this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Panpsychism is the idea that everything is conscious to some degree (which, to be clear, isn't what I think). In the past, the common response to the idea was, "So, rocks are conscious?" This argument was meant to illustrate the absurdity of panpsychism.

Now, we have made rocks represent pins and switches, enabling us to use them as computers. We made them complex enough that we developed neural networks and created large language models--the most complex of which have nodes that represent space, time, and the abstraction of truth, according to some papers. So many people are convinced these things are conscious, which has many suggesting that everything may be conscious to some degree.

In other words, the possibility of rocks being conscious is now commonly used to argue in favor of panpsychism, when previously it was used to argue against it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

In the past, the common response to the idea was, "So, rocks are conscious?" This argument was meant to illustrate the absurdity of panpsychism.

To me, this response does not illustrate any absurdity in panpsychism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Not everyone finds it persuasive, yeah. It's an appeal to intuition that many people, though not all, have.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Quantum mechanics is unintuitive. Appealing to intuition is not an argument, it's avoiding bothering with an argument.