Right, gotcha. So, a few things here:

Reasonable, though it could be argued they are full of subjective experiences, just all mixed together.

This argument wouldn’t really make sense to me, because an experience and the words describing said experience are clearly not the same. An LLM only possesses the later, but the actual experience is something conscious that an LLM does not have.

Words are approximations, and often poor ones at that. For us humans, we can use them to describe experiences so that hopefully they bring understanding in the recipient, but whether the recipient truly understands and whether they can relate to the experience, also depends on their own experiences and their empathic abilities. None of that is at work inside an LLM.

But indeed, thinking that an LLM does have such abilities would be an example of attributing person-like qualities to it.

Now, if a person does develop a sense of faith from LLM output, is that more or less valid than them developing a sense of faith through a thunderstorm? That depends on the faith, I guess.

If someone truly believes the LLM to be person-like (or godlike) that would be a nonsensical faith, as much as someone believing that firestorms are the wrath of god, for instance.

If someone believes that an LLM-generated text provided them with a critical insight that turned their life around, and therefore LLMs are divinely inspired, it’s as harmless as someone believing that a thunderbolt that struck nearby gave them the necessary wakeup call that turned their life around, and therefore thunderstorms are guided by the divine.

Of course in either case, if they start to revere LLMs/thunderstorms above other aspects of reality, it becomes problematic.

Personally, as a more spiritually-inclined person, I think we should be able to say that both thunderstorms and LLMs are awe-inspiring, and I think both can, in theory, be a vessel for the divine. But ultimately, neither are divine in and of themselves.

So isn’t there a difference between faith based on LLMs vs. faith based on firestorms? I think it really depends on the case, but there’s still an important distinction: A firestorm doesn’t pretend to be human, or doesn’t try to trick people into pretending it has humanlike qualities or experiences. So generally speaking, people tend not to develop weird faiths based on thunderstorms. But LLMs are, by design, imposters pretending to have humanlike qualities. This is why I think we tend to be dismissive of people believing in things told by LLMs, because it’s so easy to fall into the idea of ascribing real humanlike qualities to them and developing psychotic thoughts from there.

I think William of Ockham has a thing or two to say about that, but there’s no arguing with the reasoning! 😆

While I think you make some fair points, I also don't hear an argument against the belief in free will :)

For what it's worth, my argument was never that free will must be true, so I didn't fall for the argument from consequence fallacy. I merely said it's better that we should believe in it for our own good. There's a recognition of the limits of the argument in there.

But even though we recognise such limits exist, doesn't mean we should come to the conclusion that free will itself doesn't exist. I'm also not limiting my argument to rational ones, as I cite several empirical studies that also conclude that a belief in free will is better for us.

So yeah, it's fair to point out some limitations, but I wouldn't say that any of these arguments are divine or beyond examination. Please do examine them! But until there is a convincing argument against the belief in free will (rational or otherwise), I'll stick with my conviction that believing in it is indeed better for us.

Yes, I was trying to draw the analogy, but I agree it wouldn't be an active agent at least.

But bringing back to where we came from: The problematic part to me is still whether a deterministic universe is compatible with free will. I mean, I don't think they're compatible, but you said it depends on whether an omniscient agent exists. I still don't see how that follows. If the omniscient agent exists, and it is indeed an active agent, then by definition the universe wouldn't be deterministic, no?

Ah yes, I agree that's a fair way to look at it. I think if you combine that reasoning with the idea of a deterministic universe, then you also basically arrive at Spinoza's view where it is said that God is Nature, because effectively Nature then is the constraining agent.

But it does still lead me to question the sentence you posited at the start:

Whether that’s compatible with a deterministic universe then depends on whether there’s an omniscient agent in your environment.

If such a constraining agent does not exist, doesn't that imply that the universe is not deterministic? Unless you also believe that free will can exist in our mind without the ability to act upon the universe. This too was argued by Spinoza, though personally I never found such an argument to be convincing.

Nah, it's not required. Certainly I wouldn't force it upon you :) But I strongly believe it's better for you if you do.

I can agree with the first sentence to some extent, but I think the "in your environment" is unnecessary, whereas you seem to need the "in your environment" qualifier to arrive at the conclusion of the second sentence? Why would it be more intuitive to argue about free will not from my perspective, but rather from the perspective of my environment? I am me, and my ability defines me. My environment may influence me, but it would be backwards to make my ability determined by what the environment can predict about me.

I suppose you do believe in a deterministic universe? If so, that could at least explain why you think such a reasoning is more intuitive, but it doesn't align with my intuition at least.

Preach.

You’re right a coup or revolution is probably the only way out for the US at this point. But when that day comes, reestablishing democracy with the rules of today would be a bad idea, since the capitalists know how to game the system. So if we acknowledge that democracy is broken, and authoritarianism isn’t the way, we need a new system. Hopefully this post helped to give some ideas what a new system could look like.

Fair, just wanted to point out that the monarchy class I’m proposing is actually a communist class intended to keep the capitalist/socialist citizenry in check. So there may be more in it than you might have realised from the abstract alone.

in my case at least leads me to questioning how our political and social systems can change for the better.

Glad to see like-minded people here! I actually just finished a manifesto on this exact topic:

https://arendjr.nl/blog/2025/02/new-monarchy/

It’s quite the read, but I’d be happy to hear your feedback.

Runtime performance is entirely unaffected by the use of macros. It can have a negative impact on compile-time performance though, if you overdo it.

Easy: GritQL

But I’m heavily biased, since I’m also the one implementing GritQL support into Biome :)

Second would be Rust macros, but they’re both more difficult to write and language-specific.