[HarHarVeryFunny]

Being an amateur has no bearing on how knowledgeable someone is about a subject, but for an opinion to be useful (or just interesting) it needs to be backed up with some grounded rationale, otherwise it is just that - an opinion.

[dpark]

Trouble is you don’t how much time anyone else has spent studying. How can you tell who else has “spent decades thinking about things like intelligence and evolution, perception, qualia, have read dozens of papers on subjects like cortical microarchitecure”? You can’t but you still dismiss others as unqualified.

> it needs to be backed up with some grounded rationale

This was my point. Address the claim and not the qualifications.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

There is no gatekeeper to internet discussions, so nobody is stopping you from joining in.

If you feel qualified to add something useful to the discussion, or just to throw your unqualified opinion in for that matter (whichever the case may be), then go ahead. I'm certainly not stopping you.

As may be expected the conversation is already a garbage fire.