That's a bit like saying phlogiston is an unexplained part of physical theory. Once you understand the underlying mechanics of thought, it stops being mysterious and really stops being a problem at all.
Weird, because if I were to create a list of everything ranked by how confident I am that the listed item exists, consciousness would be at the very top by a wide margin. Everything else could just be a nice illusion (e.g., brain in a vat).
It depends on what you mean. We understand that it is a mechanical, computational process. As opposed to, say, the reigning theory of mind in philosophical circles which is dualist. (Spiritualism in academia in the 21st century... sigh.)
We have not yet mapped out the wiring diagrams of our brains which result in the human experience of consciousness. But that's a technological limitation in brain scanning and simulation. We also haven't yet created AI machines that exhibit what we would call consciousness, but we have good ideas of how to do so and are making progress. In both cases we know there is no need to invoke dualist answers, whether it be souls, ghosts in the machine, or 'qualia.'
>> We also haven't yet created AI machines that exhibit what we would call consciousness, but we have good ideas of how to do so and are making progress.
That's news to me. What do you mean? What are those good ideas that we have and that we are making progress towards, that will lead us to conscious machines?
Actually: conscious software. Presumably, if we can get to strong AI from where we are right now, then we already have the hardware and we just need to figure out how to write the software?
I never said there was broad consensus among all philosophers and physicists, etc. It takes generations for these ideas to truly die, just as it did with other widely believed falsehoods. No one really attacked consciousness from a mechanistic perspective until Turing, and that work wasn't followed up on outside of the AI community until the 70's and 80's, and it wouldn't be until very recent advances in AI that others took these philosophical ideas originating from computer science seriously.
So in the philosophy of physics and the mind, there are whole departments filled with tenured professors who came of age in their thinking at a time when consciousness was a Hard Problem, and have focused their mental tools on a class of solutions (qualia, observer-triggered wave collapse, etc.) which are irreconcilable with mechanistic physical reality, making the problem even more intractable and mysterious. It'll take another generation or two before the ideas of Dennett, Dawkins, Tegmark, etc. get more widely recognized and consciousness finally goes the way of phlogiston.
For references, I recommend Dennett's "Consciousness Explained", and really anything by Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins--materialistic explanations of consciousness pervade their work. For a compatible (hah!) physical perspective, I suggest Max Tegmark:
I feel like this is a bit of an oversimplification of a complicated topic. For example, qualia is not a solution, it's a problem! And while Dennett does present an interesting picture (especially in the way he resolves qualia), there is a reason his book is nicknamed "Consciousness Explained Away" -- he simply defines away many of the interesting parts of the problem.
Also, I don't really like the way you're describing these professors of philosophy. These people have spent their lives studying this problem and adjacent topics. Sure you may be absolutely convinced that "things that conflict with our understanding of mechanistic physical reality must be untrue," others believe "what almost all people perceive to be true about their internal experience cannot be dismissed when discussing the nature of that experience." I think this topic is much more debatable than you are making it out to be.
The phlogiston is an elegant argument in this context that regresses the discussion. The use of the phlogiston as a criticism is elegant because it allows you to think of consciousness as an element that inhabits the brain and then proclaim that to be wrong, leaving at the end of the story only the physical brain and no room for imagining anything else in that space, without having proven the case.
A phlogiston is not the correct analogy for grounding consciousness in science. An easier fit would be the software/hardware split you find in computing, where the abstractions and meaning we perceive to be real is a set of built layers of computational or logical abstraction.
I am on the side of not thinking you can scientifically ground consciousness with the understanding we have. I don't think either analogy fits and the argument will forever be pinned in debate between characters that prefer their own worldview.
I actually do think that to some extent, studying physics is studying the mind — specifically studying exactly how ‘reality’ differs from our intuition about it. A new discovery in physics is often also a discovery about psychology — for example — relativity exposed our intuition about time and space as incorrect.
So the pronouns thing is literally about being nice to people and respecting their ability to define their own identity. It's less "we need more than two sets of gendered pronouns" and more "people use pronouns other than he or she and we want to make space for that".
And any sort of diversion from that approved narrative, like suggesting that some of this is going a little too far, will make you a pariah in the industry. This is what I'm getting in, in questioning how much "the establishment" allows vigorous debate.
I'm not interested in debating it here, because it could damage my career, which is my point.
In fact, even debating whether I should be able to debate it could damage my career. I believe this widespread use of silencing tactics, by implicit threat, has gone too far.
There are a great many things you can't debate about people. For example, you would be severely censured if you debated whether your colleague's chronic illness really was as bad as they claim it is.
If the position is "I should be able to question and debate anything about my colleagues" then the position is obviously absurd and I would ask a person holding such a view to reevaluate what they think society is. I don't think you would hold such a position.
