[ExI] Where is the new space odyssey epic?

[William Flynn Wallace]

For me, if a critter has some sort of sensation then it has some kind of
consciousness - awareness of some aspects of the environment.

The brain is a mess:  given.  Scores of biases, all innate, I reckon.
Gives us the impetus to go about changing our genes for added or increased
function. Doesn't give us the right, but who will wait for God to give us
an answer about messing with his toys?

One thing that really irritates me - autoimmune diseases - where the body
attacks itself.  If I want to kill myself I want some control over it!

You know the answer to the testicle thing - temperature.  But why can't
that be changed?  Did you know that the inguinal canal can be enlarged (see
Bond film based in Japan - ninjas bound the path some way or other -
practice pushing them inside) bill w

On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 3:35 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Where is the new space odyssey epic?
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> >…For some definitions of consciousness…
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> >…If you want more complexity than that, you will have to give me a
> definition of consciousness.  bill w
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> We don’t really know for sure what it is Billw.  Neither do we know for
> sure if consciousness can exist on alternative substrates other than where
> we know it does exist, but I really don’t see why not.  Do you?
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> But here ya go: think of some of the structures evolution has produced.
> Consider for example the path of the vessels through which half our genetic
> material passed approximately nine months before we were born.  Those
> little guys go up and over and around and back in a most complex and
> hazardous path, when any engineer would ask: why does not those tubes just
> go directly?
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> Well, evolution brought us here.  That system for the seminal vesicle is
> an evolutionary kludge of the kind that no human engineer would ever
> commit.  And that whole external testicle thing, oh dear.  Every man here,
> well, every person here for that matter, knows exactly why that is a super
> bad design, terrible, with lots of huge disadvantages.
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> Evolution did this to us.  If one is up to speed on physiology, one knows
> dozens or hundreds of examples everywhere in the body, where evolution made
> a mess of something.  It produced something that kinda works, but we humans
> know there are ways it could be better, and even understand some things,
> such as that torturous path sperm must traverse can be surgically corrected
> if it is causing infertility.
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> My notion goes like this: if the body is filled with evolutionary ad hoc
> “solutions” many of which are not good, but just kinda work, then we have
> no reason to justify thinking our brains are not filled with analogous
> kludges that would never have been this way had the brain been designed or
> invented, rather than having to come about thru evolution.
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> This evolution business is too much like hurling plates of spaghetti at a
> wall until the result is something like a portrait of your mother.  I
> suppose if you did it long enough, it could eventually happen, but it would
> waste a lot of food, and the best result from millions of years of trying
> still wouldn’t look much like her, or if so, not her best picture.
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> I can extrapolate and venture a guess that a configuration for
> consciousness is theoretically possible, so far undiscovered, which does
> not reside in an evolutionary kludge but rather in something which is
> designed and created.  The first such consciousness may need to be
> laboriously convinced that it is a created being, disabusing the hapless
> chip of the belief that it evolved.
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> spike
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