Also, I never said computers can’t be conscious. I said that digital computers (Turing machines) probably can’t. Quantum and analog computers have no such theoretical constraints and they’re far, far more prevalent given that they’re found in every living creature.
Brains aren’t impressive because of their compute (which is both immense and absurdly efficient) or their ability to predict the future (technically the main function of evolved minds). They’re impressive because they’re conscious. The fact that organic brains can also engage in hierarchical abstraction, which no digital computer (or Turing machine) can do by definition, is icing on the cake.
(The halting problem and Godel’s incompleteness and Traski’s undefinability theorems all seem to suggest that analog, not digital computation is more likely to be involved in consciousness, if at all.)
Sometimes we use technical jargon to say something that we later realize is fairly simple. It might be obvious in retrospect, but still require thousands of years to understand, during which time the technical language is essential.
Anyway, other times we just need new words for new concepts. You can’t contemplate what you cannot name. Even the smartest humans are stupid by default and ordinary language is outstripped by our intellectual ambitions.
New concepts require new words. They also relate to each other in interesting ways, which have names, too.
Alternatively, if I ever wanted to assert something more complicated than the weather I’d need to re-build the entire conceptual framework from scratch using small words and pictures.
Legally speaking, jury nullification is real. Try to absorb this fact, which should be taught in every school.
More importantly, when corruption is the norm and other democratic avenues have failed, jury nullification isn’t just a legal option, it is the only rational one. Next comes vigilantism.
What precisely is the point of a jury if you’re going to complain about how they vote? Of course jury nullification could be bad. And of course it can be good. All legal systems are made up. The whole idea is to allow people — a jury — the freedom to decide for themselves.
There is no “fantasy,” just indifference. I have no clue what everyone else is doing, but I didn’t fight my way from homelessness and into college “to get a job.”
Completely lost sight of the purpose of education, which has nothing to do with being an effective corporate drone… unless you get a business degree, in which case 4 weeks is too long.
Nobody’s perfect, but if I had a billion dollars my sole preoccupation would be to spend it as fast and effectively as possible to help people in need. That one criterion alone — a kind of minimum requirement — unfortunately makes me weird. However, I stand by the claim that anyone who would do otherwise is a bad person.
To be clear, there is a wealth threshold (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that few people in the first world achieve, so we can hardly blame them for not donating their meager savings. But a billion dollars is utterly beyond the pale. Hence my example.
Those billionaires didn’t portal into this world from another reality. Pick any human at random, make them a billionaire, chances are you have another worst-of-the-worst.
I’d guess fewer than 1/3 of people are “good” (even after being educated). The rest are just dangerously intelligent animals.
That doesn’t change the fact that I am conscious.
Also, I never said computers can’t be conscious. I said that digital computers (Turing machines) probably can’t. Quantum and analog computers have no such theoretical constraints and they’re far, far more prevalent given that they’re found in every living creature.