You're taking what should be proven as a premise. He's only "flawed" if he's wrong, which is not really a closed case.
Besides, what's this "he doesn't have to have a reason" thing? He has a reason, and it's exactly the very arguments in TFA.
Anything particularly flawed about his argument in TFA (or him as a person)?
That said early QM had a lot of metaphysical stuff in it for example CCC had a pretty substantial following at the time due to some of the prominent people that supported it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann–Wigner_interpret...
However it’s highly unlikely that the Avon Neumann interpretation is correct given what we know about QM, in fact it was highly unlikely back when the interpretation was initially conjectured.
And this brings me to a personal anecdote I don’t believe that Consciousness Causes Collapse is a correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, I don’t actually have sufficient faculties to argue with someone like Von Neumann on this matter however it just sounds utterly stupid and rediculous to me that a consciousness would be required for QM effects to be manifested.
This is an utterly flawed and poorly constructed logic but I am most likely right in my assumption.
I don't think anyone here paid $40 to read it most people just know to go to SciHub and search for the article :)
If we’re talking about VSI/GAI or some sort of singularity event where people can upload their brains into a computer and remain conscious well then their definition would be which ever legal and common definition society would grant them.
There is absolutely nothing special about intelligence or consciousness and it’s an arbitrary definition in the first place which we put in due to fear of the unknown and our own physical limitations.
Anything beyond that is for the most part intellectual masturbation with little actual value or true insight that can be gained from it.
We created the definition for what is alive, conscious and intelligent based on our limited understanding of the universe and our human centric world view these definitions change as time changes just like every other arbitrary definition we have set in stone in the past.
Same goes for life which is why often we use the phrase life as we know it.
If a cloud of gas can do everything a brain can and we set an arbitrary set of rules of consciousness and it passes the benchmark then it’s conscious based on our arbitrary definition on a cosmic scale it’s still a cloud of dust just like we are lumpy specs of hydrated carbon.
There is no special meaning to life or to consciousness other than the former might be an intrinsic outcome of a universe with an entropy driven arrow of time, and the latter might be an intrinsic outcome of iterative natural selection of self assembling replicating strands of hydrated carbons and other organic molecules.
As far as Boltzmann brains go then a classical Boltzmann brain can actually be disproven even without going into the debate if there is even unbounded amount of randomness in the universe.
As for quantum Boltzmann brains then it’s not again freaky and it heavily is dependent on how you take on physicality.
If you think that the brain is a quantum system then a Boltzmann brain can never be a duplicate of you due to the no cloning theorem.
If the brain is not a QM system but a classical one which is more likely to be the case then classical Boltzmann brains aren’t really possible in our universe.
Overall this is again a philosophical niche not really physics it’s a fun anecdote to ponder not something you should take on seriously.
Now if you want to take evolution as a random activity despite it not being random then we are all Boltzmann brains but again as a whole a Boltzmann brain does not provide any insight into fundamental natural law or useful heuristics for emerging properties so it’s not as much freaky as well pointless.
It's somewhat arbitrary, but hardly utterly. If anything, not only it comes from direct experience, but is also the most constant experience we have.
(That's the point of Descartes cogito ergo sum, btw. We could doubt that the landscape arounds us that we see exists, but we can't really doubt that we think, for to doubt is itself part of thinking).
There is no single objective and useful definition for consciousness in philosophy or natural science other than the clinical definition of being aware and responsive to one's surroundings which technically mean that an ameba can be considered conscious since it's definitely aware of it's surroundings.
And even the clinical definition is arguably not very useful in the grand scheme of things because it does not deal with inanimate objects and the definition of life is murky at best.
So the best the best definition we have for consciousness is a clinical definition which is only applicable to life as we know it which has nothing to do with what ever you were talking about, hence utterly arbitrary.
There's nothing arbitrary about it. All of those ("thought", "doubt", "inner monolog") go hand in hand with consciousness in the common sense, and at worst case, they are phenomena that presuppose it (secondary effects).
It's also quite common in discussions regarding qualia for consciousness to include "self consciousness", not some low level awareness of surroundings that it's not aware of itself.
Else a Rumba is also conscious.
>And even the clinical definition is arguably not very useful in the grand scheme of things because it does not deal with inanimate objects and the definition of life is murky at best.
Well, everything's murky if you try hard enough. Still, aside from some corner cases (e.g. are viruses living, are robots?) life is as clear cut as things come.
>So the best the best definition we have for consciousness is a clinical definition which is only applicable to life as we know it which has nothing to do with what ever you were talking about
It makes sense it has "nothing to do" with what I was talking about, since that's a definition you brought forward here and put up as the "best" and single useful one.
It might be the simpler to test for, or the most useful for medical use. But it's even murkier than mine (since "awareness" itself reintroduces the issue). If we were to be content with low-level awareness then a Roomba is conscious, as it is in a way aware of its surroundings too.
When we discuss consciousness, qualia, etc, we go beyond this basic definition. That doesn't make it "utterly arbitrary" -- if that was the case any random definition would do.
Again an arbitrary definition based on a human centric view.
It's quite possible that we will develop an AI that would fall under what we would consider consciousness that has no inner monolog, on the other hand it's also quite possible that we'll develop AIs that come no where near consciousness with one.
Consciousness as you continue to use it is an utterly arbitrary and irrelevant definition you can set an arbitrary benchmark for any arbitrary type of consciousness you want this is simply defining heuristics which is while can be a useful tool in some cases is not natural law or anything other than arbitrary.
> Else a Rumba is also conscious.
And what would be the problem or wrong with that? If the definition that supports Rumba being a conscious contraption is a useful heuristic model for you then use it there is no wrong or right with arbitrary definitions there is just useful or not.
That, like the rest of the arguments, it would expand the reach of consciousness so much as to make it meaningless.
Like GP, I'm hoping someone with the time and inclination will summarise that argument for us.
The cutting edge of physics is often borderline metaphysical and well to a point nonsensical especially when you rely heavily on flawed thought expriements and unable to construct any good experimental ones.
Issac Newton also believed in things we would laugh about and heck even back then were considered a laughing stock by scientists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_stud...