LordNorwood
This Too Shall Pass
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Oftentimes people talk about "low sentience" or "high sentience". This guide is going to address exactly what "sentience" is and how it differs from its close companion, IQ.
To start off with some motivation:
ISentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.[1] Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as "qualia").
In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".[2] This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which otherwise commonly and collectively describes sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.
We're going to borrow from the ideas above in this guide.
What is Sentience?
Sentience is basically "consciousness", in its most pure sense and without attachment to any form of expression consciousness might undergo, like say for example the use of language, art, emotion, etc. It is not the same as intelligence, which is a function or attribute of consciousness, but not consciousness itself. Sentience is the term we use to describe the idea that behind the machinery of the body, then behind the machinery of the mind and all its workings, there is a "someone". Borrowing from the second quote above, it is consciousness if we subtract all the "characteristics of the mind". In other words, pure consciousness.
Here's our first thought experiment to describe this further: let's see we created an android that perfectly resembled a human being in all ways, except that all of its actions and responses are determined by us. If you interact with it it has not only a human body but also a personality. It responds and interacts dynamically and displays emotion and reason. Supposing that there is something separating this android and a real human - some "spark". What is that spark? Sentience.
High Sentience
Someone who is high sentience has a deep sense of being a "real" person. Although its impossible to perfect detect sentience, when someone is described as "high sentience" it means that how they dynamically express themselves gives a sense of there being someone "behind the wheel". There is a real person who is experiencing existence and not just an amalgation of mental patterns. A "high sentience" person is usually introspective and is capable of fundamental realizations about themselves and existence. They are non-robotic and multi-dimensional.
Low Sentience
If someone is described as "low sentience", the fundamental insight is that you are missing that sense of person-to-person connection you have with a sentient person. You don't feel as though there is someone "behind the wheel", you feel like the person you're talking to is flat and one-dimensional. Someone with a strong personality who is high sentience is a "persona". Someone with a strong personality who is low sentience is a walking meme.
You've encountered many people like this even on this forum. People who have little self-awareness, seem incapable of changing their thought patterns, who respond to very predictable ways to stimuli, so much so that they become the butt of the community's jokes due to how "familiar" everyone becomes with their programming. You read one of their posts and you feel like you've read a thousand from them just like it. Or you hear them talk IRL and you can almost predict what they're going to say next to a T. At its most extreme levels, low sentience results in a person who is not really a person and is more so just a collection of repeating patterns. There is nobody home and nobody behind the wheel. The "person" has checked out, if they were ever there at all.
Many of you might be aware of the NPC meme that went around a while ago on 4chan and other places. This is basically commentary on the phenomenon of low sentience.
Sentience and IQ
While it may be tempting to think that there is a relationship between sentience and IQ, by definition there is not one. This is because, again, sentience is just pure consciousness without the associated baggage of any mental characteristics. Yes this includes even personality!
IQ is so fundamental and so related to how you express yourself as a human being that its easy to confuse it for sentience if you aren't one who is given to examining these concepts carefully. But IQ is not sentience, and in fact its useful to treat it perpendicularly to sentience.
Low IQ, Low Sentience
These are your typical NPCs, and are probably what most people referred to when they used the term "NPC". Kinda dumb, manipulated easily by media, not really creative or personable, etc. etc. The average person probably oscillates in this quadrant.
Low IQ, High Sentience
These people are not intelligent, but have a kind of brightness about them. They are charming, personable, street-smart, relatable, or "wise". They can also be observant. Probably many comedians are in the upper part of this area, closer to average IQ ranges but high sentience. The "drunk uncle" archetype could be this also, or the rogue, or many other archetypes.
High IQ, Low Sentience
These are the people we refer to when we say "intellectual yet idiot".
Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his essay by the same name that refers to the semi-intelligent well-pedigreed "who are telling us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for".
Taleb points out that being educated and "intellectual" does not always mean that someone isn't an idiot for most purposes. "You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. 'Educated philistines' have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets."
The term is used slightly differently on here, I have seen it used in the sense that someone is book-smart, and clearly has a high degree of mental operation efficiency, but is still kinda dumb - he's non-intuitive, not really there, thinks in fixed ways, is uncreative etc. He often surprises you by acting below his intelligence level in spontaneous situations. He makes you think "how can you be so smart, but not get this", not in these of a fact he's missing, but an intuitive judgment. There's a distinct lack of "common sense", and this high level intelligence as a result often seems cold and inhuman. You've probably had a professor two like this.
High IQ, High Sentience
Just like its low IQ counterpart, there are plenty of archetypes and variants on this type of person. These types are philosophers, creatives, spiritualists etc. They are people who have the IQ level to have that spark of genius but also have that human insight from being very sentient - very conscious. They're the kind of people where a conversation with them is inspiring.
Conclusion
IQ is not sentience, but merely an attribute of the mind that is under the purview of sentience. A good way to put it is that IQ is how efficient or able the machinery is, but sentience describes whether someone is actually there piloting it.
