Let's say I have a backyard, and let's say further that I have a tree in it. I look out my window and I can see it and I can walk outside and actually touch it. It's real. If Old Dog were so inclined he could get on the train and come see it. It's unlikely that Beagles would paddle his canoe down the Cheboygan River into Lake Michigan and into the mouth of the Chicago river and see it, but I suppose I could send him a photo, though how would he know it was my backyard. He would just have to take my word for it.
I wonder if that's the aspect of objective reality that Old Dog finds fuzzy, the fact that you can't visit everybody's backyard, so you have to take their word on stuff, and of course some people lie, so you have to figure who is lying, and for that you have to use your judgment, which you have honed through exposure to Objective Reality, but there is that gut feeling that comes from, well who knows, I suspect the subconscious, but it feels pretty subjective, so is that what Old Dog means by fuzzy?
Now I am interested in that whole gut feeling concept. Where does it come from, how often is it right or wrong? Why do we feel kind of good about going with our gut feeling and not so good about going with something that seems right by cold analysis, but goes against our gut feeling? Well no time for that now because I am justifying Objective Reality.
I believe that the tree falling in the forest makes a sound regardless if there is anybody there to hear it. I believe the forest would be there whether we were or not, and that there are planets in far off galaxies that have forests that we will never even know about whose trees make a sound when they fall. This is, embarrassingly, a statement of faith, but I don't see how we can navigate the universe without it, it's like tossing logic by the wayside.
It occurs to me that I am not even sure what Old Dog means by his heresy. Maybe this is all a matter of semantics. I'll await his further arguments. Word on the street is that he is looking to philosophers for backup. I think I handle Descartes, but that Spinoza guy can be slippery.
I am using Chrome and the orange Send feedback box appears in the lower right hand corner when I am typing into the post a message box. But then maybe this is some kind of Objective Reality test like that tree that would be in my backyard, if I had one.
I don't know why you guys are so sure that computers or networks will ever become self-aware. I just don't see it and I don't know how we could ever know that it happened if it did. The idea of solipsism appeals to me, it is so perfectly logical, but that would mean that all my posts to the Institute are just me talking to myself.
Solipsism aside I think we all agree that each other has self awareness and I think most of us agree that our cats and dogs and deer have it, and maybe a little less as we leave the mammals and birds and get into lizards and fish and bugs. But it seems logical enough doesn't it, that they all have some form or self-awareness, that it is like a light that grows fainter and fainter but is always there to some extent. So then if we are ever going to give that big computer any kind of self awareness then we will have to grant some form of it to our desktops and then down to our toasters, and finally down to when Og rubbed the two rocks together and made a spark, and then we might as well suppose that the rocks themselves have some kind of consciousness, which I think maybe Spinoza did, but we'll have to wait for Old Dog to nail his 95 thesis to the old oaken doors of Objective Reality to parse that one out.
Ah you know what, I was just rereading Old Dog's post to check out Spinoza stuff, and I see where he does have that orange box, but it is safely out of harm's way from typing. What is going on here is that I have two windows open when I post, one for where I am typing and another of yesterday's posts for quick reference, and to fit them both on the screen I have to squinch them a bit and that squeezes the orange box right into my writing box.
Having solved the problem of the orange box, I think I will leave the problems of Objective Reality and thinking toasters for the morrow.
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