So, why are you troubled that you can't debate this particular thing, when I'm sure there are things you shouldn't debate about your colleagues?
> So, why are you troubled that you can't debate this particular thing, when I'm sure there are things you shouldn't debate about your colleagues?
I'm troubled by the top-down nature of what is decided to be beyond debate vs not: it feels like it is leading to a scary kind of authoritarianism I don't want.
For fun, I'll throw you a specific plausible hypothetical. If an app has a gender identity field, and a user enters "Apache Helicopter", should this be treated as valid data or not?
Of course it's valid. Look for patterns. If 100 Apache Helicopters sign up for your app, congratulations, you just uncovered a new and very specific marketing segment to target.
> For fun, I'll throw you a specific plausible hypothetical. If an app has a gender identity field, and a user enters "Apache Helicopter", should this be treated as valid data or not?
Depends on what the data is being used for? This is irrelevant, unless you're an app that collects statistics on its colleagues.
Okay. We only need one set of gendered pronouns. Using words from one set for some people, while using words from a different set for other people, is subject to arbitrary interpretation and therefore vulnerable to othering.
Except the "singular they" doesn't exist and in basically a forced change of spoken language by a minority who thinks forcing people is a great way to accomplish things
There's no other way to enact change than force or consensus, or mix of these. Consensus is not going to happen. Languages change very slowly.
Royal We was forced, but in widespread use. This pronoun is an offshoot thereof.
And other languages have even better pronouns than English. Check Chinese and Japanese.
Colleges probably place too much weight on, say, the SAT (which is, I presume, that to which you are referring), but they still use more. Years of report cards, letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, essays, AP exams, SAT subject tests, ACT, personal interviews, "soft factors", and other things that aren't disclosed. I agree it's certainly not perfect, and think it needs improvement, but personally can't think of a way to easily filter the huge numbers of applicants without quantifiable metrics.
The trouble is, making sacrifices for yourself, as a voluntary moral choice, and just expecting other people to do the same is not going to be a successful strategy, because you're up against human nature itself.
Any pragmatic strategy to reduce the impact of climate change must start with international cooperation. From the point of view of the USA, this must start with a new administration. Then, with this cooperation we could find actions not strictly rooted in dreamy idealism, including enforcing the changes in lifestyle you mention at scale. (Through agreements, tariffs, etc.) A real global strategy also needs to involve some very bitter pills and compromises, e.g. taking a fresh look at nuclear, geoengineering research, and having the hard conversations about global population growth in emerging countries, and what people will do in the vast regions of the world which won't be habitable for much longer.
Any other strategy is just wishful thinking, and avoiding the cold hard facts. And the facts on this will catch up. All the trees you can plant or the most frugal lifestyle you are capable of will make precisely zero difference if it isn't based on global cooperation. Andrew Yang in the most recent democratic debate was right: a lot of the damage is already done and some of the discussion needs to be about how we can move to higher ground.
> making sacrifices for yourself, as a voluntary moral choice, and just expecting other people to do the same is not going to be a successful strategy, because you're up against human nature itself.
I have the opposite experience in my life so far (40yo), and I am a perpetrator of this “strategy”.
Ask yourself, for example, why the nature of humans is that hopeless for you. How are the humans around you? (also those in the news)
What if - before fixing earth - i fix myself? My circle of friends, of colleagues, the family... from my most intimate partner to the whole society it looks like a long way .
But I will be surprised how many humans can change for good, just because I was the one changing first.
"Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)."
I think in the USA, it would be more productive to address the 80% as higher priority than reducing the 3%. I think this veganism initiative is also more driven by morality and political partisanship than by an effort to find a realistic and practical solution to GHG emissions. And this can backfire: I believe that a reason why nearly half the country will not even openly admit there is a problem, is because they fear the consequences of political over-reaction more than the problem itself.
Eating less meat is not veganism. It's not even vegetarianism.
It's not the first time that I'm seeing reactions about this report to focus on veganism. I don't understand where it comes from: the word "vegan" is absent from the article and the IPCC report doesn't recommend a any diet.
I understand debate about this report and the impact of agriculture and breeding, but I don't understand why the debate is centered around veganism.
If you trace the origin of most of these low meat consumption pushes, its often vegan groups with an agenda trying to get the governments ear. Problem is, the recommendations and studies they site don't stand up to real scrutiny. For example they often say you should not exceed the RDA for meat consumption, without realizing that an RDA is the bare minimum to not be nutrient deficient. It is by no means the optimal level of protein consumption and likely a detrimental recommendations for the vast majority. When called out on it, they will pull the GHG card, but at 3% of US GHG emission even that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Then they pull the morality card, without realized that row crop harvest kill vastly more small animals per harvest. Its all rooted in bias, plane and simple. The most vocal are the vegans and they make a convincing surface argument.
