arundelo comments on Open Thread: February 2010 - Less Wrong

1 Post author: wedrifid 01 February 2010 06:09AM

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Comment author: Yvain 01 February 2010 12:39:10PM 6 points [-]

Fun sneaky confidence exercise (reasons why exercise is fun and sneaky to be revealed later):

Please reply to this comment with your probability level that the "highest" human mental functions, such as reasoning and creative thought, operate solely on a substrate of neurons in the physical brain.

Comment author: arundelo 01 February 2010 12:51:42PM 1 point [-]

90%

Comment author: arundelo 01 February 2010 11:38:30PM 2 points [-]

I'm writing this comment after coming up with my probability level but before reading anyone else's responses.

Until Yvain's question, I had not put a number on this. I suspect if there were a machine that could measure how confident I "really" am, it would show a higher number.

I spent less than a minute translating from my previous estimate of "highly confident but not certain" to a percentage. Things I considered that made the probability higher:

  • Every time humans have figured out how something works, the explanation has been a reductionist one.
  • The only reason to think that the mind would be an exception to this is that the mind is unique in other ways (qualia/subjective experience; free will).

Things I considered that made the probability lower:

  • The proposition under question could be false for two different reasons:
    • ontologically basic mental entities
    • physical yet non-neurological parts of the mind's substrate
  • I don't know how the mind works (nor does anyone else), so I should nudge my probability estimate away from certainty either way.
  • The mind is indeed unique.
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