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Yeah i agree with you. We shouldn't be projecting other qualities onto it, just because one quality is there. But we can never know, at the end of the day.

@DefinitelyNotARobot How the fuck can we determine, if you are a robot or not ?

Yes, but to get deeper, what does a nerve made out of, that can't be replaced with dead matter?

Yes it is a mystery, thats why i don't agree with taking any strong positions here. What is the difference on a structural level between an artificial human and a 'real' human? What does a 'real' human made out of on the lowest levels, that cannot be replaced with dead matter? So how do we distinguish between dead matter and living matter, what makes living matter 'living'?

Yes, but what is the substance that allows you to experience things, what creates the ego? That is what we are essentially talking and debating about. Because a lot of people assume here, that an ego can only be created by a biological structure, but why assume what? We don't know how an ego is created, we don't know what substance and characteristics are needed to create an ego. We should be open to the possibility that an ego can be created in other ways. The problem here, even if it is possible to create an ego in an aritifical way, because of the assumption 'that it is impossible to create a real ego in an aritifcal way' it will be interpreted just as a simulation. The real problem here, that it cannot be tested, so whether you believe it is simulating or you believe it is real, it will be true for you, based on what beliefs you have. How do you safely determine if a computer is simulating it or not? Lets say, it passes all your behaviour tests, whats next?

Dreaming the only thing we can do. Even though this is all true from the absolute pov, doing the things what we do here, can have practical utility from the relative pov. Our collective moral system is mostly based on assuming things being sentient and conscious. Even though all of that is an illusion from the absolute pov, we still play a game and still use it for the sake of our collective and individual survival. You might argue, that all of this is just a distraction and you want us to focus on the real work, but at the end of the day, we do a lot of stuff thats just about fun (and this section of the forum is more about thinking, than consciousness work). We can consciously play these games, so that we are aware that it is all just an illusion at the end of the day. But at the same time, being too conscious all the time can ruin the fun. If we plan on continuing to play this game called life, then thinking about stuff like this can be useful and fun. We are attached to survival, that's why we are still "here". At the end of the day, threads like this, can be a place for collective discourse or for collective contemplation about certain topics.

Yeah i agree, but still, even to determine what has sentience it will be based on a certain set of assumptions, but i agree that it is more tangible than free will. When you wrote this, i started contemplating what pain actually is, and i have no fucking clue. What is the structure of pain or in other words what is pain is made out of? (not talking about the senory inputs, because yes thats part of every feeling, but in an of itself is not sufficient enough to create any feeling) I cannot define , and i cannot pin down what pain actually is. I want to give you two examples, just to see where you draw your line. Example 1: Lets say, if there is a person who can't feel any external pain (like if you stab him with a sharp tool he won't feel anything, or if you burn his body, he won't feel anything), but he has the ability to feel internally (like having the ability to feel love, being depressed, being sad, feel joy etc) would you consider him sentient or not and why? Example 2: The other example could be similar but a little bit different, there is a person who can't feel external pain, and doesn't have the ability to feel internally, like the same person in the first example, but not being able to have any internal emotions, its like blank. The same question here, would you consider this person sentient or not and why? @axiom Lets say we drop the free will part, and we only go with the ability to feel pain part. How the fuck can we create a thing that can actually feel pain, and in a structural way 100% similar to a human having the ability to feel pain . I think its impossibly hard to answer this question. Basically this question could be made in a different way: How the fuck can we create someting that has the ability to feel pain? What does having the ability to feel pain even means on a structural level?

Imo, it doesn't matter if biological complexity or mechanial complexity gives rise to an ego, and i agree that the current level of AI is not at the free will level yet (the reason why it doesn't matter to me, is because i think generally we will mostly care about the free will part when we are talking about a conscious being/thing). You might be right , that it may be impossible to recreate anything 'real' in a mechanical way. Because things just impossibly complex and i think we can say that things are complex not in a finite way. So to make your side stronger, you could argue, that because everything is infinitely complex, because of that, nothing can be created in a mechanical way that can truly represent any real thing ( and i think i would agree with that, but from a pragmatic standpoint, if we only care about the expresiveness of free will, then in the end it doesn't really matter).

I wouldnt disagree with this, however, i would make a distinction between human consciousness, and human ego, i am mostly focused on ego. What is structurally speaking about human neurology that cannot be replaced mechanically ? Or this question could be asked this way. Speaking about biology what gives the 'free will' part to humans, that cannot be replaced mechanically? Just to not waste your time, i think our convo can be boiled down to this question: Do you think that human ego (not human consciousness) is material, because if you think its material , then i don't see how we wouldn't be able to recreate it in a mechanical way. Not even focused on the human ego part. Do you think that any kind of ego can be created mechanically?(when i say ego, i imply free will)

I don't think the biology part is the deciding factor here, but you might say that it is a requirement. A mechanical body could be created, that can have certain senses (which would be sensors) , which it can use to get its own inputs from the world. Examine your own process, when you want to decide if one thing is conscious or not, how do you actually decide that, based on what characteristics, and what is or are the main factor(s)? If you were to chat with a complex AI and then after that with a human being, i don't think you would be able to tell which one was the human and which one was the AI.

