I don’t think he actually holds the position you’re attributing to him. I don’t know what probability he assigns to the possibility that our universe is a simulation, but I’m confident that he does not believe that as a matter of logical necessity quarks and leptons are the only things out of which one could build a consciousness, just that in our universe, these are the things that there are to build consciousnesses out of.
Hmm, I suppose his position is not that everything is reducible to quarks and leptons, but that everything is reducible to something basic, in a sense that there are no magical “qualia” preventing one from building consciousness from whatever building blocks are available. This is certainly quite reasonable, and all the currently available evidence points that way.
I don’t think he actually holds the position you’re attributing to him. I don’t know what probability he assigns to the possibility that our universe is a simulation, but I’m confident that he does not believe that as a matter of logical necessity quarks and leptons are the only things out of which one could build a consciousness, just that in our universe, these are the things that there are to build consciousnesses out of.
Hmm, I suppose his position is not that everything is reducible to quarks and leptons, but that everything is reducible to something basic, in a sense that there are no magical “qualia” preventing one from building consciousness from whatever building blocks are available. This is certainly quite reasonable, and all the currently available evidence points that way.