Comments by "TheDionysianFields" (@TheDionysianFields) on "World Science Festival" channel.

  1. The book Underbug by Lisa Margonelli is a great primer for this subject.
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  2. It's a centralization-coordination issue. The less centralized an "organism" is, the more challenging it becomes to communicate and transfer information between the individual "cells." China lost only a few thousand people in the pandemic but the U.S. has lost 250,000. But such decentralized collaboration (i.e. swarm intelligence) can work for ants because they don't have politics, insecurity, betrayal issues, etc. Human collaboration requires trust, which is something very hard to come by in this world. (But note that we are certainly capable of such high-level coordination.) I really enjoyed Monica's thoughts on the interplay of collaboration and competition, with competition creating the underlying dynamism that drives the system. I didn't expect to hear something like that from this panel. Yin and yang.
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  3. Those last 20 minutes!
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  4. I think this group disproves that (although I mostly agree with you).
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  5. We DO have a corner on the market of consciousness in that we're the only animal that's "aware that it's aware." And this trait/capacity being almost certainly essential to religious thought.
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  6.  @uninspired3583  When they start writing philosophy or dwelling on past transgressions, I'll believe you.
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  7.  @uninspired3583  Of course they have self-awareness, they're just not aware that they're self-aware. “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” -Mark Twain
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  8.  @uninspired3583  Careful observations.
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  9.  @uninspired3583  All I've said here is that animals have awareness but humans have awareness that they have awareness, which is what enables true suffering. In this regard, I stand by my words and assert that my observations do in fact support them. My cat is in severe distress one minute and playing happily the next. This is an indicator of lower consciousness. I could offer many more examples.
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  10.  @uninspired3583  Then call it a bald assertion, that doesn't phase me in the least. As a change of pace, do you believe that anything possessing intelligence can suffer? Can a plant suffer? Can an AI suffer?
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  11. I'm impressed that they're so willing to admit their ignorance. And I believe one of them did throw out a couple ideas as to how the memories could be stored.
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