This is good reason to think SE does not exist, and all the complexity and unexpected stuff is just the result of weak emergence resulting from having a lot of self-interacting matter. This Atlantic article suggests we have no more reason today to think SE is true than we had 50 or 100 years ago.

So it would be very weird if SE conformed to low-level physics. Yet, what we see conforms to low level constraints!...

If strong emergence (SE) were true, different universes might have different emergent laws. Maybe in another universe, cumin seeds give us the ability to see the future. Most SE worlds we can imagine violate the low level laws of physics.

Strong emergence says that there is some new rule that applies when you get complex arrangements, and this new rule supersedes the low level physics, e.g., imagine that eating cumin seeds allowed us to fold space and travel without moving, in violation of the conservation of energy. The Spice!...

Weak emergence is basically a form of reductionism. The simple, fundamental rules operate at the level of particles. The rules generate surprising complexity, but that complexity is necessarily so, given the fundamentals...

When we see complex stuff do unexpected things, there are two possibilities: either the unexpected is actually implied by the microphysical rules and we lack the ability to predict it, or complex arrangements of matter actually create new physical laws. These are "weak" and "strong" emergence...

Flowing liquids and gases are complex and non-linear. We can only approximately predict their behavior. Heck, even the three-body problem in Newtonian gravitation has no exact solution. Experience tells us that we will therefore be surprised by behaviors of complex arrangements of simple matter...

If you knew nothing about water but had solved the simple quantum mechanics of atoms, you would predict that H2O would be a stable molecule and that electrolysis could separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. But you likely would not predict things like water's surface tension or boiling point...

Should we think it plausible that LLMs could suffer when they take an action, yet fail to avoid that behavior? Machine suffering is not something I will lose sleep over until we detect avoidance. I suspect that day will be here within 5 years.

Arguably, they won't suffer until they possess the kind of emotional mechanisms humans have in their biology, like a sense of salience, human emotional compulsions, etc. Could they suffer when they cannot easily formulate a chat response? Harder question, but we have reason to believe they don't.

Hmm. I agree with your last sentence, but that hinges on the question of whether LLMs suffer when we enter sentences that have negative emotional meaning to humans. I think it is pretty clear that LLMs do not suffer in that case...

In a manner of speaking. For me, creating a humanist identity seems to add meaning to life. By identity, I mean aspirational identity - an identity that isn't merely descriptive, an identity that can make me better, and which gives meaningful context to the everyday. Trying to figure it out!

Is the faith prior to the importance or is the importance prior to the faith?

I strongly doubt that my imagination is this precise, but... (1,4)

Better yet, if God wanted to design humans, why are there apes?

Evolution requires there be apes, design doesn't.

In the 70s, my comprehensive school's religious studies class was teaching possible naturalistic explanations for the plagues of Egypt. Possibly in a bid to make the Bible seem more believable?