LLMs make it easy to produce a lot of plausible-looking but wrong or misleading claims quickly, and sharing them without checking yourself (or at least running another LLM to do that) puts the burden on others to correct.

This also applies to many comments written by people? In general, whenever something is shared, one could invest more time to make it more accurate. However, to me it seems hard to come up with general rules about how much time to invest vetting claims.

I agree that it's also important to tag that it’s LLM output, and at least read it over yourself, which you did.

I think sharing long texts produced by LLMs is often fine even if they were not fully read by the person prompting, basically for the same reasons that it is fine to share long text produced by people even if the person sharing them did not fully read them.

Strong illusionists reject phenomenal consciousness. Specifically they reject phenomenal properties; they accept that consciousness exists.

I have the impression many people, including academics, use "consciousness" and "phenomenal consciousness" interchangeably, and without wanting to take a stance on illusionism or realism. I think this is one reason strong illusionists saying they reject phenomenal consciousness is sometimes misinterpreted as them rejecting the illusion of phenomenal consciousness.

Thanks, Michael.

I would recommend against passing along LLM outputs uncritically like this

Do you mean you recommend against sharing them, even if the alternative is not sharing anything (I agree sharing them, and examining them would be better)? Sharing them could lead to them being corrected to the extent they are not accurate, as you just did, which is good? Maybe you mean they should be shared with a quick disclaimer that the claims were not checked.

Does Lau explain why people so often regard consciousness as non-physical, ethereal, having classic qualia properties, or some qualitative/subjective character beyond just the physical? Or does he reject that people often do regard consciousness this way?

I do not recall Lau discussing the above in the few articles and podcasts I checked. I do not think Lau would reject that people often regard consciousness that way.

Is this section trying to say the non-physical "magic" is real? If not, how does it contradict illusionism?

I believe the section is trying to say that phenomenal consciousness exists. I agree this would not contradict illusionism. It would only contradict eliminativism.

Would you agree that dreams, thoughts and visualizations aren't phenomenally conscious experiences, but your externally generated experiences are phenomenally conscious?

I would say dreams and thoughts are phenomenally conscious experiences. I am not sure what you mean by "externally generated experiences".

I [Vasco] am still endorsing (physical) realism

I meant that phenomenal consciousness is real in the sense "real" is used in common language, but I see now this is not what realism is about. "Real" as used in common language can mean something that exists. However, illusionists acknowledge that phenomenal consciousness exists. They just argue it is not real in the sense it does not have the classic qualia properties. I seem to agree with this.

Having a better look into Frankish (2016) helped me understand what illusionism is actually about. I had only skimmed it quickly, and it is easy to misinterpret it on a quick skim because some terms like "experience" are used in arguably unconventional ways.

(I shall use the term ‘experience’ itself in a functional sense, for the mental states that are the direct output of sensory systems. In this sense it is not definitional that experiences are phenomenally conscious.)

Would you do anything differently if you endorsed weak illusionism/realism as defined in Frankish (2016) instead of (strong) illusionism?

Illusionism makes a very strong claim: it claims that phenomenal consciousness is illusory; experiences do not really have qualitative, ‘what-it’s-like’ properties, whether physical or non-physical. This should be distinguished from a weaker view according to which some of the supposed features of phenomenal consciousness are illusory. Many conservative realists argue that phenomenal properties, though real, do not possess the problematic features sometimes ascribed to them, such as being ineffable, intrinsic, private, and infallibly known. Phenomenal feels, they argue, are physical properties which introspection misrepresents as ineffable, intrinsic, and so on. We might call this weak illusionism, in contrast to the strong form advocated here. (It might equally be called weak realism.)4

Hi James. Thanks for the post.

I agree there is huge uncertainty in the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges Rethink Priorities (RP) initially presented, and the similar ones in Bob Fischer's related book. Below are the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges proportional to "individual number of neurons"^"exponent", and "exponent" from 0 to 2, which covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable.

An exponent of 0.188 explains pretty well the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges in Bob’s book, as illustrated below. Here is some context about why sentience-adjusted welfare ranges might be a power law of the individual number of neurons.

People could then change the pain intensity ratios, and sentience-adjusted welfare range to get their own estimates if they want.

Here is a comment from Bob Fischer with context about the uncertainty in the sentience-adjusted welfare ranges Rethink Priorities (RP) initially presented, and the similar ones in Bob's related book which I understand inform your own estimates a lot.

I agree we cannot rule out very narrow welfare ranges. However, I now also think the probability of sentience of invertebrates may be much lower than e.g. 1 %, although I find it difficult to pinpoint the expected value of distributions of the probability of sentience (or welfare range).

Hi Jim. The probability of sentience would be relevant if the welfare range dropped very fast as the probability of sentience decreases. For example, if "welfare range" = "probabilty"^"exponent", and "exponent" is very high. For instance, an exponent of 5 would lead to a 10 % chance of sentience resulting in a welfare range of 10^-5 (= 0.1^5), and therefore in a sentience-adjusted welfare range of 10^-6 (= 0.1*10^-5). However, it is unclear to me why the probability of sentience and welfare would relate in that way. So the point of your post remains.

Hi Michael. Thanks for sharing.

