I don't want to read comments, but I can’t be the only one who wrote a script to click forever and turned the page into a chaotic, laggy nightmare. Pure art honestly
I've never quite seen eye to eye with Daniel Dennett. His tendency to reduce the inexplicable to what he's confident he understands has always made me wonder if a challenging childhood might have fostered his distrust of the mysterious. Whenever I admire Nobel Prize laureates like Roger Penrose, who argue that consciousness isn't just software running on the brain's hardware, I can't help but feel a twinge of pity for Dennett and his like-minded peers. I can almost hear him reflecting, 'Wow, that was a wild ride, but boy, was I cranky! I wish I could have another go at it.
There is an infinity of mysterious things one could posit, including an infinity of mutually incompatible mysteries. How do you decide which mysteries are worthy of consideration?
Personally, I think starting with things are known to exist, which have a physical basis, is a great start, and untestable assumptions should be kept to a minimum. Just because it would be delightful to contemplate that ornately feathered technicolor quantum unicorns are actually underlying all of reality, it isn't productive to consider until there is a reason to.
Penrose is no doubt a genius of high order in his domain, but consciousness is not one of his domains. Saying consciousness is the result of quantum effects in microtubules explains nothing -- it is just a very tiny rug which one could imagine is hiding the truth, as all the larger scale hiding places have been inspected and found lacking.
You'd think that with the stunning (and mostly unexpected) success of LLMs would expose the fact that simple, soul-free, mechanistic computations can produce some really amazing capabilities. The human brain is orders of magnitude larger than GPT4, plus it has a wildly more complex architecture than today's neural networks. To me, it takes little imagination to see how everything could be explained in purely physical terms.
Consciousness is the most obvious mystery, one that undoubtedly warrants considerable attention.
Your point about starting with physical things is questionable, as highlighted by prominent figures like Penrose and Donald Hoffman. The fundamentalism of materialism is an axiom that lacks proof.
Perhaps to you 'saying consciousness is the result of quantum effects in microtubules explains nothing', but so does Dennett's saying 'consciousness is an illusion', which equals 'I'm not sure what it is, but I will dismiss it because I would rather ridicule the unknown than accept my ignorance.'
At least Penrose denies what is deniable to open the door for a broader perspective, something that Dennett failed at.
I bet you think an LLM can experience what the color red feels like, or it can feel the scent of a rose, if it's fed enough 1/0's about it.
> Saying consciousness is the result of quantum effects in microtubules explains nothing -- it is just a very tiny rug which one could imagine is hiding the truth, as all the larger scale hiding places have been inspected and found lacking.
It also doesn't conflict with physicalism. I think he's trying to argue that consciousness would need more than you can do with a classical computer, but it doesn't seem to imply that. Classical computers are made of hardware components that rely on quantum effects to work, but that doesn't make them "quantum computers".
Well quantum computers definitely have "quantum magic"; for some reason the universe lets us build something that can do Shor's algorithm in less than forever. Even if we can't actually do it yet.
But it doesn't seem like human brains are doing Shor's algorithm.
Being a Nobel laureate isn't evidence that you're right about anything after that. I'm sorry you'd like the supernatural to be true but you should find some ghosts first if you want anyone to believe in them.
Understand things? He has never successfully explained anything related to consciousness except by using the magical word: illusion. One might argue back, 'You're the illusion, Mr. Dennett,' and we end up as a bunch of ignorant folks pointing fingers.
> His tendency to reduce the inexplicable to what he's confident he understands
Coming up with theories to explain the inexplicable is literally science.
Also, suggesting that Dennet's philosophy stems from a "challenging childhood" is argument ad hominem, because it focuses on the person, rather than on the content of the philosophy.
To continue the discussion in the same tone that you began it, perhaps you don't see eye to eye with him because he challenges your beliefs.
It's a revolutionary thing, but I'll reserve my judgment until I see if it can handle the real challenge: creating a video where my code works perfectly on the first try.
Brazil is truly "samba"-rific, hitting a high note with 92.4% of its electricity by renewables. It seems they're not just good at producing great music and football talent. Obrigado, Brazil, for showing us how it's done!
IMO it's not that there 'were' multiple species and only we survived; we are still multiple species, but we don't point that out for cultural correctness. Yes, the extent of our differences has narrowed as we passed through survival bottlenecks, but we never became a single species.
To be pedantic about the fuzziness of the "species" delineation, not every human is capable of producing viable, non-sterile offspring (breeding partner notwithstanding).
The fact that some individuals are sterile has nothing whatsoever to do with species delineation. If there were entire pairs of population groups, say the Ainu and the Xhosa, which can no longer produce viable offspring with each other due to generic distance, then we could begin a conversation about speciation of homo sapiens. But there aren't, so we don't.
Given that there is a single species of human today and most of us have some percentage of Neanderthal DNA, it seems that we are one species today and we were also one species in the past (since we could and did interbreed)
That is tautologically true, considering how Neanderthal is an offshoot of Sapiens.
The question maybe worth asking is just how far they split off, compared to how far we are split off today (or maybe in the pre-modern era, I would expect us to be merging fast since then).
This is complete bullshit. We've sequenced neanderthal DNA and can tell exactly how much modern people have in common.
If you want to promote some scientifically-accurate racism, the only "pure-blooded" homo sapiens come from central and southern Africa, everyone else is just a little bit neanderthal.
Right? Arthur Clarke has a story in which our long lost cousins finally come to rescue us from the shipwreck millennia ago, and offer also to correct the genetic mutation that reduces skin pigment...
About me:
• Over ten years of experience in back-end and front-end development across various technologies
• Background in advertising and media production
• Deeply interested in blockchain, e-mobility, fintech, alt-energy, and HPC
• Focused on freelancing but open for full-time contract
Example projects:
• Lead the design and implementation of a scalable, domain-driven NFT marketplace for enterprise clients, focusing on integration with Aventus blockchains and support for diverse payment options including fiat and crypto
• Implementing the back-end of 2 mobile apps utilizing Aventus blockchains as a utility
• Developed robust payment gateway, that is a Golang microservices solution, for Verifone, with a focus on performance and alternative payment methods
• Created the next generation of the My Basic-Fit fitness management platform
Such incidents mark the end of an era. The diminishing relevance of traditional media in the digital age is afoot.
I feel sorry for those who feed their families through this industry, but they need to learn and adapt before it's too late.
Even if this lawsuit finds merit, it's akin to temporarily holding back a tsunami with a mere stick. A momentary reprieve, but not a sustainable solution.
I agree with those who say power matters. There are players out there who don't care about copyrights. They will win if the "good guys" fall into the trap of protecting old information models by limiting the potential of new tech.
Such event should be a clear signal: evolve or risk obsolescence.
I agree that the tide is turning, but I don't think the argument that actual criminal behavior (I don't know if that's what OpenAI did, but that's what NYT alleges) should be glossed over in the name of progress.
Insightful articulation of the concept of technical debt (likening it to a financial loan) but it somewhat oversimplifies the nuanced and often non-linear nature of software development. I observe that technical debt is not always a straight trade-off between speed and future maintenance. Sometimes, what appears as debt could be a strategic decision aligned with evolving business goals or market demands. The article underestimates the dynamic nature of software projects where initial assumptions might change, making the so-called 'debt' a necessary step in the process of innovation and adaptation. This perspective fails to acknowledge that in certain scenarios, adhering too rigidly to best practices can lead to missed opportunities or an inability to pivot quickly in response to user feedback or changing market conditions.
