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I think some problems are simple enough that they can be dealt with "blindly", but some problems turned out to be tricky in special ways that evolution was more

I think some problems are simple enough that they can be dealt with "blindly", but some problems turned out to be tricky in special ways that evolution was more able to solve via consciousness than blind information processing. And from there, we find ourselves, with that new capability in hand, able to repurpose consciousness to newer and newer things. Then retrospectively it can look like consciousness wasn't "needed" for certain problems. So I think even if you want to make the sense that consciousness solves a lot of problems it doesn't need to, it may have been a "real" solution to a "real" problem at some point in our history. And from that point on, it was no longer important whether it was the best solution. I do think it's fair to say that lots of remarkably complex informational problems are solved in a p-zombie way, which is to say, with every outward appearance of intelligence (slime molds solving mazes, collective behaviors of ants). So I do think evolution or nature writ large "agrees" with you that consciousness isn't strictly necessary.

calf 3y ago
There's also the idea of the "hive mind" of ants and bees, so maybe quite literally our brains efficiently evolved as a meta-hive-mind internalized by our network of neurons.
- glenstein 3y ago
  That's an incredible way of thinking about it. I would say that is the most creditable way of dealing with the question of consciousness as it would apply to collective behavior, which is to say, it is a clear way of stating the difference between what those behaviors are, and how far removed they are from actual consciousness, without dismissing the "interestingness" of the behavior. I would suspect though, that in our case it may have been something like centralized "nerve cluster" getting more and more complicated over time rather than anything that is in any sense a hive, although that is a very imaginative idea.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    The intermediate Value Theorem, in existential form: A single one of my brain cells is not me, but all of my brain cells is me. Somewhere between these two endpoints there is a line where me has to begin, and not me ends.

calf 3y ago

There's also the idea of the "hive mind" of ants and bees, so maybe quite literally our brains efficiently evolved as a meta-hive-mind internalized by our network of neurons.

glenstein 3y ago
That's an incredible way of thinking about it. I would say that is the most creditable way of dealing with the question of consciousness as it would apply to collective behavior, which is to say, it is a clear way of stating the difference between what those behaviors are, and how far removed they are from actual consciousness, without dismissing the "interestingness" of the behavior. I would suspect though, that in our case it may have been something like centralized "nerve cluster" getting more and more complicated over time rather than anything that is in any sense a hive, although that is a very imaginative idea.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  The intermediate Value Theorem, in existential form: A single one of my brain cells is not me, but all of my brain cells is me. Somewhere between these two endpoints there is a line where me has to begin, and not me ends.