I was a downvoter. I think the first three sections are mysterious in a way that invalidates the rest of the post. I like how he thinks in the next few sections, but it reminds me of the urban legend of the PhD student who found a lot of interesting results about a new class of mathematical objects, only to show up to their dissertation and realize only the trivial case existed. It generally isn’t productive to ask a lot of “what if?” questions before pinning down what you mean when you talk about consciousness or morality. If you can’t pin it down exactly, then go with a working definition based on a few examples that should fit that category. At the very least, apply some known examples to the “what if?” that follows. I think kbear’s comment does a pretty good job of this.
It’s a (slightly surprisingly to me) very high-controversy post! On Substack it’s led to both people DMing me saying it’s their favorite post I’ve ever written, and the highest number of unsubscribes from a single post so far.
Bit of a meta comment, but I was surprised to see this post have fewer karma than it did a few hours ago, I’d be curious to hear from the downvoters.
I was a downvoter. I think the first three sections are mysterious in a way that invalidates the rest of the post. I like how he thinks in the next few sections, but it reminds me of the urban legend of the PhD student who found a lot of interesting results about a new class of mathematical objects, only to show up to their dissertation and realize only the trivial case existed. It generally isn’t productive to ask a lot of “what if?” questions before pinning down what you mean when you talk about consciousness or morality. If you can’t pin it down exactly, then go with a working definition based on a few examples that should fit that category. At the very least, apply some known examples to the “what if?” that follows. I think kbear’s comment does a pretty good job of this.
It’s a (slightly surprisingly to me) very high-controversy post! On Substack it’s led to both people DMing me saying it’s their favorite post I’ve ever written, and the highest number of unsubscribes from a single post so far.