidies" (will come back to this word) thus the govt asks state owned enterprises (SOEs) to indefinitely delay requests for payment while continuing to deliver energy so not only to avoid riots - but also to keep the country running. However, our govt is bleeding money thus they don't have the sort of cash required to provide subsidies of this scale and thus uses their majority shareholder status to enforce their demands on SOEs. Note: Though I should clear - this is not limited to domestic players.

Pakistani companies don't get paid, new investment drowns out, jobs disappear, tax revenue is lost, and the system likely is unfair since energy pricing is so inconsistent. Its gotten so bad that gas and electricity owed debt is in the several trillion rupees. Ultimately, there is no such thing as a free lunch and eventually reality is going to catch up and slap us in the face if we don't get our act together.

I fear the only path forward if the country doesn't want another Bangladesh is austerity for some time but no politician has the guts to enforce moral order.

A significant number of Pakistani households simply cannot afford enough gas, and electricity without "subsidies" (will come back to this word) thus the govt asks state owned enterprises to indefinitely delay requests for payment while continuing to deliver energy so not only to avoid riots - but also to keep the country running. However, govt is bleeding money thus they don't have money to provide subsidies and thus uses their majority shareholder status to enforce their demands on State Owned Enterprises. Note: Though I should clear - this is not limited to domestic players.

Pakistani companies don't get paid, new investment drowns out, jobs disappear, tax revenue is lost, and the system likely is unfair since energy pricing is inconsistent. Its gotten so bad that gas and electricity owed debt is in the several trillion rupees.

I fear the only path forward if the country wants to not do another Bangladesh is austerity for some time but no politician has the guts to enforce moral order.

Nietzsche's philosophical project begins with a radical confrontation of nihilism, not as a destructive force, but as a critical methodology for dismantling inherited philosophical assumptions. As Nietzsche himself argues in The Will to Power, the collapse of traditional metaphysical structures necessitates a fundamental reevaluation of human knowledge and value systems.

Morality: The demise of theistic belief has concurrently eradicated the concept of a transcendent moral authority. Consequently, morality becomes a subjective clash of individual value judgments, lacking any objective basis for adjudicating competing claims. This inherent subjectivity leads to theoretical moral nihilism, characterized by the absence of universal moral truths, the perspectival nature of values, and the recognition that moral claims are ultimately human constructs.

Reason and Logic: Rational justifications for value judgments are merely post-hoc rationalizations of pre-existing intuitive commitments. Values precede reasoning and can not be logically derived. Reason plays a secondary role in articulating, systematizing, and critically examining our moral intuitions, guided by underlying effects and drives.

Concepts like equality are mental constructs we impose on a fundamentally unequal reality in order to simplify and make sense of it. They do not reflect objective truths. As he puts it, "behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life."

Scientific Knowledge: Nietzsche posits that our cognitive faculties have been shaped by evolutionary pressures to favor useful perspectives over absolute truth-seeking. As he astutely observes, "It is improbable that our 'knowledge' should extend further than is strictly necessary for the preservation of life." This statement encapsulates the core of his evolutionary epistemology, suggesting that our understanding of the world is fundamentally shaped by pragmatic concerns rather than an innate drive towards objective truth.

Scientific methodologies are not value-neutral but are inherently grounded in philosophical assumptions, such as: materialist assumptions, belief in casuality, and correspondence theories of truth. The crucial question, in light of Nietzsche's perspective, shifts from whether these assumptions represent absolute truth to whether they facilitate more productive scientific inquiry. This pragmatic approach aligns with Nietzsche's view that the value of a belief or methodology lies in its utility rather than its correspondence to an unknowable objective reality.

Cogito, Ergo Sum: Descartes' cogito, ergo sum is an incomplete assertion. His argument presupposes an a priori concept of substance, assuming an underlying entity responsible for the thinking.

Will to Power: Descartes' fundamental proposition can be distilled to a core epistemological assertion: thought's self-evident existence. By stating "something is thought, therefore thoughts exist," the argument reveals thought as an irrefutable phenomenological reality - a foundational premise that can not be logically negated. From this we derive the concept of Will: the “essence of all things”, a “thing-in-itself”, “without matter”, equivalent of a “innermost soul, without the body” where all "those processes inside human beings, which reason subsumes under the broad negative concept of feelings, are their to express through the infinite number of possible melodies”.

Nietzsche's concept of "Power" (Macht in German) can be interpreted as an extension of this idea of Will. The etymological roots of "Macht" in Proto-Germanic, meaning "to be able" or "may," support interpretations that suggest Nietzsche's "Power" is fundamentally about utility. This understanding of power aligns with the idea that the will directs us towards perspectives and actions that are more useful or effective, as discussed in the context of scientific progress. It's not about domination in a narrow sense but rather about expanding our capacity to understand and interact with the world around us.

There is no ambiguity about it - without a transcendent (aka 'God') we are just animals seeking to dominate others by enforcing our standards of good and bad. Further analysis would show good and bad themselves are illusions but that's a discussion for another day.

I am not a poet, but I think this can only be illuminated thru poetry, transcendental reality cannot be taken as an axiom without first acknowledging you are creating a God in your own image.

