this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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First, let me correct myself. All of my previous statements refer to powered flight.
And, once again, how is what you said about synthetic consciousness different than powered flight, except 200 years have passed? The only religiosity those tech pros and sci-fi writers you refer to express is that everything we have seen in the physical world follows the laws of nature, and that we can create things that follow those physical laws to achieve behavior we see in nature, such as powered flight and (the illusion of) consciousness.
You mean... apart from the fact that we have had proof of it's possibility for millions of years?
No, I'm afraid that the idea that consciousness works like software is deeply rooted in the religious idea that the body and soul is separate from each other - in spite of the fact that reality tells us a much, much different story. If you think consciousness works like software, you might just as well believe disembodied spirits are floating around graveyards - both beliefs fundamentally require the same view of consciousness.
If your speculation is that consciousness is rooted in the hardware, then synthetic consciousness is an engineering problem, and humanity is very good at solving engineering problems. The fact is, the only thing scientists have found that is really different between the neurons in simple life forms such as jellyfish and us is the level of complexity, hence the speculation of consciousness being emergent behavior. Again, I don't know, and I haven't heard of scientists definitively knowing the source of consciousness, either, which is why I continue to maintain that we don't know if we can create synthetic consciousness because it's really hard to make something if you don't know how it works. As far as our current crop of tech bros, they seem to be relying on the idea of emergent behavior, hence the need for ever-more-complex artificial intelligence. I think they're behaving like cargo cults, building something that superficially resembles the thing they want and hoping it just starts to mystically work. Them being wrong, just like cargo cults and airplanes, doesn't mean it isn't possible to create a synthetic consciousness.
That's not my speculation at all. We are not hardware. Organisms do not function like machines.
We know the source of consciousness - it's organic. It's rooted in our physical existence as organisms. What scientists want to understand is the "how" part... and we'll never understand it if we think of it as an engineering/design problem because evolutionary processes reqires neither engineering nor design. In fact, I'd argue that this level of complexity is impossible to achieve through engineering and/or design processes.
You may continue not knowing if you wish... but it's a very mundane non-mystery as far as I'm concerned.
You're assuming that consciousness is what they want... I'd say that's an assumption that is not based on the true interests the parasite class has. Their interests is in control - not creating consciousness.
Engineering is applied physics, and physics is how the universe works (limited by our understanding of it, of course). Organisms follow physics just as much as any engineered device or structure.
So who applied the physics to create a living, pulsating jellyfish?
Who applies the gravity to that jellyfish? Same answer. Newton didn't invent gravity, and it still exists even if you don't understand. Gravity affects that jellyfish as much as it affects me. Newton gave me the formulas to describe it.
So gravity is an engineer?
I don't know if this a comprehension issue or trolling, but either one is a problem for you to fix, not me. Good luck out there.
You hitting rock-bottom with your argument does not constitute a comprehension issue on my part.
My disengagement on this discussion isn't due to my lack of ideas or capability to explain them, but due to my lack of belief in your ability or desire to grasp them. This was implied in my previous comment, but even that level of subtlety appears to be beyond you.
You're disengagement is because you aren't willing to make an "intelligent design" argument, despite the fact that your own reasoning have left that the only option open to you. Once you claim that engineering and evolution is (somehow) the same process there is nowhere else left to go.