Comment by unsui | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unsui | Hacker News Reader

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agreed.

brain-as-a-radio-antenna is a common trope amongst those who would believe that meatspace isn't capable of generating consciousness alone (always looking for some sort of elan vital, to equate with another pursuit for the magic stuff of life).

From a purposely scientific perspective, we have to begin with the working assumption that materialism is true, until such point that it is conclusively proven false.

There is no evidence that the brain works in any way like an antenna, at least insofar as any electromagnetic waves or other such messaging systems supported by the physics of our current world as we know it.

Thus, the brain-as-antenna thinking necessarily pre-supposes an other-worldly explanation; it assumes what it's trying to prove.

Even if it were true (HIGHLY unlikely), we can't begin with that as the starting point in our search for understanding it. Otherwise, our brains are incredibly adept at shaping our thoughts and concepts to fit those prescribed notions of animacy and otherworldliness.

It's no wonder that many pseudoscientific principles BEGIN with the presupposition that you have to be willing to believe in order for the effect to become apparent.

We can actually show that consciousness persists even when surrounded by shielding that would prevent the passage of any known particle or radiation except neutrinos from affecting whatever is inside.

If you shut off all outside signals, the brain works just fine, there's no effect at all. (Except maybe the stress of whatever situation you're in that landed you in a super shielded bunker. )

Except materialism has been proven false for the past 100 years thanks to quantum mechanics. There is mountains of evidence against it and none for it.

This is laughably false.

Materialism, aka "physicalism", simply posits that all phenomena have an underlying physical basis, i.e., no "spooky" or magic stuff.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

Quantum mechanics follows from physicalism by demonstrating that the physical nature of reality is incredibly complex and counterintuitive, particularly at quantum scales.

But that in no way implies that quantum mechanics leads to non-materialism or opens the door for materialism to be false. It simply becomes subsumed into materialism itself:

materialism requires that all phenomena be ultimately explainable via physical explanations, and those explanations must account for quantum-mechanical phenomena.

> Thus, the brain-as-antenna thinking necessarily pre-supposes an other-worldly explanation; it assumes what it's trying to prove.

Materialism does the same thing though, as you observed:

> we have to begin with the working assumption that materialism is true

To be clear, I'm a materialist, but that's precisely why I dislike poor arguments.

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