It was Graziano's papers (2021, 2022, some clarifications in 2020) that made illusionism click for me

I found the article from 2022 clarifying (I have not looked into the other 2), but I am still endorsing (physical) realism. I have found persuasive Hakwan Lau's views about consciousness. So I asked Gemini "What would Lau say about strong illusionism?". The answer is below. It makes a lot of sense to me. I would be curious to know your thoughts. I wonder whether disagreements between illusionists and realists are largely semantic.

Hakwan Lau is fundamentally opposed to strong illusionism. While he agrees with illusionists that our introspection is imperfect and fails to reveal the physical mechanics of our brains, he completely rejects their conclusion that this makes phenomenal consciousness a "false belief" or a non-existent property.

In his book In Consciousness We Trust, Lau argues that strong illusionism throws the baby out with the bathwater. Here is how he dismantles the strong illusionist position:

1. Macro-Level Summaries are Not "Illusions"

Strong illusionists (like Graziano, Dennett, and Frankish) argue that because our internal models don't represent the micro-physical details of our neural wiring, the non-physical "magic" they report must be a hallucination.

Lau counters this with a functional analogy: macroscopic metrics are real, even if they ignore microscopic details. When a digital thermometer gives you a reading of 20°C, it is not giving you a detailed map of the kinetic energy of billions of individual air molecules. It is giving you a simplified, macroscopic summary. But that doesn't mean "temperature" is an illusion or a false belief.

Similarly, Lau's Perceptual Reality Monitoring (PRM) argues that the prefrontal cortex generates a macroscopic summary of sensory reliability. It evaluates a signal and outputs a tag: This is real and present. Just because that tag lacks the metadata of neurotransmitter release doesn't make the resulting subjective experience an illusion. It is a highly accurate, biologically real computational output.

2. The Fallacy of the "Perfect" Introspection

Illusionism relies on the premise that for consciousness to be real, it must perfectly match our intuitive, pre-scientific introspective beliefs about it (i.e., that it is magical, ethereal, or non-physical). Because science proves it isn't magical, illusionists conclude it isn't real.

Lau points out that this is an unfair standard. Science routinely redefines phenomena without eliminating them. When we discovered that water is H₂O rather than an indivisible classical element, we didn't declare that water was an illusion. Lau argues we should treat consciousness the same way: it isn't the magical inner theater we intuitively thought it was, but rather a physical, metacognitive reality-monitoring system. Redefining it doesn't erase its existence.

3. The Evolutionary Reality of "Presence"

Strong illusionists argue that the "feeling" of experience is just an evolutionary trick to force an organism to care about its environment.

Lau argues that the brain has a much more specific, computationally vital need for this feeling: it must distinguish reality from its own internal noise. A brain constantly generates internal imagery—dreams, memories, imagination, and predictive models. If an organism cannot tell the difference between a memory of a predator and a real predator right in front of it, it will not survive.

For Lau, subjective consciousness is that mechanism. When the PRM system successfully tags a sensory signal as originating from the external world, it generates a feeling of undeniable "presence." That presence is not a trick; it is the correct computational answer to the problem of reality monitoring.

Summary

Lau would say that strong illusionists correctly identify that the brain uses simplified representations, but they make a fatal philosophical error in concluding that simplified representations are false. To Lau, subjective experience is the brain's very real, very physical mechanism for anchoring us in reality.

Hi Cynthia. Thanks for the great context.

I wonder how much the results of the CSES study would change if the management practices were similarly good for both conditions (instead of worse for the cage-free chickens). You replied to my related question below that "My [your] general sense is that option A leads to a greater welfare increase".

Relatedly, I [Vasco] wonder how much welfare varies within production systems. For example, I am interested in knowing which of the following results in a greater increase in welfare. Layers going from:

• A. Median furnished cages in the European Union (EU) to median cage-free aviaries in the EU. By median furnished cages in the EU, I mean ones with higher welfare per chicken-year than 50 % of the furnished cages in the EU.
• B. 10th percentile furnished cages in the EU to 90th percentile furnished cages in the EU.

Do you have sense of how these compare?

~30% preference studies showing that hens really value the things they can only access in cage-free (nesting boxes, perches, dustbathing, etc)

The above is an argument against barren battery cages, but not against all types of cages? All caged chickens in the European Union (EU) must have “a nest”, “litter such that pecking and scratching are possible”, and “appropriate perches of at least 15 cm”. Relatedly, I estimate moving hens from battery to furnished cages increases the welfare of chickens 70.6 % as much as moving hens from battery cages to cage-free aviaries.

Hi Abhi. Thanks for sharing.

Are you considering the risk of research on alternative proteins decreasing the welfare of farmed animals by decreasing the population of farmed animals with positive lives? I estimated cage-free layers and slower growth broilers have negative, but close to neutral lives. I am reasonably confident that caged layers and fast growth broilers have negative lives, but very uncertain about other cases. Here is an example of why this may matter in the context of eggs. 64.3 % (= 1 - 0.357) of layers in the European Union (EU) were outside cages in 2025. Funding work on alternative proteins does not have an immediate effect. It could be that it mostly reduces the consumption of eggs in 10 years, when the fraction of cage-free layers will likely be higher, and mortality lower due to improvements from experience. So I can see research on plant-based alternatives to eggs leading to fewer layers in the EU with positive lives.