Just to be clear in my vocab being sentient and conscious are related but different. Being sentient means being able to experience feelings. Being conscious means, being able to experience feelings and having some level of agency/creativity/free will. I agree with you, that from an Absolute Pov everything is consciousness or in other words, God. From the finite ego's pov it seems like there are beings and things that seems to be conscious and there are other things that doesn't seem to be conscious. We are basing our judgement on 'seemingness' . From the finite pov, generally speaking, we would consider certain beings conscious , if we think that they have some level of free will. So if we think that certain beings have some level of agency, then generally, we would consider them to be conscious. [ I know about the free will vs determinism debate, but in order to have this convo, we have to assume that free will exist (even from the finite pov), because if we don't, then we cannot continue this convo] How do we decide, if a being has any level of agency? I think we decide that based on how complex that being is cognitively and also based on how creative it can be and how unpredictable it can be. If that being gives the exact same responses to the same inputs, then we wouldn't call that being conscious (generally). So based on those things i gave, i can't see how a complex enough AI wouldn't be considered as conscious?

Do you use the word 'sentient' the same way as 'conscious'? If you do, then we are basically talking about ego. What would be the difference between a biological ego and a mechanical ego?

The thing is with AI, that there is a point where it can simulate sentience so well, that we might mistake it as real sentience. There is no way, we can actually distinguish between the simulation of sentience and real sentience. From a practicality standpoint, i don't know if it matters or not, but its still an interesting philosophical question, for sure.

@Scholar I think even though the perception would be different the desire would still be there. I think that if the concern for something outweighs the temptation or the desire, then that particular action most likely won't be taken. I think the 'concern' part can be affected by internal and external factors as well. For instance, using your rape analogy, you could say that you wouldn't rape that particular person, because of your perception of them and because of your internal moral system. But thats just the inner part, there is an external factor to this, because there are laws. Other external factor could be friends and culture. But of course the culture part is almost irrelevant here, because most people eat meat so the culture part just makes it harder. Your internal moral system and how you view things internally of course can be affected by external factors. I think most people who eat meat wouldn't eat it, if they had to the butchering and killing themselves, because they actually somewhat recognise that some animals seem to be conscious. But even though they recognise that, they still eat meat, because there is a system that does the heavy lifting of butchering the animals and providing them consumeable products. I think you are totally right ,when you say, that the perception part is the most important part here. Because there are arguments on the meat eater side like (but meat is more cheap | meat is more nutritious | based on these 2 articles a human must consume meat, because if they don't , then they won't be healthy | only eating vegetables won't give me enough energy | The place where i live, i can't access enough vegetables | meat is more delicious | vegetables nutritional value is declining rapidly compared to the past, so i have to eat 9 orange now, to get the same nutritional value, that i got from eating one orange in the past|etcetc) even if you were to debunk all of those above, most of them would still eat meat, because of the perception part . There might be a small number of people who would change their mind based on your debunking of those arguments, but most of them wouldn't. Because of this, i think the most you can do is to target the younger generation who are open enough to change their view on animals or open and receptive enough to create a more righteous perception of animals. If you want to target adult people, then the question is, how could you give them the desire or a reason, to be willing to change their perception of animals. I think that particular desire will have to be greater than the desire to consume meat. Without giving them the desire to change, i think there will be no change, unless you can do it in a sneaky way.

Yes, its good to know why we want to do what we want to do. I think its this. A TOE wouldn't be practical, but just for the sake of understanding it would be good. If you are somewhat biased towards understanding , then it could be good for you, but if you don't care about understanding stuff just for the sake of understanding them , then i don't see what you could gain from it.

Yeah, then my bad, i projected my assumption on this thread.

Yeah , thats why i said that no matter what position one take we will have to eat some heavy bullets. I bet you care on a political level , if your position on abortion would be used on a societal level. It boils down to subjective prefences and metaethics. Its not more true to say, that abortion is right or to say that abortion is wrong, because ultimately its based upon subjective grounds. Generally, we debate or talk about these topics and arguing because we assume, we can change the other side's mind about their position. If we assume, that the other side won't change their position at all, then the only point to continue talking about the topic is to be able to understand why the other side they think what they think ,and why they take the position what they take, but other than that, not much value you can get from the discussion.

Its irrelevant for the sake of abortion discussion. We could reason why he is or why he isn't a sociopath but the conclusion won't change any abortion position here, so i don't think its relevant to argue about it. Pro lifers will be able to attack your position and say, why do you justify killing a human life, by saying that that human life might grow up in a poor environment. Pro lifer could say, why shouldn't we kill then other poor children who grow up in a poor environment? Your other argument was (correct me if i am wrong) that "people should be forced into having children if they are not ready". Pro lifer would argue, why should that statement hold more weight compared to a human murder? I am pro abortion and I think, if you are pro abortion you can't take the stance that you think that human life begins from pregnancy, because it will be almost impossible to defend. Its impossible to defend, because anything you will say will have to hold more weight than a human murder.

