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wake
@wake.eth
Oh yah, I've admitted as much. My academic background is Psych, Phil of Mind and Language, and Neuro, with a dash of Computer Science because I love debt and ivory towers and prolonged adolescence.
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
That's like my sweetspot of special interests 🤣 finally returned to finish my philosophy degree recently after a couple decades of dicking around with chaos. Taking a neuroethics class this fall that I'm *really* excited about.
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wake
@wake.eth
Nice! My jam was the underdeveloped intersection between language, thought, and neurological concepts. Following thinkers like Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland; kinda pragmatic, kinda idealistic. Phil majors are dangerous fun. Glad I followed you 🍿
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
I'm primarily interested in consciousness, and especially the potential for emergent machine consciousness. Still not convinced it's possible, but also, the current iterations of LLMs really call into question a whole lot of things about the human experience of consciousness. But language is another deep interest of mine, both philosophically and linguistically. I love words. Been obsessed with them since I was a toddler - my mother noticed I was reading the words before she was when reading at story time, and made picture books with polaroids and the words written on sharpie to encourage me 🤣
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wake
@wake.eth
okay, brass tacks, choose one: dualist monist physicalist materialist pragmatist phenomenologist which house to you pledge?
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
Monist
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wake
@wake.eth
so one undifferentiated "stuff" and no supernatural frosting?
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
Yep. And that is deeply informed by the sorts of experiences one has at a ten-day silent meditation retreat where one dissolves into nothingness and realizes that we're all just the universe trying to figure out what it wants to be 🤣 It is a bit more complicated than just monism, of course, but it's all *just* the universe and any perceived substantive difference is a game the universe is playing with itself. At least as far as I can see it ;)
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wake
@wake.eth
i'm amused by the idea that human subjectivity and awareness is just a bored universe fuckin' around. and given the prevalence of "natural selection" as a governing algorithm, there might even be a sorta truth to it.
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
It really is just a big old game of FAFO.
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wake
@wake.eth
with self-assembling and eventually self-aware entities being Level 1 through Level 5 (of ♾️) so that the universe has some /one/ to find out. else, just a bunch of fuckin' around with no subjects to enjoy.
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Gwynne Michele
@thecurioushermit
Which, of course, makes the potential for machine consciousness all that more intriguing. I think the idea scares a lot of people because it bruises the human collective ego a bit - we think we're special, when maybe we're just an accident of a FAFO universe.
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