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The amount of amateur, arm chair philosophizing about consciousness in these threads is embarrassing. Consciousness and attendant concepts have been active res

The amount of amateur, arm chair philosophizing about consciousness in these threads is embarrassing. Consciousness and attendant concepts have been active research problems for thousands of years. I can't think of one time in any thread on HN regarding these topics that someone offers a view that extends from all the work that has already been done. Just de novo speculation and always really terrible takes. The tech community appears totally unprepared to deal with these subjects.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
What was the one time?
danielbln 3y ago
The scientific method has been around for a few hundred years, and while philosophers have pondered the origin of consciousness for a long, long time, I would argue that calling it "active research problem" is a bit disingenuous. Also, what do you bring to the table? Anything you can add here?
- ryanklee 3y ago
  I just did add something. An objection to the prevailing method on HN of ignoring all the prior work on consciousness.
akasakahakada 3y ago
So what is the state of the arts definition of consciousness? And does that lead to any scientific advancement like discovering new particle called Consciouston that exchange information among human's brain cells? Like Sir Penrose said consciousness arise only from quantum effect inside human neurons or stuff that cannot be tested?
weeksie 3y ago
This is also the case with any thread that touches on economics. I'm sure there are a lot more but if they land outside my Murray-Gellman bubble I don't notice as much.
eterevsky 3y ago
> Consciousness and attendant concepts have been active research problems for thousands of years. In the book "Consciousness and the Brain" neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene writes that up until 1980s or 90s studying consciousness was basically out of scope for empirical science, since conscious seemed very difficult to define. So we have been seriously studying consciousness for only 30-something years. Furthermore, there is no scientific consensus regarding how exactly consciousness works. For that reason the authors of the paper apply several different theories of consciousness.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Philosophical inquiry into these problems goes back thousands of years.
  - akasakahakada 3y ago
    Length of the history has no validity to support any argument.
    - ryanklee 3y ago
      It does when the argument is "maybe you should start from where we are" .
  - eterevsky 3y ago
    ... and is pretty much useless. Could you name any pre-20th century theory about consciousness that would be remotely relevant today?
    - ryanklee 3y ago
      The current framework of most consciousness research was erected by Hume, Descartes, and Spinoza.
      - eterevsky 3y ago
Workaccount2 3y ago
Consciousness research is just a collection of pet theories. It's silly to be dismissive of people floating their own ideas when the whole field is just own ideas built on liberal axionomic assumptions and inflated with neuroscience vernacular. When you have a meter stick that can measure consciousness, then you can ride around on your high horse dispensing empirical smack downs of armchair concepts. And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your take on the tech bros. They're often embarrassingly over confident in their takes too.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  What I'm objecting to is people theorizing in a vacuum about subjects that have been heavily theorized about, as if by starting over and disregarding all prior work, someone somehow stands a better, not worse chance of getting it right. Start from where we are on these topics, which is definitely not nowhere.
bondarchuk 3y ago
Philosophy of mind is simply a trainwreck, not too long ago completely idiotic stuff like "the chinese room argument" and "the zombie argument" passed for the state of the art of the field. I'm more inclined to take a well-reasoned HN comment seriously than anything coming out of that field.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Again, these are just empty objections.
  - bondarchuk 3y ago
    Why empty? I gave specific examples of arguments that are considered acceptable within contemporary philosophy of mind, that are so nonsensical I don't think we should use them as a barrier for giving your own thoughts on consciousness. Meanwhile you are objecting to anyone commenting on these things without linking to any specific comments or mentioning lines of argument that you object to, nor naming any specific theories you believe should be engaged with. So my objection is much less empty than yours. I've read quite intensely (for a layman, alright) into philosophy of mind over the years and I've come to believe there's not much to be gained from engaging with it, vs. presenting your ideas in a self-contained manner or with reference to neuroscience or AI theory.
    - ryanklee 3y ago
      Calling something idiotic without details is an empty objection. Calling two of the most powerful thought experiments in philosophy of mind and consciousness idiotic without details is less than empty, it's ridiculous. My objection has nothing to do with "links". I am objecting to the method of acting as if there haven't been hundreds and hundreds of years of work on this subject. That's not an empty objection. It's pointing out that the method is wrong. Which is a substantive point. It doesn't have to be followed up with my own naive theory on the subject to be so.
      - bondarchuk 3y ago
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Why don't you try educating rather than berating? What models do you think are actually worth studying? Give concrete examples. You can't just wave vaguely at a concept and say people are ignoring everything that has come before them. It's not obvious to me that existing lines of inquiry are going to lead to a successful model of consciousness. In particular, my sense is that the AI revolution has provided us with more key insights than thousands of years of philosophical inquiry. But like you said, maybe I'm just ignorant of existing work. I'm happy to be proven wrong. Have you considered that not all readers might've been afforded the same educational opportunities as yourself? People are engaging with openness and curiosity, exploring ideas. You're just telling them to shut up until they've read a bunch of existing work which might not even provide them a meaningful answer. I think trying to shut down any kind of conversation because someone hasn't spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying a field goes against the spirit of Hacker News.
keiferski 3y ago
I don't disagree that the tech community is unprepared to deal with these subjects, but this sort of comment is really not helpful. It's fine to be critical, but at least share some links [1] or give a hint as to where you think most commenters go wrong. Otherwise, this comment merely adds negativity to an important discussion. [1] Lots of good articles here at SEP, although they can be a bit technical: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=consciousness https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=consciou...
- ryanklee 3y ago
  How is it not helpful to point out that people are not having the kind of conversation that they think they are having, or that their assertions do not have the weight they believe them to have? Presumably most people here are familiar with at least 1 serious intellectual subject. They are welcome to treat another with the same seriousness, and I presume as well they would know how, if they'd just bother to do so.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    It's not helpful because you offer no further solutions, only complaints. Nothing in your comment pointed toward anything that helped resolve the problem you are complaining about. Even worse, it just invokes hostility from people that you supposedly want to help educate. When you make these kind of complaints without offering any solutions, it comes across as if you only care about appearing intellectually superior, not being helpful.
    - ryanklee 3y ago
      People are out here disregarding entire fields of study, and I'm the one who is pretending to be intellectually superior? If this were a group of willfully ignorant creationists, the simple act of pointing them to the existence of evolutionary studies wouldn't be so easily objected to.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

