perceptronium, huh?

i don't think it's as complicated as philosophers would have you believe. they've just been stumbling around in the dark all these years, looking for a light switch. i hardly think somebody that lived before the age of computers could possibly have a single worthwhile thing to say about consciousness. i'm not really interested in hard or soft problems. i'm convinced it's just electricity running through circuits, and we just have to understood the physical properties of the circuits. while we understand that quantum mechanics governs the behaviour of matter, i don't see any reason why it's at all fundamental to understanding consciousness. the classical approximation is probably good enough.

a dozen philosophers will object, but what they have to say isn't based on empirical studies and is not worth seriously contemplating.

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d

so, no. this is crazy talk.

i mean, you could say something about a system working holistically. but you could apply the same reasoning to a paperclip factory. you take out a component, the whole thing falls apart. that doesn't mean you can't understand how it works by examining the components, and deduce that the functioning is a result of the components working together.

clearly, it's a complicated thing. but i reject the idea that it transcends mechanical explanations.

if you're really convinced that there has to be something deeper, the answer is going to lie somewhere in studying dna. which seems like i'm putting off the question. but i reject the idea that there's something more to it than that.

as mentioned: i'm not really interested in this (i'm suspecting this appeared in my feed as a reaction to some recent rambling and feel obligated to respond, but i have problems with solipsism), but a quick run through wiki suggests i roughly agree with daniel dennett. there isn't really a hard problem. well, it certainly *was* a hard problem to somebody living in even the not so distant past. but lots of hard problems turn out to have unremarkable solutions...

regarding qualia, i'll never forget the way i watched a philosophy prof take down a stoner in a class on german idealism.

"how do we know that what's red to me is red to you?"
"because we understand the theory of wavelengths."
"but..."
"no. it's a wavelength. it's not subjective at all."

i smiled. it was nice to hear.