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We don't! We've gotten into philosophy, which is always a blast to ponder over. Aside from measuring brain activity and making observations, all we really know

by d4mi3n 2y ago

We don't! We've gotten into philosophy, which is always a blast to ponder over. Aside from measuring brain activity and making observations, all we really know is that awareness seems to be an emergent property of our biology. That said, we _do_ know how probabilistic models work and we do know that a calculator doesn't think or have awareness in the way we consider ourselves to.

NateEag 2y ago
> we do know that a calculator doesn't think or have awareness in the way we consider ourselves to. If only this were true. Some people take panpsychism seriously, and while it may sound ludicrous at first blush, it isn't actually unreasonable. Hard materialist reductionism may be true but no one's really given an irrefutable explanation for the oddity which is consciousness. It's tempting to say "Things that don't respond to stimulus are obviously not self-aware", but see locked-in syndrome for a falsification of that claim.