Generally speaking we would want to get down as deep as we can, to see what you value and why. There is a reason to get down deep, because the other party might change its position if he/she hears a sounding argument in favour of your position, but if you start on the ground of "common sense" then no one will change any positions and noone will be convinced of anything. But we don't need to continue this,if you don't want to, but you have to be aware, that the other party who will argue againts you can use the term "common sense" as well (because you are using it too) as they like and whenever they like without needing to justify or further elaborate why they think what they think. Using the word "common sense" is begging the question and implies that we didn't really think through our position why we think what we think and why we value what we value. Its irrelevant for the sake of this discussion if he is a sociopath or not. Of course i would just use my assumptions, just as you. So if a mosquito put its needle in you and suck your blood and you kill it, regarding to this framework it would still be considered murder, because you intentionally killed it, just to be more comfortable and to not feel pain. Or if you kill a fly in your home, just because you got annoyed by it , it would still be considered a murder, and if you use this framework the only justification you can use is that, "it annoyed me , so i had to kill it " but of course that will be very weak to justify murder. So according to you , from where human life begins and why there? Also, why should we value the potentiality of a life the same way as an already developed life?

If you want to take the position that consciousness is not necessarily related to the brain, then you will get into a weird position which will be really hard to justify. We would get to a place where killing any small bacteria or life should be considered a murder because generally speaking what we actually value is conscious experience. Also, generally speaking we definitely value consciousness over potentiality, so how do you go around that? Just as he said, we can keep a body alive, but we no longer consider him conscious (if he is braindead) . I don't think you value 5 braindead bodies the same as 5 healthy person with healthy brains Also, he can use the "from where do you consider the fetus a human" argument as well. He can say that it isn't a human before 6 weeks and that way he can justify abortion. Its subjective where someone draw his/her own line. He is not a sociopath. He was a pro lifer some years ago, but he changed his position. I think he is giving pretty sounding and rational arguments most of the time. There are no common sense distinctions in morality debates. You need to bite some heavy bullets depending on what position you take. Its the nature of moral arguments that you need to justify everything. No matter what positions you will take ,you will have to eat some heavy bullets, the only question is, with what bullets you are okay with.

Destiny is laying down a strong pro abortion position here. It starts at 1:19:31 .

that "pay me for my nudes" is really strange if she is interested in you for real. She could be a desperate hooker or idk lmao. But i mean, you can test her and that will tell which assumption is true. If you really want to, you can keep on chatting with her and see where it goes. If she is not interested in you, she will stop chatting with you, if she is interested, she will stay around more, but who knows. Or it might be the case ,that she really is a hooker, but she is interested in you, and testing you if it would be okay if she was a hooker. But of course this is just speculation.

I think she was pretending to be into you in person. Hookers and bitches can play like that . First try to make you horny and try to play it like they are into you and then they can use the buy my nudes card or to fuck me for money card or to get a bj for money card. Also girls can pretend to be into you , just to get drinks for free. 100% agree.

I think you need to work on your embodyment, and your ego is fragile. You are getting overrun by your emotions by a pretty basic everyday situation. In the future, you will bump into a lot of cold and provocative people and they will be much more triggering than the one you interacted with. That being said, i agree ,that there is a subjective line for everyone ,where they will decide to kill someone. That line is being drawn at different places depending on the person. But i think your tolerance level is way too low. If you got so triggered by this situation , that you started contemplating about killing other people, that means that you have work to do, and you are dangerous. You need to figure out why you get so bothered by basic life situations. You may need to go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist to work on yourself and on your ego to be able to tolerate more shit. Your ego will be shattered by other much more serious situations. I don't think so. Even if a cop kills someone who is dangerous, he doesn't want to kill that person but he doesn't have any other option. He doesn't do it because he wants to, but he hast to. There is a big difference between wanting to kill and when there is no other option, but to kill. (In the first you have other options, in the second you pretty much ran out of options) If you get satisfaction by the thought of killing other people you have something seriously fucked up in your mind and you should go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist. But to be more charitable to you, there are exceptions of course. For instance, if a pedophile would rape and torture my kid ( I don't have any but if i had ) i would probably want to kill that person because of the emotions. But that is a pretty exceptional situation and not some basic everyday situation that can happen on a regular basis. My tolerance level is pretty high, i try to avoid and do everything before things get physical. Even if i was to get attacked there are a number of things i could do, before i would get into a fight.

It might be, but not necessarily. Lets take spirituality, you can get the big picture pretty fast using hardcore psychedelics, however to get the details and the connections between the parts and how it really works is much more harder imo. The problem with only focusing on the parts is that you study them in an isolated way, and your understanding of them will be limited. You can put those elements/parts into a different system and see how they will work (That way you can understand even better what the purpose of those parts why they work differently in different environments and structures, and you will know what are the aspects that are unique to those parts, regardless of what system you want to put them into.) Of course focusing only on the big picture has its own limitations too. But i think you are right , that you don't necessarily need a TOE to be more practical. TOE would be more about understanding than being practical. If practicality is your main focus, then TOE won't be interesting to you. A theory is pretty strong and not just speculation it is based on data. Of course that doesn't mean that it can't be faulty, but a theory is "stronger" than a hypothesis.