How Dumb is Daniel Dennett? | Hacker News Reader

How Dumb is Daniel Dennett?

aaronsw.com

6 pointshhm18 comments

This would be just as informative if someone else wrote a blog post called "How dumb do you have to be to say 'How dumb is Daniel Dennett?'" and then quoted Aaron's in full. No new information, no arguments. I know from other posts that Aaron is a fan of John Searle (whose "Chinese room" argument disproves a Turing Test for artificial intelligence by disproving any kind of intelligence). So to me, this post reads like a reminder that Aaron is on a particular side of a particular squabble.

If Dennett's argument (in the ordered list in that post) is stated accurately, it is obviously wrong. Having not read _Freedom Evolves_, I can't say whether this is an accurate summary, but it's clear that "to avoid the actions you'll deterministically take" and "to avoid objects" are not using "avoid" in the same sense.

Sure. I get the feeling I'm not hearing an accurate summary -- like when Naomi Klein turns something like "the pursuit of rational self-interest maximizes collective gain" into "They're trying to convince people that by doing good you do bad, and that by being bad -- by pursuing your most selfish desires -- you do good." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2kTy7glZ9s).

I've read some Dennett, and I've never found anything amenable to the paraphrase AS quoted. I'm sure if you wanted to, you could find people who tell you how ridiculous Dennett was by quoting him that way, just as people have had a great time finding out what Milton Friedman said by way of Klein's parody. I suspect that AS just hasn't bothered to consider the possibility that he and his idol are wrong.

Later on q reaffirms aaron's argument (@ 2008-01-19T10:55:30), seemingly based on q's own read of DD's work. So, at least two seemingly smart people come to the same conclusion independently.

Who is q?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_

But I don't recall seeing Dennett in any episodes.

No idea. Some commentator.

How did this completely unimportant blog post make it to the top page on hacker news?

It seems to me that the entire study of philosophy is comprised of arguments based on linguistic puns; how else to express our thoughts? As long as we are limited by language, any existing language, we are constrained by its syntax and semantics. This is analogous to the study of physics with math; we often need to invent new math to model physical phenomenon. Likewise, until we invent a suitable new philosophy language to model the world, we're just going to spin our wheels.

somebody's been reading wittgenstein

I haven't ever actually, but I may have to start now.

How dumb is Daniel Dennett? Umm, not very. From what I've read of his work he seems to be pretty smart, which is why I suspect that this Aaron guy is misunderstanding his argument. I note that his summary is in fact a summary of somebody else's summary.

I haven't read Freedom Evolves, but my guess is that Dennett was actually making an argument that it's possible to simulate, in a deterministic universe, entities which have "free will", or at least which believe they do. I doubt he really makes an argument based on confusing two different meanings of the word "unavoidable".

Though I'm happy to be proven wrong if anyone can post some actual quotes from the book.

Why is this useful or interesting to hackers?

Seems like Aaron doesn't like Daniel. Also seems like it belongs in a soap opera and not on ycnews.

I posted it here not for Aaron, but for Dennet. I thought that the argument posted by Aaron (and attributed to Dennet) was silly, and if that argument was truely Dennet's, then maybe he was right at some level. That was it.

I haven't read Freedom Evolves, but I intend to. Judging by the list of points that Aaron provides and Dennett's other books, I bet Dennett's actual point was to say: 'Look, this is plausible, and you can't dismiss it out of hand. Yes, obviously the data still needs to come in to determine whether this is the actual truth, but you shouldn't consider it a foregone conclusion that this isn't a valid option.'

Here's some "primary source" Dennett material in contrast to Aaron's angry "tertiary source" rant: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101017 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101024 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101023 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66917

Hark! Philosophy doesn't have the same standards of argument as 20th century mathematics! Sound the alarm!

I like Dennett a lot precisely because he's badly behaved and disrespectful of other philosophers.

Free Will is a completely meaningless concept. I don't know what it means in the real world, or how I could test for it, or what would be different if it did or didn't exist, and neither does anyone else. I don't know why people spend so much energy squabbling about it.

At least consciousness (which Dennett might but in the same category... something that affects _precisely_ nothing) is something I can experience.

He quotes a person whose like or dislike of Dennet is not based on how good Dennet's ideas are and instead are based on personal character:

"I used to be a rabid Dennettite [until] I started reading more widely in the subject, and found that Dennett had been pretty (no, make that very) badly behaved [...] And that's when the hate developed."

Aaron goes on to call Dennet "stupid" but fails to actually seriously discuss any on-topic ideas.

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