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I would add the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and Link from Zelda to this list. One can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, but calling oneself merely agnostic misuses the term. Agnosticism is about knowledge. (A)theism is about belief. We all believe or don’t believe, and agnosticism supplements those labels, but cannot replace them.

That's utilizing functionalism on a neuron (saying something like "the function is to encode and decode"... Isn't this computationalism all over again?). The entire thing about heuristics... what determines it? The selection criteria somehow isn't itself a program? The created "populations" didn't come from programs? Programming is everywhere in a machine, up to the bare metal. Machine "evolution" isn't "evolution" at all. When any design is involved, it's over. Who designed the genetic algorithm itself? All this is kicking the can labelled "programming" down the road hoping it would disappear into the rhetorical background. The second part of your reply continues the functionalism of neurons. It's using "symbol systems"? Nope... the computational/IP conception really needs to die off. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer You're using a computerization technological parallel. It's the latest in the one long chain of bad analogies based on the latest tech of the day, starting from hydraulics, then telephones, then electrical fields, and now computers and web-networks (or what's being called "neural networks..." when there's nothing "neural" about those) As for DNA, I've addressed that issue in the article by saying DNA differs in functional compartimentalization (i.e. the lack thereof) as well as scope. DNA works nothing like machine programming code. You gave a bunch of names. I don't know what points they made. You have to tell me. That's what I meant. You then pick at singular and plural. Great. Then you said algorithms are not needed, and there are other mechanisms. Like what? What do you mean "treat other people who know other things than you do?" I simply asked you the points those people you named made, plus what those "other mechanisms" are. Excuse me but what's so unreasonable about the request?

He’s just another time waster

Your figure of a being and an environment reminds me of Markov Blankets, which relate a set of internal and external states as conditionally independent from each other. In this framework, i think the distinctions between intelligence, consciousness and self-awareness are on a continuum and so not qualitatively different - unless there is some kind of 'phase transition' when markov blankets are embedded in one another to a sufficient extent. (The free energy principle from which this model is derived draws heavily from physics so might be of interest to you).

That is correct. (it is a vertical drop*, the information in the question is enough to find images and videos of the ride on the net @DODOma ) * "drop tower" or "big drop" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tower

OK, it’s not identified as a roller coaster, and the implication is that you are starting from rest. You can use s = 1/2 at^2

Then why not save typing and just use "god"? If you have no belief, then it's a handy term for a deity. Again, choosing a term with specific implications is what people do when they harbor specific ideas. Intelligent designer implies a being with intelligence and engineering skills that are applied. You can't really avoid implications when you use language.

I'm agnostic about God the same way that I'm agnostic about unicorns, hobbits and Zeus. Is that what you had in mind? It does, in fact, natter what we believe.

Yes I agree with TheVat is is a shame because you are setting a good example by using correct terminology for instance hypothesis instead of that much abused term, theory.

I've started reading this - one of the most fascinating papers in cognitive sciences I've seen. The anti-representational view of brains interacting with the world certainly deserves consideration. I thank you for sharing that. I was already aware that information processing was an imperfect analogy for what biological brains do, so I'm curious how the author will steer away from it. Don't know yet if I can agree with abandoning that model completely but will try to finish, check some related sources and get back here tomorrow. I will confess I always enjoy watching a paradigm get shaken up, even if it's one I subscribe to. 😀 Sorry to hear that. Your perspective is valuable IMO.

You're very welcome. Feel free to PM me if you need articles to specific topics you have in mind surrounding consciousness, AI, and philosophy of mind. I might have what you want buried somewhere in my web-link archives.

