{"id":195,"date":"2008-11-14T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T22:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=195"},"modified":"2009-01-26T06:51:36","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T14:51:36","slug":"with-apologies-to-pete-townsend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"With Apologies to Pete Townsend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know, we&#8217;re not on the cutting edge any more with this whole value-of-consciousness riff.  Just a couple of years ago, the idea that sentience isn&#8217;t worth the trouble seemed a pretty radical proposition.  But in the years since <em>Blindsight<\/em> came out<sup>1<\/sup> we&#8217;ve seen top-flight journals publishing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/real\/articles\/Science_The_Right_Choice.pdf\">research<\/a> showing that consciousness impedes complex problem-solving; we&#8217;ve seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/real\/articles\/Neuropsychologia_Rosenthal_2008.pdf\">review papers<\/a> suggesting that self-awareness is a mere side-effect of brain function, serving no real purpose.<\/p>\n<p>And sometime between then and now the whole thing went from heresy to mainstream. In fact, we&#8217;re <em>so<\/em> mainstream that there&#8217;s actually a Value-of-consciousness <em>backlash<\/em> brewing.  According to <em><a href=\"http:\/\/discovermagazine.com\/2008\/oct\/15-could-an-inner-zombie-be-controlling-your-brain\">Discover<\/a><\/em> magazine a couple of months back<sup>2<\/sup>,  &#8220;A small but growing number of researchers are challenging some of the more extreme arguments supporting the primacy of the inner zombie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A small but growing number.&#8221;  Right.  A plucky band of free-thinking rebels, taking on the fossilized Establishment dogma that Consciousness Is Irrelevant.  You know, back in the old days, the Old Boss would have ruled at least long enough to move his things into the Palace before the New Boss threw him out.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m just glad that Thomas Kuhn didn&#8217;t live to see this day.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 85%;\"><sup>1<\/sup>Or maybe before;  I only started following the arguments when I started researching the book)<br \/>\n<sup>2<\/sup> And thanks to Nas Hedron, or whatever he&#8217;s calling himself these days, for the link.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know, we&#8217;re not on the cutting edge any more with this whole value-of-consciousness riff. Just a couple of years ago, the idea that sentience isn&#8217;t worth the trouble seemed a pretty radical proposition. But in the years since Blindsight came out1 we&#8217;ve seen top-flight journals publishing research showing that consciousness impedes complex problem-solving; we&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scilitics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}