Carl-Richard

Many indigenous and primal cultures have engaged in things like tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption. It's possible to survive while engaging in behaviors that compromise your health and longevity. So the fact that something has been done by humans for a long time does not mean it promotes health and longevity. It could, but that would be for a different reason.

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@Danioover9000 I think I understand what just happened: your point about the relativity of language seemed like a tangential point, but I still responded to it. Then you somehow tried to shoehorn that point back into the discussion, which is why I said "that's a weird twist". Then I thought we were moving on from that tangent, but you apparently kept rephrasing that same point in a more verbose way, and that is what threw me off.

This guy is very enjoyable to listen to, and he makes a very thorough case for why religions (or "grand narratives") exist and why we need them.

If you're an idealist, consciousness doesn't arise from anything, because it's beyond physicality, but sentience is a concept we ascribe to lifeforms. It does seem to have something to do with physicality. You wouldn't say a rock is sentient. It doesn't feel pain when you step on it. It doesn't have eyes to see with or ears to hear with.

Why is that the end goal? Isn't it the survival of the organism as a whole? And if you're singling out signalling between neurons as the only important process for sentience, what is so special about this process, and why are other processes in the brain irrelevant? But then, would it be able to think? Does it have memories of previous experiences?

It's true that there is no reason why it can't become sentient. I'm just talking about what reasons we have for it being sentient.

You'd be surprised what goes in there. I'm just saying we have less reasons to believe this than the alternative. Besides, what exactly would they experience? How would you replicate the signals associated with sensory input if you don't have sense organs?

@LSD-Rumi The inside of a neuron is also extremely complex. Maybe missing out on that complexity means missing out on sentience. There are also other arguments about things like embodiment. For example, we have never experienced being a brain in a vat. What if sentience requires being born in a body, developing sense organs, growing up and learning to respond to environmental inputs and relate to the world in some hands-on way?

Why is the signalling between neurons the important thing to replicate and not for example the various types of signalling inside the neuron?

;_; That is what I meant. You know, Silicon Valley? So you're fine with merely replicating the patterns of neuronal signalling, not say the ion channels or the various neurotransmitters that exist in a real brain? But that would still need a substrate, no?

Would you be satisfied with a silicon replica of the brain at the level of neurons, or would you also want to replicate what is happening inside and outside the neuron as well?

If a computer had the intelligence of a dog, would you believe it to be sentient?

@Danioover9000 I don't see how it relates to the discussion.

No ?

@Danioover9000 I don't know what you're talking about.

How does this relate to the discussion?

Can you say that in simpler words?

That's a weird twist, but sure.

There is no absolute interpretation. The best you can do is to know which interpretations you want to use for which goals you want to pursue.

I technically agree, but also consider the context. The dude is a gamer and people call in while he is gaming. Most callers are casual, but sometimes you get gems like this. I would also prefer if he was always fully engaged, but that is just how he is. He is obviously not a shining beacon of virtue, but I prefer Destiny over any other daily content YouTube entertainer. It's a funny meme

Just being Destiny.

The reason I made this thread is because I wanted to talk about the video, because I liked the points the guy made in it. He happened to use the term "grand narrative", and I went with that. If I wanted to talk about Lyotard's definition of grand narratives, I would've made a thread about that.

I don't see that. Remember that my thread is about a YouTube video where that concept was being talked about and which I told you to watch and which I explictly referred to multiple times?

So you still misunderstand what I mean by a grand narrative. That's ok. A grand narrative meets all human needs. There can be many possible grand narratives, but all of them have to meet all human needs in some way. Whether the specific contents of each narrative is efficient or actually conducive to each need is a different question. What I was talking about with an "universal grand narrative" was in the scenario where the world is united (not in serious conflict), which would mean that the specific contents of the leading grand narratives (if they exist) would in some way be commensurate.