@PrettyBoyMaxxing @Fuk @Blackout.xl @EthnicelAscension
To start off with some motivation:
ISentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.[1] Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as "qualia").
In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".[2] This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which otherwise commonly and collectively describes sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.
We're going to borrow from the ideas above in this guide.
What is Sentience?
Sentience is basically "consciousness", in its most pure sense and without attachment to any form of expression consciousness might undergo, like say for example the use of language, art, emotion, etc. It is not the same as intelligence, which is a function or attribute of consciousness, but not consciousness itself. Sentience is the term we use to describe the idea that behind the machinery of the body, then behind the machinery of the mind and all its workings, there is a "someone". Borrowing from the second quote above, it is consciousness if we subtract all the "characteristics of the mind". In other words, pure consciousness.
Here's our first thought experiment to describe this further: let's see we created an android that perfectly resembled a human being in all ways, except that all of its actions and responses are determined by us. If you interact with it it has not only a human body but also a personality. It responds and interacts dynamically and displays emotion and reason. Supposing that there is something separating this android and a real human - some "spark". What is that spark? Sentience.
High Sentience
Someone who is high sentience has a deep sense of being a "real" person. Although its impossible to perfect detect sentience, when someone is described as "high sentience" it means that how they dynamically express themselves gives a sense of there being someone "behind the wheel". There is a real person who is experiencing existence and not just an amalgation of mental patterns. A "high sentience" person is usually introspective and is capable of fundamental realizations about themselves and existence. They are non-robotic and multi-dimensional.
Low Sentience
If someone is described as "low sentience", the fundamental insight is that you are missing that sense of person-to-person connection you have with a sentient person. You don't feel as though there is someone "behind the wheel", you feel like the person you're talking to is flat and one-dimensional. Someone with a strong personality who is high sentience is a "persona". Someone with a strong personality who is low sentience is a walking meme.
You've encountered many people like this even on this forum. People who have little self-awareness, seem incapable of changing their thought patterns, who respond to very predictable ways to stimuli, so much so that they become the butt of the community's jokes due to how "familiar" everyone becomes with their programming. You read one of their posts and you feel like you've read a thousand from them just like it. Or you hear them talk IRL and you can almost predict what they're going to say next to a T. At its most extreme levels, low sentience results in a person who is not really a person and is more so just a collection of repeating patterns. There is nobody home and nobody behind the wheel. The "person" has checked out, if they were ever there at all.
Many of you might be aware of the NPC meme that went around a while ago on 4chan and other places. This is basically commentary on the phenomenon of low sentience.
Sentience and IQ
While it may be tempting to think that there is a relationship between sentience and IQ, by definition there is not one. This is because, again, sentience is just pure consciousness without the associated baggage of any mental characteristics. Yes this includes even personality!
IQ is so fundamental and so related to how you express yourself as a human being that its easy to confuse it for sentience if you aren't one who is given to examining these concepts carefully. But IQ is not sentience, and in fact its useful to treat it perpendicularly to sentience.
Low IQ, Low Sentience
These are your typical NPCs, and are probably what most people referred to when they used the term "NPC". Kinda dumb, manipulated easily by media, not really creative or personable, etc. etc. The average person probably oscillates in this quadrant.
Low IQ, High Sentience
These people are not intelligent, but have a kind of brightness about them. They are charming, personable, street-smart, relatable, or "wise". They can also be observant. Probably many comedians are in the upper part of this area, closer to average IQ ranges but high sentience. The "drunk uncle" archetype could be this also, or the rogue, or many other archetypes.
High IQ, Low Sentience
These are the people we refer to when we say "intellectual yet idiot".
Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his essay by the same name that refers to the semi-intelligent well-pedigreed "who are telling us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for".
Taleb points out that being educated and "intellectual" does not always mean that someone isn't an idiot for most purposes. "You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. 'Educated philistines' have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets."
The term is used slightly differently on here, I have seen it used in the sense that someone is book-smart, and clearly has a high degree of mental operation efficiency, but is still kinda dumb - he's non-intuitive, not really there, thinks in fixed ways, is uncreative etc. He often surprises you by acting below his intelligence level in spontaneous situations. He makes you think "how can you be so smart, but not get this", not in these of a fact he's missing, but an intuitive judgment. There's a distinct lack of "common sense", and this high level intelligence as a result often seems cold and inhuman. You've probably had a professor two like this.
High IQ, High Sentience
Just like its low IQ counterpart, there are plenty of archetypes and variants on this type of person. These types are philosophers, creatives, spiritualists etc. They are people who have the IQ level to have that spark of genius but also have that human insight from being very sentient - very conscious. They're the kind of people where a conversation with them is inspiring.
Conclusion
IQ is not sentience, but merely an attribute of the mind that is under the purview of sentience. A good way to put it is that IQ is how efficient or able the machinery is, but sentience describes whether someone is actually there piloting it.
@PrettyBoyMaxxing @Fuk @Blackout.xl @EthnicelAscension
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