"A trillion mindless robots dancing."
#beehiveiorism
I love that I've been able to replicate a famous authors philosophical bent simply by researching ants and a strange theory about scat based cognition.
I don't use the same words. However if you look up his phrasing you get some interesting correlation.
"is it me or is everything shit?"
So I know Dennett did his Ted Talk on consciousness in 2003, and I've read his book on the origins of consciousness from a philosophical standpoint.
But I wonder how long he's thought about it in terms of a swarm of robots?
Who influenced him, and whomever that is what influenced them and whomever that is what influenced them?
#hivesongs are weird.
@Flaccus
Oooh, I remember that one. I'll have to mine it for details.
I dug into Hofstadter a while back and i'm fairly certain they know each other, at least professionally.
I am reminded of all the physicists that Einstein worked with. Our culture has a knack for labeling one 'brilliant mind' as the cause, but I see it as a group level thing.
@ultimape , there is this wonderful line that de Koninck had—at least, I think it was him, in the same letter where he complains that he cannot talk to those outside of the scholastic tradition—that philosophy is not an historical tower to lock oneself into, but a series of bridges leading from our own imprisonment.
"It becomes lit"
"just as life does in the real world, these complex properties emerge from simple laws that contain no concepts like movement or reproduction. It's possible to imagine that something like the 'game of life' with only a few basic laws might produce highly complex features perhaps even intelligence..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgOcEZinQ2I
"A trillion mindless robots dancing."
#beehiveiorism
@ultimape , I'm certainly no epiphenomenalist, but there is a certain elegance to thinking about the development of things—and I think everyone should see these arguments.
@Flaccus
My brain latched on to this idea: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27126 a while back - the notion that information and systems can exist somewhat independently of the medium. Or rather, in my head: that intelligence is emergent.
I don't much care for the rest of that authors arguments, but the concept combines interestingly in my head alongside "epiphenomenalist". I didn't realize there was a word for that. Sounds simlar to framings of "materialist'?
@ultimape , I think that I recently posted the article, but the New Yorker recently ran a piece on him that I was very pleasantly surprised with. It summed up well his philosophical history and some of his personal life.