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Again, I think you are focusing on differences at the fringes. I understand your argument, and I think my contention with your view is perhaps tainted by the fa

Again, I think you are focusing on differences at the fringes. I understand your argument, and I think my contention with your view is perhaps tainted by the fact that I have met people with similar viewpoints who ultimately arrive at the conclusion "I can only be sure that I am real, everyone else is a construct of my mind" and I find that view to be completely despicable and even moreso- completely asinine. But this isn't really what you are saying. You are right, it is quite clear that consciousness is some kind of spectrum, and people have different, perhaps even wildly different qualia from the same stimuli. My only real contention, I suppose, is that this does not suggest at all that some people are so different that we can only consider them to be virtual, without consciousness, or even simply constructs of our own imagination.

ben_w 2y ago
> Again, I think you are focusing on differences at the fringes. Ah, I see. My perspective is that this comes up so often, in so many people, that it reveals an underlying truth: there's no such thing as "normal", not even in humans. As you say, we agree that it's a spectrum :) > "I can only be sure that I am real, everyone else is a construct of my mind" No solipsism here: even though is unclear to me how to determine the boundaries, I still have a probability distribution that's got most of its mass somewhere between "most humans are conscious" and "most big mammals are conscious" — the fact I can't prove either panpsychists or A J Ayer wrong doesn't mean I have to take either seriously. Now, that said, "most" humans. There's people who act like they're not really there. Is that behaviour indicative of an inner absence? IDK. Even in the most extreme human case, that of anencephaly (*do not* google that unless you have an iron stomach), I'd rather not let them be treated poorly, for the same reasons I will never consume insect-based food: just because they fall outside the region where I put most of my probability of finding consciousness, doesn't mean I'm actually confident that it's absent. (This also applies to AI, but as they share zero evolutionary history I have zero reason to expect an AI which does have subjective experience mapping "what they do" and "how do they feel about it" in anything like the way we do; could be all laughs and smiles on the outside while hating every second, just as Stephen Fry describes some of his depressive episodes, except even then this is over-anthropomorphising and even an AI modelled on a human brain scan may be much more different from this example than any two humans are different from each other).

ben_w 2y ago

> Again, I think you are focusing on differences at the fringes. Ah, I see. My perspective is that this comes up so often, in so many people, that it reveals an underlying truth: there's no such thing as "normal", not even in humans. As you say, we agree that it's a spectrum :) > "I can only be sure that I am real, everyone else is a construct of my mind" No solipsism here: even though is unclear to me how to determine the boundaries, I still have a probability distribution that's got most of its mass somewhere between "most humans are conscious" and "most big mammals are conscious" — the fact I can't prove either panpsychists or A J Ayer wrong doesn't mean I have to take either seriously. Now, that said, "most" humans. There's people who act like they're not really there. Is that behaviour indicative of an inner absence? IDK. Even in the most extreme human case, that of anencephaly (*do not* google that unless you have an iron stomach), I'd rather not let them be treated poorly, for the same reasons I will never consume insect-based food: just because they fall outside the region where I put most of my probability of finding consciousness, doesn't mean I'm actually confident that it's absent. (This also applies to AI, but as they share zero evolutionary history I have zero reason to expect an AI which does have subjective experience mapping "what they do" and "how do they feel about it" in anything like the way we do; could be all laughs and smiles on the outside while hating every second, just as Stephen Fry describes some of his depressive episodes, except even then this is over-anthropomorphising and even an AI modelled on a human brain scan may be much more different from this example than any two humans are different from each other).