Search Ideas

Fixed as of d633dc3.

Fixed as of 76299a2, see eg https://veritula.com/ideas/3951-done-as-of-cc1ab95-ruby-example-ruby-def/revisions/2. (Click on “Expand unchanged parts”.)

Fixed as of 76299a2.

Done as of 65dba4b.

Ruby example:

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def criticized? idea
  pending_criticisms(idea).any?
end

def pending_criticisms idea
  criticisms(idea).filter { |c| pending_criticisms(c).none? }
end

def criticisms idea
  children(idea).filter(&:criticism?)
end

JS example (h/t ChatGPT):

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function criticized(idea) {
  return pendingCriticisms(idea).length > 0;
}

function pendingCriticisms(idea) {
  return criticisms(idea).filter(c => pendingCriticisms(c).length === 0);
}

function criticisms(idea) {
  return children(idea).filter(c => c.isCriticism);
}

Fixed as of 7134d27.

Fixed as of b2a2a32 at the latest.

A sticky button can't work here: the main content area has to be a horizontal scroll container so deeply nested trees can grow sideways, and that stops position: sticky from sticking. The workarounds (reworking the global layout, or JavaScript positioning that jitters on mobile) are too risky for such a small benefit.

(Generated with Claude.)

The argument is that we have no reason not to adopt an idea with no pending criticism. In other words, we should adopt unproblematic ideas.

A criticism can itself be such an unproblematic idea. Meaning we should adopt pending criticisms. We can’t consistently adopt an idea and its pending criticisms. So from the adoption of a pending criticism logically follows the rejection of its target idea.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

That isn’t learning in the relevant sense that has to do with consciousness. DD explains some of that here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

Unnecessarily complex language like this makes ideas harder to criticize. Just write ‘they sense things, feel pain, and change behavior.’

Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience.

No, the substrate independence of computation rules that out. Neurons don’t matter for our purposes here, at all.

A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.

It’s a guess. No other explanation is known. If you have a different guess, propose it here.

The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history…

So do laptops and their hardware, only with memetic evolutionary history. So what?

For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.

I disagree. Human behavior is so far off the mark I can’t explain it in terms of preprogramming only. I don’t know how to explain poems and rocket ships. Biological evolution had no reason to create any of the knowledge needed to make rocket ships, so preprogramming doesn’t make sense as an explanation.

If monkeys suddenly started making rocket ships one day, I would have trouble explaining that, for the same reason.

Ultimately the criterion will depend on an explanation of how the underlying program works. There can’t be a purely behavioral criterion, as DD argues in BoI ch. 7 (IIRC). But until we have that, some behavior is so blatantly robotic, like a Roomba, that I think we can reasonably conclude it has nothing to do with consciousness.

Explanations of animal behavior can be phrased fully in terms of unconscious, purely dogmatic information processing. We can write the programs and simulate animals on a computer. We don’t need consciousness for any of it. But we can’t write the program that would simulate a person on a computer. That program would result in consciousness. There’s an asymmetry there.

Can I prove that dogmatic programs don’t give rise to consciousness? No. But I think that’s the wrong epistemological standard. I can’t prove that rocks aren’t conscious either. What I do know is that I don’t invoke the concept of consciousness when explaining rocks (whatever little there is to explain about them).

I usually find that terms like “phenomenal experience” and “cognition” are confusing and make discussions harder. Ultimately, there’s one type of consciousness and one type of information processing that gives rise to it. I don’t think distinctions between different types of ‘cognition’ or ‘experience’ are worth drawing, if they even exist in reality at all.

We have different degrees of awareness during different dreams, I agree. But we’re aware of them. With higher critical ability, we plausibly get lucid dreaming – lower instead means passive observation.

It’s like watching a movie. I have no control over what happens in the movie, still I’m consciously aware of it. I could instead play a video game, where I do have some control over what happens, and which arguably requires more of a critical attitude. I don’t see how this refutes my stance.

My talk about hard to vary at Conjecture Con 2026 is now online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LfEPLmjxNk

We now have refute.us, which I plan to integrate with V eventually.

Archiving #3904 for now.

I miss y'all!

Apparently Scribd profiles are public? 🤷‍♂️ https://www.scribd.com/user/430906064/Dennis-Hackethal

In the reasoning you link in support of animal insentience, you argue that similarities between human and animal nervous systems do not tell us whether the same conscious “software” is running. But humans and other mammals are not analogous to two identical computers on which entirely unrelated programs happen to have been installed. The relevant systems have a shared evolutionary history, with substantial continuity in sensory, affective, nociceptive and learning mechanisms.

A change in that inherited system may indeed have produced the qualitative leap to universal creativity. Since universality is necessarily all-or-nothing in the relevant sense, that leap is unsurprising. But it does not follow that every other aspect of mental life (including pain or other phenomenal experience) must have appeared in the same leap, or even require a comparable leap at all.

Neural continuity therefore seems evidentially relevant even if it cannot by itself prove sentience. The observation that universal creativity is uniquely human still leaves open whether older, shared systems already supported phenomenal experience.

If vivid phenomenal experience persists while the relevant critical capacities are greatly diminished (and some forms of meta-awareness appear to be absent altogether in ordinary dreams) that seems at least evidence that phenomenal experience does not closely depend on the degree to which those capacities are active. Lucid dreaming strengthens this: reflective/metacognitive capacities can return within an experience that was already phenomenal.

I have seen no evidence of any animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. If you know of any, please show me. <

You ask for animal behavior that could not have been preprogrammed. But I’m not sure any finite observed behavior could meet that standard.

For any finite sequence of behavior, it seems possible in principle to posit a sufficiently elaborate fixed program that produces it. The same would apply to human behavior.

So if the criterion for sentience is behavior that could not possibly have been preprogrammed, it is unclear how sentience could ever be established behaviorally, including in humans.

But the argument is that behavior that may just as well be preprogrammed and then executed mindlessly is not evidence of consciousness (because it is, again, mindless).

This seems to be circular reasoning:
Your reply seems to move from “the behavior could have been preprogrammed” to “the behavior is therefore mindless.” But those are different claims.

“Preprogrammed” describes how the behavior is generated. “Mindless” additionally says that no phenomenal experience accompanies that process. That does not follow unless we already assume that non-universal or preprogrammed computation cannot support phenomenal experience. Which is precisely the connection my criticism questioned.

So showing that animal behavior could be preprogrammed may show that the behavior does not prove sentience, but it does not by itself provide evidence of insentience.