What was the one time?

danielbln 3y ago

The scientific method has been around for a few hundred years, and while philosophers have pondered the origin of consciousness for a long, long time, I would argue that calling it "active research problem" is a bit disingenuous. Also, what do you bring to the table? Anything you can add here?

ryanklee 3y ago
I just did add something. An objection to the prevailing method on HN of ignoring all the prior work on consciousness.

akasakahakada 3y ago

So what is the state of the arts definition of consciousness? And does that lead to any scientific advancement like discovering new particle called Consciouston that exchange information among human's brain cells? Like Sir Penrose said consciousness arise only from quantum effect inside human neurons or stuff that cannot be tested?

weeksie 3y ago

This is also the case with any thread that touches on economics. I'm sure there are a lot more but if they land outside my Murray-Gellman bubble I don't notice as much.

eterevsky 3y ago

> Consciousness and attendant concepts have been active research problems for thousands of years. In the book "Consciousness and the Brain" neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene writes that up until 1980s or 90s studying consciousness was basically out of scope for empirical science, since conscious seemed very difficult to define. So we have been seriously studying consciousness for only 30-something years. Furthermore, there is no scientific consensus regarding how exactly consciousness works. For that reason the authors of the paper apply several different theories of consciousness.

ryanklee 3y ago
Philosophical inquiry into these problems goes back thousands of years.
- akasakahakada 3y ago
  Length of the history has no validity to support any argument.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    It does when the argument is "maybe you should start from where we are" .
- eterevsky 3y ago
  ... and is pretty much useless. Could you name any pre-20th century theory about consciousness that would be remotely relevant today?
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    The current framework of most consciousness research was erected by Hume, Descartes, and Spinoza.
    - eterevsky 3y ago

