5 ms·

I agree, our major issue is that we can't get over this intuition that we must be special somehow. This quote from Westworld really gets to the heart of it, for

by burke 8y ago

I agree, our major issue is that we can't get over this intuition that we must be special somehow. This quote from Westworld really gets to the heart of it, for me at least: > There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. We humans like to fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet, we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do—rarely questioning our choices—content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.

tj-teej 8y ago
> There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist The idea that consciousness doesn't exist is very interesting, and I'm not poo-pooing it, however the argument that it doesn't exist because you can't identify an inflection point is an example of the grains of sand fallacy. The Grains of Sand fallacy basically claims you can't say "there's no way adding one piece of sand would render a pile of sand un-liftable." This isn't true as I can lift a bag with one grain of sand and can't lift a bag with a billion grains of sand, therefore there has to be a point where I can lift the bag with N grains of sand, and can't lift the bag with N+1 grains. I agree it's hard to identify an inflection point; but that doesn't prove that consciousness isn't real. If we define consciousness as something dead people don't have and an alive person has (or at least SOMEONE once has had), then there has to be an inflection point as people die.
- burke 8y ago
  Yeah—Ford overstates it for my taste but I think the key realization is that if there's no inflection point at which the magic thing that is "consciousness" arises, our intuitive conception of consciousness-as-such is wrong in a deep way. What I take out of this is not that consciousness doesn't exist, but that generally when people use the word "consciousness", the thing they think they're referring to doesn't exist in nearly as substantial a way as they think it does. We talk about ourselves as special and animals as fancy pattern matchers because we can't intuitively accept that consciousness isn't a binary phenomenon. If we accept that it's an emergent phenomenon with no clear boundary, there are only two possible conclusions: * Panpsychism or dual-aspect monism, where matter is imbued with proto-consciousness; or * "Illusionism" is maybe the best descriptor? Where consciousness exists but not in the way we think it does.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
> we can't get over this intuition that we must be special It seems possible that a group of people who see animals as subhuman would be able to exploit them more completely and may have an evolutionary advantage. Similar to how animals who believe they have their own consciousness separate from a global conscious would fight harder for survival, and therefore have a selective advantage. Doesn't mean either of those things are true, but animals who think that way may breed more. It's also possible that humans who see other groups of humans as subhuman have done better in war times, and have therefore proliferated. I wish more people would consider that we might have ingrained beliefs that are both false and adaptive. I think knowledge is power generally, but lies can be power in specific cases.

by burke 8y ago

tj-teej 8y ago

> There is no threshold at which we become greater than the sum of our parts; no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist The idea that consciousness doesn't exist is very interesting, and I'm not poo-pooing it, however the argument that it doesn't exist because you can't identify an inflection point is an example of the grains of sand fallacy. The Grains of Sand fallacy basically claims you can't say "there's no way adding one piece of sand would render a pile of sand un-liftable." This isn't true as I can lift a bag with one grain of sand and can't lift a bag with a billion grains of sand, therefore there has to be a point where I can lift the bag with N grains of sand, and can't lift the bag with N+1 grains. I agree it's hard to identify an inflection point; but that doesn't prove that consciousness isn't real. If we define consciousness as something dead people don't have and an alive person has (or at least SOMEONE once has had), then there has to be an inflection point as people die.

burke 8y ago
Yeah—Ford overstates it for my taste but I think the key realization is that if there's no inflection point at which the magic thing that is "consciousness" arises, our intuitive conception of consciousness-as-such is wrong in a deep way. What I take out of this is not that consciousness doesn't exist, but that generally when people use the word "consciousness", the thing they think they're referring to doesn't exist in nearly as substantial a way as they think it does. We talk about ourselves as special and animals as fancy pattern matchers because we can't intuitively accept that consciousness isn't a binary phenomenon. If we accept that it's an emergent phenomenon with no clear boundary, there are only two possible conclusions: * Panpsychism or dual-aspect monism, where matter is imbued with proto-consciousness; or * "Illusionism" is maybe the best descriptor? Where consciousness exists but not in the way we think it does.

erikpukinskis 8y ago

> we can't get over this intuition that we must be special It seems possible that a group of people who see animals as subhuman would be able to exploit them more completely and may have an evolutionary advantage. Similar to how animals who believe they have their own consciousness separate from a global conscious would fight harder for survival, and therefore have a selective advantage. Doesn't mean either of those things are true, but animals who think that way may breed more. It's also possible that humans who see other groups of humans as subhuman have done better in war times, and have therefore proliferated. I wish more people would consider that we might have ingrained beliefs that are both false and adaptive. I think knowledge is power generally, but lies can be power in specific cases.