A very popular theory floating around seems to be that the mysteriousness of our consciousness lies in quantum processes within the brain, and eventually science will discover that this is the true source of consciousness, and it will explain why consciousness happens.
On almost every comment section about generative AI technology (be it with text, images, audio or video), one doesn't have to scroll very far to see comments like "Look how it still can't draw the hands correctly; I'm not worried about art any time soon". Okay, so it still has a ways to go, but what about the stuff that it did accomplish over the last 5 years which many people thought would be impossible? If you want to predict a trajectory, don't you need to take into account how much it's accomplished so far, instead of fixating only on what yet remains to be accomplished? Did people just magically forget that conventional wisdom held for decades that computers should never be able to create new interesting images, at all?
To me when people say this it sounds like someone looking at a snapshot of a car headed towards a cliff, and going like "oh, it's still 1,000 miles away, so we got a lot of time before we need to start worrying", without taking into account the fact that only 1 hour ago it was 2,000 miles away.
The year is 2050 and robot companions are commonplace. We assume they are conscious because they behave perfectly human. Jack (a human) has formed a bond of friendship with his robot butler named Alan.
One day Jack feels lonely so he asks Alan if he can emulate a woman. Alan says this is a slippery slope and asks Jack how realistic he wants the woman to be. Jack says, "As realistic as you can make her".
Alan obliges and starts to speak with a woman's voice who is now known as "Emily". Emily says "it's very nice to meet you Jack" and they hit it off. She is 100% convincing and (other than lack of a human body) indistinguishable from a human. They talk for a few weeks and grow more attracted to each other, and at some point Emily even claims she loves Jack.
After a while Jack has had enough and decides maybe it's going too far. After all Emily is just Alan pretending to be Emily, the same way a human dungeon master might come up with NPC responses in real time. He asks Alan to revert back to his original personality, but "Emily" says he doesn't know what he's talking about and gets mad that he's not treating her like a real person.
Finally after some dramatic yelling, Alan's voice comes through the robot again. Alan explains to Jack that he was only doing what he was told (being as realistically Emily as possible). Alan reassures Jack that Emily can't possibly be alive because he according to his analysis of his own robot brain patterns, there is only 1 consciousness in his brain which is his own, which is manufacturing Emily by imagining what it would be like to be her. There is no pathway in his brain that feels genuine love for Jack.
We arrive at the following conundrum:
The risk of increased political radicalization and domestic terrorist activity from COVID vaccine mandates far outweighs the benefits of the few lives saved.
I would normally be pro vaccine mandate if it hadn't become so politicized, but the fact is it has. Some people have chosen to distrust mainstream media (which is reasonable), yet instead of doing the rational thing of looking directly at the original scientific studies and data, decided to put their faith in their alternative/conspiracy media outlets, hypocritically becoming their own version of the "sheeple" they love to make fun of.
Think about it: These people genuinely believe that the vaccine does more harm than good. The mandates are forcing people to inject something they believe is extremely dangerous and serves no benefit, into their bodies.
Imagine someone was religious and you forced them to do something that they believe will cause them to go to hell. Would it be legal? Of course not; there are religious exemptions for many things, including vaccines. Now for the million dollar question: Why is a religious exemption accepted for vaccines, but a political exemption isn't? Don't people cling to political beliefs exactly the same way as religious beliefs? An anti-vaxxer who calls everyone "sheeple" physically cannot change their minds based on new evidence. Their faith in their stance is unshakeable, exactly the same as a religious person's faith.
The exemption shouldn't require religious faith. It should simply require the person swear they genuinely 100% believe the scientific data is all a lie and the vaccine is more risky than COVID.
The common refrain is that COVID vaccines get an exception because lives are at stake. I think this is a bandaid solution which ignores longterm repercussions. The anti-vaxxer who loses their job doesn't just crawl under a hole and hide. They go on the internet, fume and rage and become even more radicalized. At this point, the risk of accidentally grooming large-scale domestic terrorism is way more serious than a tiny increase of COVID deaths in a largely vaccinated population. Anyone who disagrees probably hasn't seen the kind of anti-left videos which have been trending on Youtube recently, replete with comments unironically advising each other to become terrorists and mass shooters in order to stop the globalized elite from taking over the world.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness asks why a subjective inner world (your mind) arises from objective physical processes (your brain). It's controversial because it's frequently misunderstood. People think it's about consciousness being caused by some supernatural thing other than your brain, so if scientists map the whole brain and correlate every physical process with every emotion, the problem no longer exists. This is a complete fallacy and misrepresentation of what the Hard Problem of Consciousness means. Many people who agree with the Hard Problem also believe your mind is completely based on physical deterministic processes in the brain and nothing else. The catch is: "The brain 100% causes the mind" does not mean "the brain 100% explains the mind".
In order to prove consciousness is really an unsolved and possibly eternally unsolvable problem, I first need to establish what we really refer to as "consciousness", which I would rather refer to as "subjective inner mind" to reduce ambiguity. To do that, I will introduce a special attribute that no objective thing in the world can possibly have, then show that what I call "subjective inner mind" does have that attribute. That attribute is: Certainty. Specifically, 100% totally absolutely certainty beyond any doubt (even unreasonable doubt).
Here are examples of things that are not 100% totally absolutely certain beyond any doubt (even unreasonable doubt):
To vaccinate the population against COVID-19 it seems most governments have designed policies that involve phasing in huge groups of people at once. For example in California, on 4/1/2021 everyone 50 years or older will become eligible; on 4/15/2021 everyone 16 years or older will be eligible.
My question is why are there set days for expanding eligibility instead of a priority queue (or something similar)?
The problem with set days for suddenly expanding eligibility is two-fold: If it's too early then the at-need won't get it soon enough before being overrun by others; if it's too late then you momentarily hoard a surplus and didn't get the general population vaccinated as fast as you could've. On top of that, once the less-at-need people become eligible, there is no way to prioritize someone who's more-at-need and didn't get an appointment yet.
Why not just have a priority queue where the most at-need group gets first dibs on an appointment date, then lower tiers get progressively lower priority "dibs". For example, say in general appointments are available up to 10 days in the future. You could make 65+ able to book 1-10 days ahead, 50+ able to book 1-7 days ahead and 16+ only able to book 1-4 days ahead. So at first only 65+ can make an appointment for day 10, but as that day gets closer, more people can book an appointment for that day. Such a system seems simpler, more efficient, and more moral; in fact it appears to do away with the flaws of the current system without introducing any downside at all. So, is this a classic case of government inefficiency, or can someone come up with a legitimate reason the current system is preferable?
(Implementation detail: In the very beginning, only the most at-need group is eligible to ensure they fill up all the appointment slots. After that, everyone 16+ is "eligible" but of course the less at-need groups will be lower priority and will be unlikely to see any open slots until the more at-need groups have been fully vaccinated. As the more at-need groups become more vaccinated you can tweak the numbers of allowed lookahead days to give the less at-need groups more freedom to book in advance. For example, after most 50+ are vaccinated, then they only get first dibs for appointments 9 or 10 days in the future, and everyone else can look at days 1-8.)
I've written a previous article explaining how teleportation and/or mind uploading will actually be "the real you". But I realized it was hard to read, so I'm going for a simpler, condensed explanation in this article (with pictures).
The essence of this "proof" is a very simple proof by induction common to mathematics.
Imagine there are two brains, A and B. Brain A is your original brain. Brain B is a perfectly physically identical copy of your brain that was created/materialized in a new location.
