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by Taek 18 days ago
Isn't pain just a manifestation of a bunch of chemical and electrical signals in the brain and body? It's not "clearly nonsense" to me that you could cause pain by writing a sufficiently long sequence of 0's - for it to be obviously wrong, you'd have to have some understanding of where consciousness comes from.

If you don't understand that, how can you assert that it doesn't come from mathematical relationships?
2 comments
RivieraKid 18 days ago
What specifically you mean by "manifestation of a bunch of chemical and electrical signals"? The brain is a system of physical particles. Why do I feel pain when the system is in state X but feel happy when it's in state Y? Physics can't explain that.

Do you seriously think that there's any chance that writing a lot of zeros on a piece of paper will create a feeling of pain in some conscious being?

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erehweb 18 days ago
This seems like a logical error. I don't understand how an internal combustion engine works, but I know it doesn't come from goblins jumping up and down inside.
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vitamark 18 days ago
The fact that you know it literally means you understand, at least to some extent, how an internal combustion engine works (i.e. it is powered somehow by combustion, and jumping goblins are not combusting generally).

If you would have zero knowledge about ICEs, how would you know?

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