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Comment by blacksqr | Hacker News Reader

Spoiler: if you redefine "conscious" to whatever an electron is.

I think I read that somewhere on the side of a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap in the shower. Although, every permutation of writing that could ever be written by a million monkeys at typewriters is on the side of a Dr. Bronner's too. Even this comment. #meta

Entities with too much consciousness can't handle their own consciousness and either go Warhol, invent the atom bomb, or make a startup selling silicone girlfriends because their bulging brains get in the way of their more fundamental drives.

Mental onany isn't as good as reality.

More like, consciousness is a matter of degree, rather than a binary yes/no.

Even materialists agree that consciousness is a matter of degree; panpsychists don't have a monopoly on that position. Humans are more conscious than mammals who are more conscious than fish who are more conscious than insects. But the materialist position is that any non-zero degree of consciousness requires a substrate capable of computation, and so you bottom out to zero long before you get to electrons.

So if I'm getting this right, the usual materialist position is that thinking is a matter of degree for stuff that can think, and just a straight no for everything else. While the panpsychists think it's just a matter of degree, full stop? No 100% unthinking allowed?

Great explanation. My thoughts approximately (but more eloquently).

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