[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[gts]

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 13:43:48 -0500, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

>> I would say that a bacterium acts intelligently or rationally
>
> Contrast is needed to see things, if EVERYTHING has a property then it's
> invisible and there is no point in wasting perfectly good ASCII strings  
> like"intelligence" and "rationality" on it.

I'm not suggesting everything is intelligent.

I am suggesting that the most basic level of awareness is a simple  
physical change in response to the environment; that evolution produced  
organisms with evolved nervous systems not to *create* awareness, but  
rather to *exploit* it.

And yes I agree that in some sense the word "awareness" becomes  
meaningless if everything is aware. But we need to use words to  
communicate our meanings. When you see that awareness is a meaningless  
word then you will have understood my argument.

-gts