the reason people think LLMs are conscious is because they use natural language. we evolved to understand speech and to specifically understand speech as representative of the internal world of the speaker. the only creatures we spoke to were conscious. we evolved specifically to have greater empathy and kinship via conversation - the main way people come to understand each other and feel closer is still just talking.
all that has happened to dorkins is he has fallen into an evolutionary trap. the exact same trap that those tiktokers who believe their dog can talk to them by jumping on buttons have fallen into. because the buttons create a simulacrum of language, however crude, the listening brain itself constructs a simulacrum of the internal world of the perceived speaker. Because that is what it already evolved to do with the only available speakers in its evolutionary history!!!!!!
people are so evolutionarily hardwired to see conscious agency and communication in the world that for our entire history we have ascribed agency, communication and personhood to earthquakes, the weather, diseases, stillbirths, the arrangement of entrails, dreams, and much more besides. To this day we have to remind people that wild animals are not like people and do not have our internal world lest they become new Timothy Treadwells!





















