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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

The Occam's razor favors the simpler explanation though.

Why is "emerging from computation" simple? As an explanation, it seems vastly more complex. I mean, the laws of physics don't even contain terms for defining or valuing computation. Even my examples (which were meant to be bad arbitrary explanations) at least have the benefit of being describable as physical quantities. So at least one side of the explanation is already grounded in things that physics recognizes.

What explanation are you referring to though? Just saying consciousness is an emergent property is not an explanation. Rather it is an assertion.

It's a working hypothesis where the element of "HOW does consciousness emerge out of computation" remains unanswered, but you could argue that you shouldn't assume the hypothesis is insufficient until it's shown that the question is not answerable without adding extra assertions (that there is something beyond computation).

Just like we stick to the "planetary orbits are only shaped by gravitational interactions" hypothesis, and if we observe deviations, we try to exhaust all possible explanations that remain gravity based before introducing the possibility of other forces at work.

I’m not sure the analogy to gravity works. At least in the case of gravity we have a model which (largely) explains the planetary orbits. As far as I know, we are not even close to a model in the case of consciousness. And even if we had a model for the “easy problem” it’s possible that the “hard problem” would still remain.

Edit: to be clear, I’m agnostic on this problem. I just don’t really like the emergence “model”, where we have a bunch of supposedly non-conscious matter and if we put enough of it together in the right way consciousness just pops into existence.

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