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You should try harder not to assume the people you're talking to are morons. The person you're debating doesn't think evolution is going away, not even a little

by ellyagg 12y ago

You should try harder not to assume the people you're talking to are morons. The person you're debating doesn't think evolution is going away, not even a little bit, not even for a second. That you don't recognize this means you should be more charitable in understanding his point of view.

macspoofing 12y ago
>That you don't recognize this means you should be more charitable in understanding his point of view. Should that understanding have come before or after being accused of 'Scientism', which feels like an insult, but I can't be sure because I don't really know what that means in context. >The person you're debating doesn't think evolution is going away, not even a little bit, not even for a second. I didn't imply that he did. The point I was trying to get across is that there are some real constraints on the type of explanations we'll have with respect to Consciousness. We are not going to need unknown exotic physics to explain it, and whatever the answer is it will stay comfortably within the current Evolutionary framework. Obviously that could be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it. This should not be a controversial statement.
md224 12y ago
Eh, I'm willing to cut them some slack. I talked about science as a continuous process of revision, which might give the impression that I'm making a Pessimistic Induction argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimistic_induction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimistic_induction) against all scientific conclusions. I think macspoofing was just trying to counter with examples of scientific theories that seem pretty airtight, and that's fair. Also I basically accused them of falling prey to mindless Scientism, which was admittedly a bit harsh (seeing people attribute "magical" explanations to skeptics can trigger my rage mode, apparently). Anyway, this whole thing is very controversial (they don't call the Hard Problem "hard" for no reason), and I can see the appeal of trying to safeguard the scientific process of knowledge-building from the messy weirdness of subjective experience. Time will tell if consciousness can be explained by a more advanced physics. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

by ellyagg 12y ago

macspoofing 12y ago

>That you don't recognize this means you should be more charitable in understanding his point of view. Should that understanding have come before or after being accused of 'Scientism', which feels like an insult, but I can't be sure because I don't really know what that means in context. >The person you're debating doesn't think evolution is going away, not even a little bit, not even for a second. I didn't imply that he did. The point I was trying to get across is that there are some real constraints on the type of explanations we'll have with respect to Consciousness. We are not going to need unknown exotic physics to explain it, and whatever the answer is it will stay comfortably within the current Evolutionary framework. Obviously that could be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it. This should not be a controversial statement.

md224 12y ago

Eh, I'm willing to cut them some slack. I talked about science as a continuous process of revision, which might give the impression that I'm making a Pessimistic Induction argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimistic_induction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimistic_induction) against all scientific conclusions. I think macspoofing was just trying to counter with examples of scientific theories that seem pretty airtight, and that's fair. Also I basically accused them of falling prey to mindless Scientism, which was admittedly a bit harsh (seeing people attribute "magical" explanations to skeptics can trigger my rage mode, apparently). Anyway, this whole thing is very controversial (they don't call the Hard Problem "hard" for no reason), and I can see the appeal of trying to safeguard the scientific process of knowledge-building from the messy weirdness of subjective experience. Time will tell if consciousness can be explained by a more advanced physics. I'm certainly looking forward to it.