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A comment on What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists. Parent comment

Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by peteretep on Thursday August 11, 2016 @08:08PM (#12272650) 

    > I don't see how
Isn't that just The God of The Gaps? I suspect that many intelligent people 500 years ago wouldn't have been able to "see how" a 500 ton metal object could take controlled flight.

    > That means that a Turing Machine would be able to
    > produce them
Is there any specific reason to think it wouldn't?

    > the scientific community is very opposed to talking
    > about it
It sounds like you're suggesting there's a super-natural force at play, in which case, the scientific community is entirely justified in being opposed to talking about it.
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by wildmusings on Thursday August 11, 2016 @08:15PM (#12272675)
I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm suggesting that there's possibly physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model.

Further, my big problem is with people trying to ignore the problem completely by claiming that there is no Hard Problem or even suggesting that consciousness is not real. It's a total head-in-the-sand position to take but it's the dominant stance.

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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by Retra on Thursday August 11, 2016 @08:30PM (#12272740)
Who is saying consciousness is not real? It just not non-physical and has no single set of hard properties from which to form a definitive boundary for discussion.
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by peteretep on Thursday August 11, 2016 @10:05PM (#12273016)
I'm curious at what point you think agency becomes consciousness. Is it self-awareness? Is a dog conscious? A mouse? A snail? An ant? A bacteria? A tree?
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by wildmusings on Thursday August 11, 2016 @10:27PM (#12273068)
It has nothing to do with agency. I'm talking about the phenomenon of subjective experience. The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world. It would be the difference between you and a philosophical zombie.
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by 0134340 on Thursday August 11, 2016 @11:02PM (#12273165)
If you aren't that "artificial" intelligence and can't put yourself in that subjective experience, how would you know that the AI's subjective experience differs from yours? Because you're relying on material observance? You realize your conundrum now? You have to rely on the material to gauge the material yet you try to invalidate the material experience using material observations.
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Re:What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physic... by ajuc on Friday August 12, 2016 @04:51AM (#12274169)
> The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world.

How do you know there is a qualitative difference?

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