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This is definitely true, but there are lots of things we can't rule out -- including that intelligence is a magical property bestowed upon us by a benevolent de

This is definitely true, but there are lots of things we can't rule out -- including that intelligence is a magical property bestowed upon us by a benevolent deity. When you are faced with this kind of situation, the scientific approach is to choose the model that requires less new stuff. In other words, let's choose a model that doesn't require esoteric physics until we're sure that esoteric physics are absolutely required. Or let's choose a model that doesn't include a deity until a deity is absolutely required. In this way we are constantly working with the simplest models and only adding complexity when we find that the simpler models don't work. It may not be correct in the end, but science is more about building useful models than it is about finding the "truth". Indeed, the absolute truth is probably something that we can never really know.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> This is definitely true, but there are lots of things we can't rule out -- including that intelligence is a magical property bestowed upon us by a benevolent deity. When you are faced with this kind of situation, the scientific approach is to choose the model that requires less new stuff. Yeah, but we don't even have models to choose from. We can choose the model with the least new stuff when we have competing models; for now, we have models for bits and pieces of the brain/mind, but no wholistic model. So, what we can really say about the brain or mind as a whole is that it's an open research question and we don't know what it will take to explain it. We can absolutely say we have no particular reason to think esoteric physics are needed to explain the brain. What we can't say is that we have a firm basis for confidence that they aren't needed.