alt Hacker NewsI'm following this mini-thread with interest but I've arrived here and I confess, I don't really know what your argument is.
I think this all stems from you objecting to this statement:
"I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique."
I think you're being uncharitable in how you interpret that. Human's are unique in the most literal reading of this sentence, we don't have anything else like humans. But the context is the ability to reason and people denying that a machine is reasoning, even though it looks like reasoning.
They're shocked that people believe that humans are unique. I explained why that shouldn't be shocking. I think I was pretty charitable here, I gave an alternative option for what they could mean in my very first reply:
> Unless you mean "fundamentally unique" in some way that would persist - like "nothing could ever do what humans do".
> I don't really know what your argument is.
I just said that I think that we have very good reasons for believing that human cognition is unique. The response was seemingly that we don't have enough of an understanding of intelligence to make that judgment. I've stated that I think we do have enough of an understanding of intelligence to make that judgment, and I've appealed to the many advances in relevant feilds.