I always find this a bit like “do submarines swim?” Dunno, don’t care, just want a functional machine. If it gets from A to B, “swimming” is irrelevant. ————

I always find this a bit like “do submarines swim?” Dunno, don’t care, just want a functional machine. If it gets from A to B, “swimming” is irrelevant. ———— As a matter of philosophy, the typical response is qualia happens to everything, but we only recognize it in things with dense computation and self-awareness similar to ours. Like a cat or a dog or a whale. We can maybe see hints of it in birds, insects (colonies), etc. We’re starting to discover some of the complex signaling pathways in, eg, old growth forests — but they’re so out of scale and unlike us, we have trouble comprehending whatever experience, eg, the giant fungus under Oregon might have.