Just to clarify, I disagree that materialism is the one true way (re: your "believe in ghosts" quip), even though I'm quite aware that Searle is not a cartesian

Just to clarify, I disagree that materialism is the one true way (re: your "believe in ghosts" quip), even though I'm quite aware that Searle is not a cartesian dualist (which is why I made the comment about what our "brains do"). Philosophy of mind-wise, I'm much more in line with folks like Chalmers, though not fully bought in there, either. And yes, by "AGI nonsense" I meant that "ChatGPT isn't a step toward human-like AGI" since the main chatter these days is about how ChatGPT/Claude/etc. is the harbinger of AGI. I think Searle's argument is particularly strong because you don't even have to believe in something "spooky" happening in our heads. In fact, I'd probably extend "AGI nonsense" to "AGI is flat out not possible" but that's more of a hunch and the full argument invokes things like the non-computability of various physical phenomena.