private_messaging comments on Confused as to usefulness of 'consciousness' as a concept - Less Wrong
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Ahh, OK. The thing is, though... say, a crystal puts atoms back together if you move them slightly (and a liquid doesn't). And so on, all sorts of very simple apparent self maintenance done without a trace of intelligent behaviour.
What's your point? I've already acknowledged that this metric doesn't return equally low values for all inanimate objects, and it seems a bit more common (in new-agey circles at least) to ascribe intelligence to crystals or rivers than to puffs of hot gas, so in that regard it's better calibrated to human intuition than Integrated Information Theory.