The claim is that it is not possible for a full description of the universe at some time T1 to be shorter or longer than a full description at some future time T2. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What if there was no consciousness at T1, but consciousness later emerged at T2? Wouldn't the full description at T2, when there is consciousness, be longer than the consciousless description at T1?

There is no reason to expect them to answer all moral questions that we can think of. — Mark S

It's going to have to say something about Trolley Car.

This is not complicated. If you want complications and endless arguments, join the search for imperative oughts (categorical imperatives in Kant's terms). — Mark S

Would travelling back in time (assume it's possible) to kill baby Hitler be the moral thing to do? What about using data the Nazi's collected experimenting on people? What about diverting a runaway trolley car full of children by pushing one child in front of it? What about aborting a baby one minute for non-health reasons?

What does your proposal have to say about the probability of Last Thursdayism?

So, what does science say we should do about the Trolley Car problem?

Appeal to authority is classically taken as perhaps the definitive fallacy. Classic in contemporary modern is positivist diagnostic criteria. — introbert

And yet, when your car doesn't work you don't take it to a cardiologist and when you have chest pains, you don't go to a mechanic.

If we could see how particles combined in a certain way could lead to liquidity, then we'd understand the theory and the phenomenon. It's the phenomenon which is puzzling, not the theory. — Manuel

Forgive me for butting in, or if it's been covered, but if one knows all the properties of certain particles, can't one predict which phenomena will emerge? For example, if we knew enough about H and O, would H2O's liquid properties be surprising?

I'm sorry, am I questioning the orthodoxy too much? You were the one who linked the article. Don't you want to talk about it?

An octopus is as smart as a three-year old. Don't you think they're conscious?

That's an interesting article. This stood out:

"then consciousness evolved gradually over the past half billion years and is present in a range of vertebrate species."

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in?

Sensory deprivation tanks weren't part of the environment our ancestors were exposed to. There is no reason to think that there is an evolutionary benefit to how we respond, to an environment that played no role in the natural selection of our ancestors. — wonderer1

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness?

Good point. Even 20% of people born without limbs have phantom limb syndrome. What this tells us is the brain actively fires looking for limbs to use. Makes sense since even babies use their limbs all the time. The locus of thought is from the mind to the limb, not from the limb to the mind. — Philosophim

It seems that if sensory input isn't coming in to the brain, the brain will create it's own hallucinatory input to compensate. People in sensory deprivation tanks hallucinate fairly quickly when deprived of external stimuli. What is the evolutionary benefit of this?

People who have dead nerves in certain places of their body cannot feel anything there. — Philosophim

What about phantom limb pain?

If Biden goes down, an old white guy President gets replaced by a black woman. Good.

Suppose we're in the Library of Babel and a curator says, "You want an explanation for consciousness? Yes, I have the book right here." Would we be able to understand it?

So many of Trump's hires turn against him. What's that about?

Firstly, I doubt it's possible to know all the physical facts about anything let alone brains, and secondly most of what we call physical facts are conceptual models given in mechanistic causal terms. — Janus

You don't need to know all the physical facts of an engine to figure out what it is and what it does. The same should be true of brains, but it's not. No matter how much an alien/machine intelligence studies a working brain, it will not know if it's conscious or not. Is your claim then that there is some undiscovered method of science the machine intelligence/alien could use to figure out whether something is conscious or not? Shouldn't we at least have some hints by now of what that could be? Are you a mysterian?

I already said the engine is easier to understand being far less complex, and also because our models are mechanistic, and it just may not be possible to understand how the brain gives rise to consciousness mechanistically. What more are you angling for? — Janus

It seems obvious to me that the alien/machine intelligence could know every physical fact there is to know about brains, and still not know the most salient fact: they're conscious. Do you agree? Doesn't that put brains in an entirely new class of things: things you could know all the physical facts about and still not understand them completely?

You would have to pull the engine apart and examine the components and analyze their functions and inter-relations in the overall process of its running.to understand how it works. — Janus

OK, the alien/machine intelligence takes apart the engine after it stops running. Then it takes apart the working brain. Is the engine going to be mysterious in any way? Is the brain?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bill-barr-trumps-indictment-very-damning-even-half-true

""He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets the country has.""

For be it for me to be redundant, but this is the man's own Attorney General saying this. What say you?

OK, suppose you have a working brain hooked up to life support and a running engine. Would the engine be mysterious in any way? Would the alien/machine intelligence know that the working brain is conscious?

I don't think so; in any case it's not just a matter of knowing you are looking at an engine or whole motor vehicle but of being able to explain all its functions and macroscopic interactions and inter-relations in terms of the understanding of fundamental particles.

Even if it were possible, it would be such a complex task, I think it could hardly be referred to as "reductionism". — Janus

Fair enough. Let's assume an alien (or better yet, machine intelligence) was examining, for the first time, an engine and a brain. I don't think the engine would be mysterious in any way, but I think the alien/machine intelligence would not be able to figure out the brain was capable of consciousness.

The functioning of an internal combustion engine motor vehicle cannot be understood in terms of the fundamental particles that constitute it. — Janus

Do you mean just the fundamental particles? What if you knew the fundamental particles and all their interconnections/arrangements? Wouldn't you be able to figure out that you were looking at an engine?

It's not meaningless, you just don't agree with it. Do you think consciousness is an illusion? Chalmers demarcates soft illusionism and hard illusionism in that paper I linked. At least read the first couple of pages.

That's a position you still see a lot these days, but I think it's on the decline.

I didn't ask you to evaluate the claim only for the meaning of "illusions" in your statement. What you're reply says is nothing but 'I don't like the sound of it'. — 180 Proof

I was reading a paper by Chalmers last night in response to your reply. You might be interested in it.
https://consc.net/papers/debunking.pdf

That's who I had in mind. Consciousness explained indeed.

The claim that consciousness is an illusion of any sort, in any sense of the word "illusion", is absurd.

Of course, and like an idiot I didn't even consider this aspect. — Tom Storm

That cuts both ways. I know atheists who are so invested in their atheism and the idea they are simply biological machines, they embrace strange notions, like mind and consciousness don't exist or are illusions.

The world seems physical and substantial and from that experience and the reificational potentiality of language we naturally extrapolate the notion of substance. We really have no idea what either physicality or mentality are in any substantial sense. — Janus

The sun also seems to move across the sky, the Earth seems flat, and it seems like we're not moving 10,000+ mph through space. We should be careful about making leaps from what seems true to what is true.

Not only that but many of Trump’s legal losses are not the result of him committing crimes, but the result of anti-Trump lawmakers creating and altering laws to get him. — NOS4A2

Did you actually read the indictment, or listen to analysis of it?

I thought he would be president awhile and that would be the end of it. — NOS4A2

That would have been the end of it, after he lost in 2020, but the GOP went nuts with the stolen election crap, and now he's the GOP frontrunner.

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/donald-j-trump-pays-court-ordered-2-million-illegally-using-trump-foundation

https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-finalizes-25-million-settlement-victims-donald-trumps/story?id=54347237

What did you think would happen when you boarded the Trump Train? Did you think it would end well? Like the Scorpion said to the Frog, "You knew I was poison when I got on your back."

I think now you're just trolling people here to get a rise out of them.

"Against boredom even gods struggle in vain."

Trump indicted again. I love seeing the "lock her up!" crowd get sent to the pokey.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-russia-shelling-civilians-fleeing-dam-collapse-rcna88324

Evil.

Ukrainian counteroffensive has officially begun.

Hence, we already have absolute chaos under our so-called rule of law. — quintillus

No we don't.