I didn’t particularly note the tag before reading, and that’s not the reason for my downvote.
I downvoted because it’s a lot of assertions that may have some truth, it doesn’t do any better than what it complains about in terms of alternatives.
The problem with truly exploring meaninglessness or solipsism is that you disprove it by trying to explain it in mechanisms that other humans (who don’t have anything special in terms of feeling/meaning) will be convinced by.
Much like free will: the true model may not be the most useful model.
I’m not trying to explain meaninglessness, the point is to put forward a position that is actually compatible with the facts of the evolution of nervous systems, in as simple terms as possible, then using that to explore the impossibility of consciousness on transistors. And to also explain that the reason computationalism is palettable, is due to cognitive biases built into our culture that we inherited from Christian Dualism.
If I failed at that I’d appreciate some feedback. I’m guessing it’s because I underestimated how much hatred is involved in the US culture war and comparing rationalists with Christian mythology gets people’s backs up.
I think you’ve failed at that. I don’t think you’ve made ANY progress toward showing consciousness is impossible on transistors (nor on variations of neural connectedness, nor in the Sun). You’ve asserted (correctly IMO), but not shown that it may be possible to have human-level behaviors without consciousness. Kind of—the fundamental dissonance that I experience things which I cannot prove to others nor measure objectively in them remains, and the only thing I can say for sure is “eh, I don’t know, but they sure seem conscious, and I don’t know what would PREVENT those feelings in sufficiently-complex transistor processing”.
I also don’t think the case for “computationalism is only accepted because of Christian heritage” is very well-made either. At least I am not convinced—that’s just one of many possibilities for the causality arrows of untestable beliefs.
What about the evolution of nervous systems needing will at the bottom? The guy in Searle’s Chinese Room? I think I should probably work on those a bit. And be a bit more charitable towards Hofstadter too.
I didn’t particularly note the tag before reading, and that’s not the reason for my downvote.
I downvoted because it’s a lot of assertions that may have some truth, it doesn’t do any better than what it complains about in terms of alternatives.
The problem with truly exploring meaninglessness or solipsism is that you disprove it by trying to explain it in mechanisms that other humans (who don’t have anything special in terms of feeling/meaning) will be convinced by.
Much like free will: the true model may not be the most useful model.
I’m not trying to explain meaninglessness, the point is to put forward a position that is actually compatible with the facts of the evolution of nervous systems, in as simple terms as possible, then using that to explore the impossibility of consciousness on transistors. And to also explain that the reason computationalism is palettable, is due to cognitive biases built into our culture that we inherited from Christian Dualism.
If I failed at that I’d appreciate some feedback. I’m guessing it’s because I underestimated how much hatred is involved in the US culture war and comparing rationalists with Christian mythology gets people’s backs up.
I think you’ve failed at that. I don’t think you’ve made ANY progress toward showing consciousness is impossible on transistors (nor on variations of neural connectedness, nor in the Sun). You’ve asserted (correctly IMO), but not shown that it may be possible to have human-level behaviors without consciousness. Kind of—the fundamental dissonance that I experience things which I cannot prove to others nor measure objectively in them remains, and the only thing I can say for sure is “eh, I don’t know, but they sure seem conscious, and I don’t know what would PREVENT those feelings in sufficiently-complex transistor processing”.
I also don’t think the case for “computationalism is only accepted because of Christian heritage” is very well-made either. At least I am not convinced—that’s just one of many possibilities for the causality arrows of untestable beliefs.
What about the evolution of nervous systems needing will at the bottom? The guy in Searle’s Chinese Room? I think I should probably work on those a bit. And be a bit more charitable towards Hofstadter too.