Consciousness lives in the network: LLM-style statistics may explain qualia
yeastsplainer · x · 2026-10-16
The author proposes that neural meaning and qualia are roughly the same thing — "mind-reading" is qualia-reading.
The core argument: meaning doesn't exist as a tangible entity, only as use and the statistics of use ("the network"). So an LLM can achieve high-level understanding without ever touching the external-world meaning of its tokens. Consciousness works the same way: we start from meaningless brain events and learn their statistics, becoming conscious as we learn what our own brain states "mean" — with no woo-style quale ever added, just as no extra "meaning" is added to an LLM's tokens.