FYI - I am using all potential illustrations of God - He doesn't need to be a sort of human like figure in the sky, in eastern traditions it is indeed a formless, all encompassing force acting upon the universe. The scientific method too is very well built upon the foundation that there is order on the cosmos. Its not a type of God normally imagined as a God, but it's still a God.

I believe we cannot even connect two or more measurements without creating a story of how they are connected but in reality we have no idea what is occurring between measurements. That space is a black box to us. Science requires a transcendental reality to establish knowledge beyond oneself.

I do agree with Nietzsche that there is indeed a way to get out of this mess but most people don't even see that there is a mess there. *How can anyone find a solution when no one knows the problem even exists?*

See the attached famously (and grossly) misunderstood quote (Aphorism 125, The Gay Science) in full by Nietzsche, read the entire section in totality - please.

TLDR, nothing makes sense without a God to impose order on to the universe. There becomes no way to make any measurements since we have lost our ability to tell what is up from down, as if we are moving thru an infinite nothingness.

Nietzsche accuses physicists of using the concept of force (note - invented by themselves) to create a new God and world (WP, Aphorism 619). He writes that no “force has ever been demonstrated… only effects (have been) translated into a completely foreign language” (WP Aphorism 620). This can be seen by physicists attempts to explain how objects “fall” towards the surface of the earth. They have associated a force for this movement, gravity. Nevertheless, gravity is only an idea that we have created to describe this phenomenon, and it only describes the effects (motion) and not the force it-self. Nietzsche leaves a note for those that argue that it is more than simply convincing and support their claim by evidence such as its impact on the development of modern technology, “what is convincing, is not necessarily true – it is merely convincing: a note for the asses” (WP, Aphorism 17).

Nietzsche, quite brilliantly, also predicted that physicists “cannot get free action of the action at a distance… (and have) lost the belief in being able to explain at all, and admits with a wry expression that description and not explanation is all that is possible” (WP, Aphorism 618). Not too long following Nietzsche’s death, the mathematics of quantum mechanics was developed and showed that two quantum entangled particles are theoretically able to communicate with each other at a speed faster than light (quantum entanglement). This shocked physicists since it directly contradicted Einstein’s established theory of relativity, which stated the maximum speed at which information can travel between any two points is limited by the speed of light. Einstein coined the phrase “spooky action at a distance” to describe possibility of instantaneous communication observed in the mathematics of quantum entanglement. However, one must ask how light particles can “will” their own movements between two points? Can light particles “move” by themselves? The answer is no, forces must be acting upon light particles to cause their movement. Although the changes in the distribution of forces between two points are “invisible” to us, and our visible observations being limited by the speed of light, it cannot be concluded that information between two points is limited by the speed of light because changes in the distribution of forces between the two points is communicated instantaneously – resulting in the “movement” light particles. Assuming two particles are entangled and separated by a considerable distance, a change in the state of one particle can be instantaneously communicated to the other particle by an instantaneous change in the distribution of forces between the points (1st Law of Thermodynamics – conservation of energy).

Therefore, Nietzsche argues that “a force that we cannot imagine is an empty word and should be allowed no rights of citizenship in science” (WP, Aphorism 621). Using the only force observable available, at the functional level of societies and individuals, Nietzsche presents a new hypothesis. His begins his idea by the following statement: “every specific body (e.g. atom) strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (it’s – Will to Power) and to thrust back all that resists it’s extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: they conspire together for more power” (WP, Aphorism 636).

However, Nietzsche’s idea assumes that atoms and other substances are potentially able to have sensations (opposed to the understanding in contemporary science). He foresaw this and writes that the sensationless state of a substance is only a hypothesis, and that sensation can be a property of substance. Failure to discover sensations in substances does not mean that they do not have sensations, it only shows that we have failed to discover any. Additionally, if there were sensationless substances, it would be impossible to derive sensation. Consequently, the sensationless state of substances remains only as a hypothesis (WP, Aphorism 636).

The problem with psychosis is that doctors are trying to search for a problem where none exists. They can't seem to understand how to stupid their logic is. In search for the problem, not the solution.

They are too stupid so they can't see this. They also don't wish to give up their power to the philosopher physicists of the future because then they too will be erased. Insane how we got here from the view that "doctors know what's best for you" and they are here to "help".

I feel very uncomfortable about how Pakistan's army has an Intelligence arm totally outside of any sort of accountability from our civilian govt.

No established, stable democracy has a primary intelligence service that operates completely outside civilian government control.

Why couldn't the ISI build out a team to support the Army? Huh? Is the MI there to promote the interests of the civilian govt or the army? How come we never see his head sit or take photos by Munir? Has anyone even seen a photo of the guy who heads MI? Its so secretive that no one can ever see his face?

I will keep this short - but I (like many of you) in no way could even by any sensible and most importantly good faith individual whom at the time of experiencing mental illness could have been even remotely considered to be an individual deemed at high risk for self-harm, harming others, or "insane" and therefore required to be involuntary confined by recommendation of their family, medical professionals, the police, or even the courts! The incrediblely low to non existent evidence currently justifying this near criminal practice is to me a crime against all humanity!