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Romain Brette
Personal blog · romainbrette.frsciencephilosophy
Romain Brette's personal blog at romainbrette.fr covers science and philosophy. Since 2017, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times, most often “Is a thermostat conscious?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Romain Brette's writing on tests for consciousness in humans and beyond. The one comment here debates whether LLMs could be conscious and does not judge the post itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Theoretical Neuroscience
Most-linked posts?
- Is a thermostat conscious?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-01-03
What Hacker News says?
> people who thought humans were special Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Keep going, though. All the other species of monkeys and I are enjoying it. > so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. The null hypothesis is that your chatbot isn't consciou…
Comment linking /is-a-thermostat-conscious/
on “Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond”Submitted Academic precarity and the single PI lab model (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is a thermostat conscious? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The substrate of consciousness as a story · 1 points
HN discussion