In addition to my previous post, one should also note that auto workers took a pay cut when automakers struggled during the great recession “the UAW agreed to $11 billion in labor cuts, twenty-one thousand layoffs, a wage freeze for workers, a tiered wage system for new workers, a no-strike agreement until 2015, and the transfer of retirees’ health care and pension benefit costs from GM to the UAW, in order to save GM $3 billion. The union is still fighting to regain the ground they lost from these concessions.” https://jacobin.com/2023/09/united-auto-workers-uaw-strike-big-three-automakers-stock-buyback-shareholders

~So the bodies, call them A and B, are 'at rest', yet they feel the influence of gravity. Since you can't turn gravity on and off, there must be something holding them in place. So at time t = 0 that something is removed and the force of gravity begins to pull them together. Both Newton't 3rd Law (N3) and Newton's Law of gravitation say that the force of B upon A is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the foce of A upon B. Neweton's 2nd Law (N2) says that this force is proportional to the product of the mass and the acceleration of that mass. (F = ma) So to maintain the equality the smaller mass will have a larger acceleration. How are we doing so far ?

Evaporative coolers only work in low-humidity areas, but where they work, and water is available, sure, people should use them.

It is important to distinguish between the acceleration of each object involved and the total closing rate between the two objects. When you drop an object near the Earth, it accelerates towards the Earth at a rate that is solely dependent on its distance from the center of the Earth and the mass of the Earth. Simultaneously, the Earth accelerates towards the object at a rate that is determined by the same distance, and the mass of the object. For the everyday type of objects you are likely to drop, the Earth out-masses them by so many magnitudes that its acceleration is imperceptibly small, and can be ignored for all practical purposes, meaning we can treat the acceleration of the object towards the Earth and the closing rate between the two as being one and same. As you move to larger and larger objects, the acceleration of the Earth starts to make up a greater proportion of the closing rate, and at some point cannot be ignored( where this point is depends on how accurate you need your solution to be) So all objects dropped from a given height from the Earth do accelerate at the same rate regardless of their mass, but the Earth's acceleration towards them does change according to their mass.

Stop your conflation, because artificial consciousness is the topic. If you insist upon the conflation then there's no such thing as "artificial consciousness" in the first place since everything would just be "natural consciousness." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial Excuse me, but do you know what you're even asking at this point? Do you realize that the making of any man-made object doesn't start with a "law of nature"? If so, then the design process itself is also that of "natural law," and thus everything is operating on "natural design," a equivalent of an Intelligent Design argument? You need to tread carefully at this point.

You're ignoring that the process of design isn't one of "natural law" or "natural design." You're the one who is avoiding the issue. Next. People accusing me of not reading the thread, but they sure go easy on themselves. The practical functioning has to do with models of all kinds. If you have a working model, that doesn't mean that your model is in any way indicative of the entirety of the subject you're dealing with. Complete models never exist in actuality- If that's the case then there's no way to build a complete model of anything that's conscious.

Therein lays the rub. You're assuming that the device is built on the title question of "is it possible." I'm not, because my argument (if you even bother to read it) goes ground-up. You on the other hand, already presumes the answer. You know what it is you're doing, right? Yeah, okay I'll ignore your rubbish for a second to say this: You only stated effectively "consciousness is a continuum" and not "consciousness necessarily exist in all things" That doesn't contradict anything I say.

Sure. the point is that there ARE relativistic effects that don't. There is a need of a complete model, otherwise we're relying on producing symptoms via functionalism and behaviorism. Practical models don't have to be complete. Doesn't matter where I'm citing the paper from unless the information is bad. If I have to issue a correction inserting the word "certain" in front of the word "relativistic," sure. Doesn't change my point. I've contacted my editor. You keep ignoring the crux of the issue and therefore you're a troll. Bye.

Stop your hysterics. How is a car tyre "self diagnosing" (since I can't find your reference) and how does that even fit any definition of intentionality and/or qualia, which my article stated to be the basic requirements for consciousness? and by the way, again, how the heck am I misusing the term "machine?" iNow trying to troll. Cute.

Idea that only married people can enroll in religious faculties. There are many religious faculties in Europe and the Middle East, and most of the students who enroll in these faculties are not married. It happens that these students change sexual partners during their studies, which is not good for that type of faculty, I think it is smarter, wiser and more logical for religious faculties that only married people can enter that faculty (An exception would be Catholicism).