Introduction

Whenever I get curious about my beliefs, I search other people’s beliefs to see where it stands among society, and each time I do, I’m perplexed by the position the majority hold.

CASE 1: Searle’s Chinese Room

To give an example, I’m interested in the Chinese Room thought experiment by Searle, which makes a very clear and thorough argument against a syntactic approach to artificial intelligence.

So I decided to see what reddit had to think– which was my first mistake. The top comments everywhere were basically iterating piss-poor arguments that he’d already addressed, in their vain attempt to defend the present concept of intelligence.

It’s like their minds are built to defend their hopes by instinct, and that any argument against it is seen as overlooking some simple deficiency, as though Searle’s thought experiment can be solved by them in a single “gotcha!” like the argument itself.

Because when problems arose in Newtonian Mechanics, all it took was a single quip from Einstein to solve it and not a series of articles produced from a body of knowledge acquired through a diverse and deep collection of thinkers.

Of course, as with every reddit thread, there are wiser people lurking in the replies, but by far the dominant thought is “B-but he forgot this???” Because the thought of computationalism being challenged is a heresy to their futurist and pop-philosophical dogmatism.

The chinese room is a very strong thought experiment that hasn’t yet been properly addressed by the majority of computationalists, and that people who dismiss it with a brush of the hand don’t appreciate the complexity and depth to which it’s already been discussed, nevermind a whole host of other criticisms laid forth against computationalism.

I understand the waryness of the thought experiment, that people might see it as some sort of Zeno’s paradox, like with one of Parmenides’ argument against motion. Where you can’t travel anywhere because you have to get half-way there, and then half-way there again, and then half-way there again, leading to an infinity.

Thought experiments that in the end, should not lead to a conclusion which is self-evidently false (because things clearly do move, despite what Parmenides tricks himself into believing), and displays a problem with the question’s own assumptions and beliefs, that can itself be interesting to explore.

But Searle isn’t trying to conclude anything in a paradox, he’s just describing a CPU in a metaphor. There isn’t a conclusion that’s absurd, it can be real and evident. The person doing calculations does not understand chinese, it’s entirely possible.

It’s a problem that needs to be answered rather than brushed away because the assumptions are the basis of computationalism and functionalism, things we believe.

And yet nobody sees it that way. Why am I the one, who doesn’t know much about it, can see that it’s an issue these people are covering up to protect themselves. Shouldn’t it be a pervasive topic, instead of something dismissed? I don’t know.

CASE 2: Astronomy

Rare Earth

The rare earth hypothesis is another example of people rationalizing their cope, when it’s quite clear that the rare earth hypothesis is one of the few and clearest evidence for the lack of other intelligent life so far.

There are so many stupid attempts to disregard it. Arguments like alien civilizations not being characteristic to growth and spread; because one of life’s inherit characteristics has never been about the spread of species wherever it may be possible? Arguments like aliens use a completely different way of communicating that may not be seen from earth. Because other alien civilizations don’t live with the same physics as we do?

Other arguments include there not being any evidence to support the rare earth hypothesis. Argument from ignorance is relevant here, where an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is the argument. However, that argument is based on the fact that there hasn’t been any investigation. We say that aliens don’t exist because there isn’t evidence for it.

When we test drugs, we test if there are no harmful effects. Does that mean because we haven’t found any harmful effects, that there’s no evidence that it doesn’t have harmful effects? No, it means the chances for any undiscovered harmful effect is low.

It’s entirely contextual. In our case, our findings show no evidence of life, even in situations where life is conducive, such as on ancient Mars, or in any of our observations on stars. I mean, the Fermi Paradox is there, clear to see.

Even on earth, where life does exist; multicellular extremophiles struggle to thrive outside a comsmologically small range. When such extremophiles are presented with extreme conditions, such as with the tardigrade, they must enter a period of stasis to survive, and unable to perform standard biological function like feeding and reproduction.

I can write a detailed response to every argument laid for and against it, but it’s taking too much of my time.

My point is, the rare earth hypothesis is clearly a serious and respectable hypothesis that’s immediately thrown away because it harms sentiment. “We’re not alone” is not a conclusion we should hold, if we come to hold any. It’s the one we do because we’re sentimental, and think that just because there’s a lot of stars and galaxies, that means there’s some alien species out there looking back at us in awe.

Human imagination is beautiful, we like to think of all the extreme possibilities for intelligence and life to emerge, and not all the very real ways it can’t. The reality is, we’re probably alone. We probably won’t find them, and that the universe we’ll have is only there for us. What life we may find will be extremely rare to find, and will likely be more primitive than we would culturally find interest in.

Terraforming of Space

Planets should not be terraformed, it’s an affront to research, and is an extremely anthropocentric position. Humans are naturally adaptive anyawys, we can create habitats that will allow us to survive, and tools that do our work for us in uninhabitable locations. We don’t need to terraform and colonize an entire moon or planet to live there, tainting every bit of data we may receive from it.

Everything

It’s just stuff like this that makes me question my sanity. Stuff so clearly flawed, in which the majority of “intelligent” people believe, all because they enjoy being high off copium.

CASE 3:

I recognize my ignorance

I’m horrible when it comes to estimating my capabilities, but I’m always accurate in assessing my lack of intelligence.

I ignore people who argue with me online

Unless you hold a PhD in your field, where you’ve clearly have done the research, have read the literature, have an understanding on the philosophy of science, I’m not going to take

I already understand my ignorance. Any argument I make will be from from a point of ego. If I know you know more than me, then I’ll see it, but if you approach it like a debate, and start linking articles like an asbolute fucking moron, then I know you’re far more stupid than me.

You’re spouting in a more degraded, and retarded way. There’s no absolutely no way you’re intelligent and you hold no self-awareness.