alt Hacker NewsWhy exactly should consciousness require the ability for internal state to change? That seems like a fairly arbitrary requirement to me.
Even if we allow it, from a certain perspective it does change, otherwise each token output would be identical. They are not.
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michaelmrose • today at 2:35 AM
First you have to define consciousness. I don't see how you do that without self-reference and state transitions.
> Why exactly should consciousness require the ability for internal state to change? That seems like a fairly arbitrary requirement to me.
Yeah, and I don't think anyone would argue that a human who's been rendered stateless by dementia is no longer conscious. (They might argue that the person isn't actually stateless - but that seems like pedantry to me - allow for a hypothetical dementia patient who is stateless.)