One mind knows that the universe is purely deterministic
Some thoughts:
The word “knows” does a lot of work here. What does it mean for a brain to know that it is deterministic? I guess you appeal to an intuitive understanding, but that makes the argument weaker.
I also don’t think that the conclusion follows. Many organisms get a lot of things done without knowing it.
Evolution cannot work on concepts in the neocortex, and thus your argument doesn’t work unless you assume some mechanism for how the brain stem brings about the concepts in the neocortex. In this case, the argument is really about that mechanism and not about our high-level summary “knows itself”.
If your argument works, though, that would indicate a new (?) alignment strategy: Sufficiently strongly ensuring that the mind doesn’t produce self-awareness could reduce agency to zero.
Some thoughts:
The word “knows” does a lot of work here. What does it mean for a brain to know that it is deterministic? I guess you appeal to an intuitive understanding, but that makes the argument weaker.
I also don’t think that the conclusion follows. Many organisms get a lot of things done without knowing it.
Evolution cannot work on concepts in the neocortex, and thus your argument doesn’t work unless you assume some mechanism for how the brain stem brings about the concepts in the neocortex. In this case, the argument is really about that mechanism and not about our high-level summary “knows itself”.
If your argument works, though, that would indicate a new (?) alignment strategy: Sufficiently strongly ensuring that the mind doesn’t produce self-awareness could reduce agency to zero.