Workaccount2 3y ago

Consciousness research is just a collection of pet theories. It's silly to be dismissive of people floating their own ideas when the whole field is just own ideas built on liberal axionomic assumptions and inflated with neuroscience vernacular. When you have a meter stick that can measure consciousness, then you can ride around on your high horse dispensing empirical smack downs of armchair concepts. And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your take on the tech bros. They're often embarrassingly over confident in their takes too.

ryanklee 3y ago
What I'm objecting to is people theorizing in a vacuum about subjects that have been heavily theorized about, as if by starting over and disregarding all prior work, someone somehow stands a better, not worse chance of getting it right. Start from where we are on these topics, which is definitely not nowhere.

bondarchuk 3y ago

Philosophy of mind is simply a trainwreck, not too long ago completely idiotic stuff like "the chinese room argument" and "the zombie argument" passed for the state of the art of the field. I'm more inclined to take a well-reasoned HN comment seriously than anything coming out of that field.

ryanklee 3y ago
Again, these are just empty objections.
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  Why empty? I gave specific examples of arguments that are considered acceptable within contemporary philosophy of mind, that are so nonsensical I don't think we should use them as a barrier for giving your own thoughts on consciousness. Meanwhile you are objecting to anyone commenting on these things without linking to any specific comments or mentioning lines of argument that you object to, nor naming any specific theories you believe should be engaged with. So my objection is much less empty than yours. I've read quite intensely (for a layman, alright) into philosophy of mind over the years and I've come to believe there's not much to be gained from engaging with it, vs. presenting your ideas in a self-contained manner or with reference to neuroscience or AI theory.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    Calling something idiotic without details is an empty objection. Calling two of the most powerful thought experiments in philosophy of mind and consciousness idiotic without details is less than empty, it's ridiculous. My objection has nothing to do with "links". I am objecting to the method of acting as if there haven't been hundreds and hundreds of years of work on this subject. That's not an empty objection. It's pointing out that the method is wrong. Which is a substantive point. It doesn't have to be followed up with my own naive theory on the subject to be so.
    - bondarchuk 3y ago

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

Why don't you try educating rather than berating? What models do you think are actually worth studying? Give concrete examples. You can't just wave vaguely at a concept and say people are ignoring everything that has come before them. It's not obvious to me that existing lines of inquiry are going to lead to a successful model of consciousness. In particular, my sense is that the AI revolution has provided us with more key insights than thousands of years of philosophical inquiry. But like you said, maybe I'm just ignorant of existing work. I'm happy to be proven wrong. Have you considered that not all readers might've been afforded the same educational opportunities as yourself? People are engaging with openness and curiosity, exploring ideas. You're just telling them to shut up until they've read a bunch of existing work which might not even provide them a meaningful answer. I think trying to shut down any kind of conversation because someone hasn't spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying a field goes against the spirit of Hacker News.

keiferski 3y ago

I don't disagree that the tech community is unprepared to deal with these subjects, but this sort of comment is really not helpful. It's fine to be critical, but at least share some links [1] or give a hint as to where you think most commenters go wrong. Otherwise, this comment merely adds negativity to an important discussion. [1] Lots of good articles here at SEP, although they can be a bit technical: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=consciousness https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=consciou...

ryanklee 3y ago
How is it not helpful to point out that people are not having the kind of conversation that they think they are having, or that their assertions do not have the weight they believe them to have? Presumably most people here are familiar with at least 1 serious intellectual subject. They are welcome to treat another with the same seriousness, and I presume as well they would know how, if they'd just bother to do so.
- keiferski 3y ago
  It's not helpful because you offer no further solutions, only complaints. Nothing in your comment pointed toward anything that helped resolve the problem you are complaining about. Even worse, it just invokes hostility from people that you supposedly want to help educate. When you make these kind of complaints without offering any solutions, it comes across as if you only care about appearing intellectually superior, not being helpful.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    People are out here disregarding entire fields of study, and I'm the one who is pretending to be intellectually superior? If this were a group of willfully ignorant creationists, the simple act of pointing them to the existence of evolutionary studies wouldn't be so easily objected to.