AndyWood 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: AndyWood 01 February 2010 06:07:07PM *  0 points [-]

I'm going to take your question in the simple sense that first occurs to me, which is something like "dualism is false, and mysterious quantum effects are unnecessary. ordinary molecular chemistry only."

In that case, my probability approaches 1 that ordinary molecular chemistry is 100% sufficient to describe a system that implements reasoning and creative thought, and - heck - experiences consciousness. However, I also think that explaining how will require abstractions that are probably not yet well-understood.