Indeed. It is not an all or nothing kind of thing. I've been eating less meat lately for a number of reasons, but I'm far from being vegan.
The Skeptical Science link doesn't seem to touch on water usage, only focusing on greenhouse gas emissions. Groundwater decline and depletion is another factor that should be kept in mind as people consider their food choices.
unfortunately, many vegans DO make it seem like an all or nothing issue. The amount of people I know who hate on Reducetarianism is infuriating and incredibly "anti-vegan" to use their own language.
it's a knee jerk reaction when people hear "eat less meat" they think "vegans". It's easier to downplay facts and argue against ghosts when you can associate what you don't like hearing with people who are commonly hated.
Is that 3% number associated with meat production in the USA or with meat consumption in the USA? If it's the former, then 3% would be an underestimate of the impact of reducing meat consumption, since the 3% doesn't include the emissions impact of feed and livestock that is imported.
That is true, but I think the point stands. As (mostly) programmers we're quick to understand and make use of practical rules like Ahmdal's law[1] for optimizing software, and know that you always start by looking at the parts that take the longest. Yet in real life we're sometimes tempted to optimize at the fringes first and ignore the obvious biggest contributing factors first.
or maybe it's possible to address multiple sources of a problem simultaneously?
I see this "not as bad as" fallacy again and again in various different discussions and it is mainly used to downplay issues by comparing them to something worse. There is absolutely no reason we cannot discuss and address one issue without it taking away from other (possibly more impactful) issues. Some issues have less impact but are easier to to solve, and some have more impact but are harder to solve. We absolutely can (and should) work to address them at the same time.
If one is 3% and the other 80%, any effort put on the 3% is only useful to distract from the 80%. It's wasted time. So ideally you don't do both, you focus on the things that matter.
> any effort put on the 3% is only useful to distract from the 80%
How is it a distraction to address the percentage (however small) that we can have as individuals while the larger problems are solved through legislation/technological advancements? They are not mutually exclusive. It's not like people/organizations/governments can only think about/propose/implement one change at a time. It's like making the argument that nobody can do any work on smaller bug fixes while the main code branch is being compiled. Both contribute to the success of the whole, but neither are mutually exclusive given enough manpower (which the world undoubtably has). You can certainly work on hobby projects at home without it taking away from your work in the office.
when we are at a tipping point for climate change and every bit of reduction in greenhouse gases matters, plus the fact that most of the contributors aren't easily affected at an individual level, there is no reason to not address both simultaneously. How most individual humans currently live is unsustainable, period. If we actually want to ensure the continued survival as a species on this planet, we are going to have to change our individual habits at some point. There is no amount of carbon capture/tax that can undo or prevent the destruction of the planets natural resources. You have to address the underlying unsustainability, not just treat the symptom.
That 3% figure prbably doesn't take the global supply chain, deforestation and consumption shift towards western diets in developping and emerging economies into account.
At least in the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change's Global Calculator[1], the food lever seems to be much more powerful than your comment suggests.
well, we know that animal agriculture results in deforestation. so it's not so simple.
one would need to calculate both the carbon output of animal agriculture and - crucially - the carbon that will /permanently/ not be captured via loss of land that serves as a carbon sink (Amazon rain forest is the big one) that results as demand for additional animal agriculture increases.
I would also be curious to find (I can't find any stats) on how much carbon is put back into circulation when people metabolize hydrated carbon a.k.a. carbohydrates. I've done my part to stop consuming carbohydrates and it was not easy.
It depends on whether you have the technical prowess of Jonathan Blow or not? He was able to create game aspects in custom engines that would have been impossible otherwise. E.g. low level sound control in Braid, some amazing use of lighting and reflection in The Witness.
> Where I think it tends to fall down for a modern listener (assuming good recordings, which is not a good assumption) is that it mostly dates from a pre-recording period, so it tends to draw out all of its ideas because it expects the listener can't just rewind and listen to the last few minutes again, and this is the only such music they may hear this month; in modern times this results in a lot of pieces overstaying their welcome. Sometimes by a lot.
What a great point, I hadn't considered this before though it's completely obvious. A lot of fans of classical music though (like myself) still prefer a live performance, where I certainly don't mind hearing a da capo of Beethoven's Fifth at all!
So, breed a future full of inconsiderate people, I guess? If there's one best point thoughtful conservatives have, it's that for a sustainable planet, we need to value good people producing and raising the next generation.
The inability to understand this (ending in antinatalism at the extreme) is perhaps the root of my problems with the left side of politics. It's hard to get behind a side that is mathematically predestined to disappear completely.
