Comment by SerLava | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SerLava | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I don't understand why people have such a weird problem reconciling the brain with the mind.

It IS all physical. It's also an unimaginably complex fucking shitload of tiny physical objects working incredibly quickly. If your brain was big enough to see the parts working like little gears of a clock, it would probably be planet sized, or something like that. Huge.

I would EVEN say it doesn't raise any interesting philosophical questions. Are computers silicon, or magic? Is a book paper, or magic? Is the economy magic, or a bunch of people buying shit everywhere?

Knowing that the brain is physical doesn't make me question myself or doubt control over my life or any silly shit like that. Yes all of my actions are technically "predetermined" by the Big Bang, but not in an interesting way, at all.

Semi-related, if you made a giant brainlike calculator out of water pipes and valves and shit, and asked it a question, then turned all its pipes and valves for a while... it would probably just say "please kill me."

I don't think there's a problem reconciling the brain with the mind, if by 'mind' one means problem-solving ability. The problem is in reconciling the brain with consciousness. There is, as far as I know, no theory that explains how consciousness can arise from matter.

I don't know that they're really different. It's just a first-person frame of reference.

When something else is conscious, or something else has a mind, that's the same thing.

"Just" — but why should there be any "perspective" at all?

There is: the attention schema theory, and I find it quite compelling.

I've come to think that the great consciousness mystery is a psychological one: why are human beings so obsessed with the consciousness mystery? Why do we need so much to believe that we are special?

Should this super AI come to be, I expect it to give the problem of consciousness the same amount of thought we usually give to other people's bowel movements.

> I don't understand why people have such a weird problem reconciling the brain with the mind.

You do understand, you said it yourself! Because they have no free will to not have the problem!

I can't blame you though. You had no choice.

BTW,you are the first person I know who admits being a Compatibilist. I don't understand how you can rationally take that position.

>BTW,you are the first person I know who admits being a Compatibilist.

Not really - I'm determinist, but I just know the difference between "Things are technically predetermined" and "I'm being forced to do something, like at gunpoint." As in, it's not demoralizing because that makes no sense.

I like it when my brain makes a decision, and I don't care that my brain isn't pulling decisions magically from a mysterious dimension full of floaty ghosts.

> Semi-related, if you made a giant brainlike calculator out of water pipes and valves and shit, and asked it a question, then turned all its pipes and valves for a while... it would probably just say "please kill me."

Um why? Most humans don't do that.

Well it would kind of be a brain trapped in sensory deprived hell.

The point is I think people would expect pretty mundane things from a giant "mechanical" brain, but as described, it would be very unpredictable and complex. It would do things that instantly make the experimenters uneasy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com