To give examples from media properties rather than quizzing everyone on philosophy stuff I only learned this year: Blindsight and Westworld
Personally I find the insistence on this annoying and I think consciousness is really important for correcting errors in vision. Who decides when to loose the arrow on the deer, so you don’t starve? That’s not something which can be handled subsconsciously, training to do it requires presence of mind and imagination.
Let me know if you think I’m misinterpreting it. I am curious what everyone thinks about the fabric of reality.
See, compiling and uploading stuff is good for the brain, it gives us time to reflect. 🧘♀️
Edit: want to add that treating human nature as the driving factor in human extinction (which won’t happen btw we will win) instead of capitalism is Bill Gates tier liberalism. I am deeply skeptical due to having done a little research on why this stuff is promoted, but dismissing it outright wouldn’t make sense, as people with a sufficient amount of money thrown at them in academia tend to produce some valuable nuggets
Personally I think you’re deep into logical fallacy territory. Evolutionary side effect vs. major advantage – these aren’t mutually exclusive things. And the second question makes even less sense, to be honest. Are you high?
Having said that, sentience is an emergent property of our complicated biology, and from that perspective and trying to tie this back to your question, it is kind of like a side effect of our brain structure and biochemical processes. But like all “side effects” that persist in populations through time, it almost certainly has evolutionary advantages for sentient species, or at least, it did at one time. Evolution itself is not a omniscient, self-deterministic, or static process, though.
As for correcting errors in vision, it’s possible. But it’s incredibly unlikely that’s the only advantage consciousness and/or sentience provides. Blind people are also able to process and filter complicated sensory information in order to perform substantially complex behaviors. And, conversely, organisms we consider non-sentient are capable of performing some very sophisticated behaviors, presumably completely by instinct.
It is very undialectical framing but there is a charlimit in title. I almost started yammering about crows using tools but also just enjoying pranks and experimenting with their environment. I think saying stuff like consciousness is just slowing us down is reducing it to its drawbacks.
Yes of course I’m stoned. I’m doing the laundry on a Saturday evening, I have no plans. Here, let me rephrase the title: how much do you hate Richard Dawkins?