Raw LLM Responses

Ghost, Observer -- not consciousness. The only thing Geoffrey said that was close to the mark was that people will stop using the word consciousness. Anyone who is a materialist has to base their entire worldview on the idea that there is no immaterial world and hence no ghost or observer. But there are numerous challenges with that view. The most obvious challenge is the fact that as an observer, I only observe the world through the lens of my own brain, which leads to the question "Why does my observation even exist?" Obviously there are all other living beings having their own experiences, and obviously I am *not* observing their experiences. I'm only observing my own experiences. There's a curtain. But the presence of the curtain doesn't address the issue of why any observation of the material world exists to begin with. An immaterialist (or a spiritualist) would say that we are observing the material world but the materialist says that the material world itself *creates the observation*. Bizarre viewpoint to say the least. Geoffrey claims that consciousness (and thereby observation) is an emergent phenomenon that comes out by simply making systems more complex. There's a problem with that. He points out that current AI is functioning in the digital world. But its useful to realize that digital does NOT mean electronic. Digital only means on/off/binary state. You could build a gigantic super computer out of playing cards (or stone beads or anything you can imagine) that you manually shift around to run exactly the same neural network algorithms that are running AI right now. If you as a human move the playing cards around in the same patterns as an electronic machine, does that mean the playing cards as a system have become conscious (or have an observer)? What if you build some mechanical contraption that moves the playing cards around in automatic response to the algorithm itself? Is it conscious then? For a person who says yes, there's honestly zero point in discussing further. I also submit that such a person has a "God complex" or maybe an "anti-God complex". They have some kind of issue deep inside that has made them decide they have figured out the material world and thereby extension that the immaterial world simply doesn't exist and that observation only lives within the material world. That's literally proving a negative. And we all know you can't prove a negative. If you point that out to a materialist, he will say "Right and I'm comfortable with that." So think about that. You're talking to a person who is ok with having a worldview that is based on proving a negative because they just choose to ignore it.