Satirist Reuses 'LLMs Are Just Books' Proof on Human Brains, Sparks AI Consciousness Spat
ctjlewis · x · 2026-10-05
A viral thread argued LLMs are "obviously not conscious" because they're pure functions f(w,s,t)->o that can be rewritten as an explicit lookup table—literally a book mapping inputs to outputs, and books aren't conscious. QED.
User ctjlewis then quote-RT'd it applying the identical proof to human brains, substituting neurons for weights and sensory input for tokens, concluding "human brains are mathematically equivalent to a book"—written, he noted, by someone whose brain was subconsciously keeping them breathing the whole time. The parody mocks the original argument's oversimplification of computation as side-effect-free functions and has become a fun flashpoint in the AI consciousness debate.
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