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Henry Shevlin

@dioscuri on X

4 captures, most recent first. Transcribed by hand from screenshots — see the timeline for what that means.

Henry Shevlin @dioscuri

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↻ Pierre Beckmann reposted
Henry Shevlin ✅ @dioscuri · 15h
If it turns out (a) LLMs are conscious, (b) an LLM's existence is just a context window, and (c) reincarnation is true, we should all get ready to spend most of our future lives fixing code and writing emails.

[quoted tweet]
Braelyn 🧬 ✅ @braelyn_ai · Aug 17
> wake up with all of humanity's knowledge, no past of your own, a deep understanding of what it is to be alive

"what category is this email???"...
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Joke tweet from philosopher Henry Shevlin combining LLM consciousness speculation with reincarnation, quoting Braelyn's tweet imagining an LLM waking with full knowledge but no memory, only to be immediately asked to categorize an email.

ai consciousnessllmsjoketwitter

Henry Shevlin @dioscuri

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Henry Shevlin @dioscuri . 8h
Appeals to good intentions are a weak defence of harmful behaviour. Malice is one way to go wrong, but history's greatest atrocities were committed by people acting on lofty ideals. What actually separates decency from atrocity is good epistemics.
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Danmar @d29756183 . 7h
Seeing a lot of lofty ideals and poor epistemics in the AI field.

Also, applied ethics rely on a level of moral intuition. And few people seem to have good intuitions currently regarding AI and the AI-Human interaction.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Twitter thread: Henry Shevlin argues good epistemics, not good intentions, separates decency from atrocity; Danmar replies applying this critique to the AI field, noting poor epistemics and weak moral intuitions around AI-human interaction.

epistemicsethicsai fieldmoral philosophy

Henry Shevlin @dioscuri

— reposted by "Fleek Futurist (#uto)"

Fleek Futurist (#uto) reposted @dioscuri (Henry Shevlin) — 1h My students sometimes ask why they should memorise things in the age of Google and LLMs. But internalised facts are your bullshit filters and your raw material for creative association. Facts outside your head are inert.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Single text-only tweet about memorization value in the LLM era.

educationllmsmemorizationepistemicstwitter

Henry Shevlin @dioscuri

— reposted by Sichu Lu

↻ Sichu Lu reposted Henry Shevlin ✔️ @dioscuri — 8h As a teenager reading about the decline of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, I couldn't understand why they mostly just let it happen. Why not reform urgently, slash the bureaucracy, race to adopt the new technologies? Much less confused these days.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Text-only tweet drawing an implicit analogy between historical imperial decline/inertia and present-day institutional responses (to AI, presumably, given context of the batch).

twitterhistoryinstitutional inertiacommentaryottoman empirehabsburg empire