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Brian_K_Whitetoday at 9:06 AM1 replyview on HN

You can't tell the difference between a person and an mp3 player saying the same words, even if the words are about inner life musings.

And you can't tell the difference between a person exhibiting many behavioral actions and something I could rig up with an electric motor and a light sensor to exhibit tropism, seeking things, avoiding other things.

But if you only had a remote controlled roomba to interact with the world, you would be able to make yourself known to me.

I don't mean that you could substitute a voice with writing out words on the floor, I mean your actions, the overall totality no single act, would would expose a driving source of actions that so far nothing else exhibits.

We just anthropomorphize everything because we have so much in common with all the other animals. When a dog or a dolphin does something, we have had experiences that we recognize as being practically identical, and we know what our experience was like. It's protecting it's baby. I protect MY baby! Yes and an electric motor can turn a crank, and you can turn a crank.

Simple outward alignments like that are some kind of logical trap everyone falls for because we don't have any other conceptual vocabulary to even think with.


Replies

somenameformetoday at 12:46 PM

This is an interesting take but are you not equating intelligence with consciousness?

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