This is what I want to know when I get to know someone. What is the experience of being alive in your body, in your world?
This is the definition of consciousness: there is something it is like to be you.
Erik Hoel contrasts this with LLMs, speculating
there is nothing it is like to be two matrices multiplying.
This is why humans can be responsible and accountable for things. Our actions have consequences that we can feel, that we can’t help but feel, for decades. What I do changes what it is like to be me. This is ongoing, inescapable.
When we share experiences either by living them together or by telling stories, then there it is something it is like to be us. Connection.