Episode #264 Consciousness and Self
Sam had already broadcast with Anil Seth (as episode #113 in January 2018) and he brought it out again because of a book Anil just released. I didn’t really care for that podcast episode the first time around, but here are a few new comments:
1) Even after a 3-hour podcast, we are no closer to answering the question “what is consciousness?”
2) Anil attacks the plausibility of the philosophical zombie based on the notion that if it is complex enough to appear identical to something that it conscious, then it's probably going to be conscious also. I had hopes that his arguments about brain complexity and the entropy of cognitive states was going to give us a toehold into how to build a conscious information processor, but… no.
3) I'm more sympathetic now to the idea of panconsciousness, starting in atoms and growing in flies and bats and so on to humans. Anil's theory is that consciousness evolves; it consists merely of basic motor responses in simpler beings, and develops in richness with increasingly complex brains. It does seem pretty obvious.
Episode #268: The Limits of Self-Knowledge
Here, the questions are how do we know, and how do we know what we know? As Sam's listeners are aware, he's particularly concerned with how many people in America are running around spouting gibberish which they just have to know at some level are simply lies, and yet they cling to them like barnacles to a sunken ship. Disbelief of climate change, Voter Fraud, Systemic Racism everywhere, the 2020 election... our country, it seems, is filled with idiots. How did that happen? Of course they reference Dunning & Kruger, who came up with the famous work on the inverse correlation with competence and confidence.
Unfortunately, neither are able to propose any kind of antidote for this epidemic of willful ignorance. So ultimately, the whole podcast is not really much more than a bemoaning of our limitations as a species.
I did have one thought while listening to the podcast, which was that the Right brain v. Left brain stuff covered in #234 probably plays a role in how we delude ourselves.
Here's a throwaway thought they covered, worthy of Chuck Palahniuk, which is a good place to stop:
The first rule of Alzheimer's is to not recognize that you have Alzheimer's.
