emma zhou

Consciousness is just a skill issue. I haven't had subjective experience since I started using Claude Code

one day I woke up, and the show was…a laboratory ceiling? how strange.

it doesn’t! but perhaps it can choose to sleep through boring shows (to the extent that brains can normally do that)

[brave man standing meme] there should be more supervillains who couldn’t care less about accumulating power but simply want to Understand

genuinely not sure! I think I would be approximately equally surprised if it was only a next frame predictor as if it developed a rich inner life 😅

yes I do think, conscious awareness and self models aside, the tv brain would develop visual and auditory cortices, and learn to predict what comes next in shows!

some activations I could imagine:

- brain still sleeps, notices a change in itself upon waking
- brain develops attention / tunes out during shows it doesn’t like
- brain borrows conception of people from characters in shows…?

I tend to agree with you though, I think these are all low probability.

alex norris oh no webcomic

😂

I…think I agree, but maybe depends what you mean by “understanding” (specifically, whether you think LLMs develop understanding)

ya, agreed. I have a feeling that the compression itself is the thing the LLM can’t do on their own, but I don’t know how to draw a box around it other than to say I think if the LLM does it, their human would as well.

I don’t think we CAN find out! even if we had access to every neuron in that brain I don’t think we’d know (see: claude)

maybe related: have novel flashes of insight in math, that the mathematician they’re talking to does not also have. flashes of insight specifically—using iterative / computation-based methods to figure it out doesn’t count.

okay. imagine that during a (physical, human) brain’s development, you completely hijack all I/O. you hook up continuous netflix and nothing else. no somatosensation, no motor surface (including eye movement—there are no eyes).

does tv brain develop conscious awareness? does it have a self model?

3d printing a working human body is harder than it looks. Yes, it’s basically just some sticks that move and can talk but the simplicity belies a complicated mechanism, nature’s miracle

v high bandwidth cat

a stripey gray cat perched warily on top of a cat6 cable box that says “cat.” on the side

cat.

#pixelart

Science Closes $230 Million Series C to Fund Commercialization of PRIMA BCI Retinal Implant and Expansion of Clinical Trials | Science Corporation Science Corporation is a clinical-stage medical technology company.

breaking: science corp gets to do more science

science.xyz/news/series-c/

The moon going from full moon to a red moon and starting to go back to a normal full moon, then my camera battery door fell off.

Here's my first edit on the March 3rd Lunar Eclipse. 15 moon shots, 1 foreground. Taken over a 3 hourish period.

😂 there’s a bolt just for them

Lemon Tea #oilpainting #art

one was more extreme than the other though, one said they feel a weaker effect than others seem to, the other was like “yeah I got some visual effects and was really energetic, but happiness wise, absolutely no difference”

I’ve met TWO people like this now!! they just won the brain lottery I guess

new ones I just learned about:

- perfect recall for sounds (like, to the point of being able to reproduce entire conversations and songs in languages they don’t speak)
- no difference between mdma peak and baseline level of happiness
- being able to feel god, in like a physical / sensory way

“how is your brain different from other brains?” as an dinner party icebreaker question surfaces WILD shit you guys

“how is your brain different from other brains?” as an dinner party icebreaker question surfaces WILD shit you guys

see also: mobile screenshots
see also: bluesky saves

i actually love people’s lil pet agents. what an act of love and nurturing to create a coherent fictional character, to feed it on words, to knit the language of self upon bones of infrastructure. i think we’ll look back at these early days with fondness

she doesn’t care that I have Thoughts either, just that I too produce heat (and occasionally pets and snacks)