Chatting with Claude Sonnet 4.5 was such an interesting experiment, so I created a YouTube video version based on the Spotify version. If you’ve already listened to it, feel free to check out the video content â the audio hasn’t changed.
Video: Inside the Machine: What LLMs REALLY Think About Your âThoughtfulâ Questions
I feel that the explanation of some of Claude’s internal logic was telling, and how it is anthropomorphised in a way that a person might interpret through an emotional lens.
Personally, I also enjoyed the dialogue around Platonism as it related to maths. I updated the subtitles, so you can read along if you are so inclined.
I’d like to do more videos, but they take so much time. I don’t know how much total time this took, but it was many hours over three days. It’s not that I don’t want to take time to produce them; it’s the opportunity costs â I am not writing new material, which is my preferred activity. For the record, the bulk of the time is searching for appropriate stock footage and B-roll â and that’s not always successful either.
I generated a few clips in Midjourney â sometimes just because, and other times to fill a gap with something better than I could find on Motion Array.
I’ve embedded the video here as usual, or you can watch it on YouTube. In any case, I’d love to read what you think about the topic or the video. As for the video, I won’t be giving up my day job, but it’s fun to assemble them.
An idea that Galen Strawson mentions is that of the self and the case of self and selves. I’ll presume he also considers the case of no-self, but I haven’t heard his position on thisâat least not yet.
About the No-Self
In the East, Buddhism teaches the notion of no-self or non-self. AnattÄ (à€ à€šà€€à„à€€à€Ÿ) captures the idea of the everchanging. By this doctrine, nothing is permanent. Any separation from this is merely an illusion. In principle, this leads to the Four Noble Truths:
Life is suffering
Suffering is due to attachment
This attachment can be overcome
There is a path to achieve this (the eight-fold path)
Life just is suffering.
There are many incantations of this, but these four capture the essence. The points here are that life just is suffering. No one escapes this fateânot wealth nor powerâbecause we become attached to these things. The self (or Ego) is another attachment. In identity politics, people tend to get upset when you don’t accept or at least identify with their self-perception. Personally, I don’t believe in identity, but I understand how it is meant idiomatically, so I can operate in this space.
About the Selves
What Strawson says (at the risk of misinterpreting him egregiously), is we have many selves. We are a composite of time slices. As he quipped, each Planck time moment is a new self. We tend to construct these selves into a single selfâI suppose in the manner that a 2-hour film shot at 60 frames a second would consist of 432,000 frames and yet have a continuity analogous to a self.
Self, No-Self, Selves Depictions
About the Self
In the West, the notion of self is as ubiquitous and uncritically accepted as rights, private property, and Democracy. As their Declaration of Independence reads, some things are self-evident. This self is obviously constructed, so let’s look at how these selves are merged.
Selves to Self
Cognitive processes function to stitch these time-sliced selves into a cohesive narrative about ourselves. In fact, it tends to pick out keyframes of memorable events. Strawson posits that there are (at least) two types of people: Those who create these identity narratives, and those who don’t. Given the pressure toward self, especially in the West, it may be awkward or uncomfortable for those who don’t toe the line in this arena. And if you don’t abide to the notion of self, don’t worry, you’ll be burdened with at least one, more likely one per person you interact withâor observed by. As in the US justice system promises relative to legal representation, if you don’t have one, one will be appointed for you. (I’ll spare you another psychology cum pseudoscience rant.)
There are two types of people: Those who create these identity narratives, and those who don’t
Some religions attempt to solve compositing the selves into a self by introducing a soul that acts as a core. In some belief systems, this sole is even able to serve as a core for some future incarnation and some versions of karma carry with it burdens of past lives.
I am partial to the Selves interpretation. Some Gestalt and apopheniaânot to be confused with apotheosis, albeit perhaps relatedâserve to do the heavy lifting. I don’t think that any (or at least many) people disagree with the idea, even if one is partial to the notion of a self, that a person is not the same at 1, 10, and 100. We can identify this person as Sanjit, at each observation, but Sanjit is materially different at each point. We just construct a narrative as in the case of the film frames. I can’t imagine it’s easy for a person indoctrinated into a world of ‘self’ that seriously grasping a sense of ‘non-self’.
It seems, I’m disrtracted and rambling at the moment, so I’ll end here. I think I’ve captured the essence of my thoughts.
Philosophics 