If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
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Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#2If this is true then the higher you go, the more lonely it becomes.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#3From the abstract it sounds like the author here is drawing a false equivalence between consciousness and intelligence. Reading more into the article, it really sounds like this is the case. More specifically, it sounds like the only connection between intelligence and consciousness comes out of some pretty strained definition usage.
Digging deeper, the issue I see with this essay is that to accept the end conclusion, you have to say "I'll allow it" to a lot of tenuous conjectures.
I think it's totally fine to say that the USA may have some form of emergent intelligence, however to make it out to be an organism is strained. This essay would have been a lot stronger if the author had tried to argue that the USA has emergent intelligence.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#4Sounds like the plot to Metal Gear Solid 2
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#5The author has perhaps overlooked CAP theorem. Consciousness requires both consistency and high-availability, thus it can't arise in situations of partitioned networks.
Brains (or, at least, most healthy brains) are unpartitioned. But any given community of brains is at best intermittently connected: I wave to my neighbour, then my neighbour disappears from sight. I call my parents on the phone, then the phonecall terminates. I have a tab open to a webpage, but then my attention shifts to another tab.
Perhaps consciousness could eventually arise from individual machines or the internet more broadly, but I can't see an argument for it happening in something as loose as "the United States".
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#6[deleted]
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#7I have no idea what is meant by materialism in this context
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#8The author has perhaps overlooked CAP theorem. Consciousness requires both consistency and high-availability, thus it can't arise in situations of partitioned networks. Brains (or, at least, most healthy brains) are unpartitioned. But any given community of brains is at best intermittently connected: I wave to my neighbour, then my neighbour disappears from sight. I call my parents on the phone, then the phonecall te…
We don't actually know how much the neurons in a given brain pay attention to each other. The part of me that learnt to ride a bicycle probably just sits there idle while I type this comment here. Logically, they might as well have been partitioned. Your example of switching between tasks is another great example of how parts of our brain don't really need high-availability.
In fact, many psychological studies from the last century contest this idea of consciousness requiring either consistency or high-availability.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#9I have no idea what is meant by materialism in this context
That consciousness arises from the physical world and not something like the soul.
Re: If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious (2015)
#10[deleted]