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Is Consciousness Everywhere?

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#141

Post by n4r9 »

morpheos137 wrote: post #95
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be able to, but it doesn't seem to generalize to scientists in general: https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-life-its-vast-diversi...

I was creating an operational definition. Of course others disagree. That is how words work. They have narrower and broader meanings to different people or in different contexts. The fact the others disagree with my operational definition does not invalidate my operational definition which stands on its own. Gp asserted "We don't know how to define life." I put forth a closed definition of life that makes sense. Othe…

The difficulty I think is not in proposing a coherent definition, but in capturing precisely the shared understanding of what people mean when they say something is "alive".

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#142

Post by forgotmypw17 »

RichardCA wrote: post #132
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, i have read the book, and it is full of detailed descriptions of experiments with references. as a hacker, you should have little difficulty finding these and reviewing them. unfortunately, i have not the time or motivation to be your personal research assistant.

Well, then, it's a real shame that he never tried to claim the Randi Prize.

Why would he give a rat's ass about someone's hostile contest?

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#144

Post by forgotmypw17 »

xVedun wrote: post #114
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

I would be curious to see how the author would respond to this fairly detailed criticism of his book: [1] One excerpt from this amazon review goes "If you are impressed by statistics, blips on fMRI screens, taking correlations as proof of causality and meta-analysis as equal to replication, then you might like this book. If you are interested in what wild speculations parapsychologists are coming up with these days,…

The other day I was riding the train and a guy called me an idiot. Are you also interested in knowing how I responded to his claim?

why did you choose to post that particular review out of all the others? why not, for example, this one?

"Consider the possibly that classical physics is not only wrong but way wrong." "A wild ride through the data supporting psi. I was for many years a reductionist like Michael Shermer. However, after reading more and books like this, my mind has accepted the reality that we know very little about where we came from and what really drives our human..."

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#145

Post by brighton36 »

geophile wrote: post #12

I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable, and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from five years ago and this one seem intercha…

We're eating the menu instead of the food.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#146

Post by forgotmypw17 »

tayo42 wrote: post #120
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

> There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, I'm skeptical of this claim in general, there's a lot of research that either isn't reliable, biased or gets twisted to support a claim. Then this i think becomes pop science, low quality sounds realistic to me kind of things. When you have to emphasize "based on science" my bs sensor goes o…

well, from past experience, if i don,t address the ,,hard science,, aspect of it, i just get laughed at, especially at a place like here, where scientific beliefs reign supreme. that,s why i stress that fact.

i found it not only convincing, but also to have practical applications which are not difficult to arrive at with a little thinking.

if you are a well-intentioned tinkerer and hacker not limiting yourself to digital devices with a manual, you may find it intriguing.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#147

Post by anoonmoose »

andi999 wrote: post #92
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

The Amazon description says: "Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab test". Actually as far as I understand we know that telepathy does not work, and even more so with psychokinesis. Did you read the book, can you point me to the scientific evidence of psychokinesis?

I can point you to probably the last time Radin's work was ripped apart on HN, at least.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#148

Post by Jeff_Brown »

The claim that a more complex system is capable of a richer experience seems like exactly the sort of baseless chauvinism that the article begins by taking on. Also "richer" seems like it could use a definition.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#149

Post by fortunes_favors »

geophile wrote: post #12

I have been hearing about Koch, and Tononi, and panpsychism, and phi for years now, in these articles summarizing consciousness for laymen, (a group that includes me). And these very long articles bloviate but never go any further than giving a facile description of phi, claiming that this IIT "theory" is testable, and then not saying how it could be tested. The articles from five years ago and this one seem intercha…

You're correct that the mathematical veneer proposed here is bullshit - however the philosophical argument presented is perfectly sound. In these matters it's a mistake to adhere to the scientistic fallacy that the only things that are true are those that can be directly observed or quantified.

Re: Is Consciousness Everywhere?

#150

Post by anoonmoose »

kharak wrote: post #60
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures…

Is there a good podcast or Youtube video for starters? Highly sceptic of the idea and therefore intrigued.

You can start with the last time Radin's work was savaged in the comments of an HN article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233

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