AB,
How can you possibly compare the probability of randomly shuffled cards coming out in sequence to the probability of physically driven subconscious brain activity coming up with rationally thought out conclusions
Easily – it’s your failure to comprehend the sheer enormity of very large numbers that’s letting you down here.
First, let’s correct your terminology (again): “physically driven" is wrong – it implies a driver or some such, when all that’s necessary here is a
naturalistic model for consciousness.
Second, you have no idea how improbable naturally occurring consciousness is. Nor have I. Let’s agree though that it’s a very improbable (though also perhaps not as improbable as you might think – even a trillion-to-one against event that has an opportunity to occur a trillion times will give you a probability of 1, and in any case the only necessary
a priori outcome for consciousness would be single-cell life, on which evolution could then do it’s thing) but anyway, let’s agree that it’s very improbable in any case – in the trillions to one against range perhaps.
Still with me? Ok then…
Now consider how many possible combinations of 52 randomly dealt cards there are. It’s a big number. Really, really,
really big. That number is called “52 factorial”, and it’s written like this: 52!
OK, so how big is 52! then I hear you ask. This is what it looks like written in full:
80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824
Big eh? As it’s so hard to conceptualise though, try this:
“This number is beyond astronomically large. I say beyond astronomically large because most numbers that we already consider to be astronomically large are mere infinitesimal fractions of this number. So, just how large is it? Let's try to wrap our puny human brains around the magnitude of this number with a fun little theoretical exercise. Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. We're going to see how much fun we can have before the timer counts down all the way.
Start by picking your favorite spot on the equator. You're going to walk around the world along the equator, but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years. The equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075,017 meters. Make sure to pack a deck of playing cards, so you can get in a few trillion hands of solitaire between steps. After you complete your round the world trip, remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean.
Now do the same thing again: walk around the world at one billion years per step, removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean each time you circle the globe. The Pacific Ocean contains 707.6 million cubic kilometers of water. Continue until the ocean is empty. When it is, take one sheet of paper and place it flat on the ground. Now, fill the ocean back up and start the entire process all over again, adding a sheet of paper to the stack each time you've emptied the ocean.
Do this until the stack of paper reaches from the Earth to the Sun. Take a glance at the timer, you will see that the three left-most digits haven't even changed. You still have 8.063e67 more seconds to go. 1 Astronomical Unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, is defined as 149,597,870.691 kilometers. So, take the stack of papers down and do it all over again. One thousand times more. Unfortunately, that still won't do it. There are still more than 5.385e67 seconds remaining. You're just about a third of the way done.
To pass the remaining time, start shuffling your deck of cards. Every billion years deal yourself a 5-card poker hand. Each time you get a royal flush, buy yourself a lottery ticket. A royal flush occurs in one out of every 649,740 hands. If that ticket wins the jackpot, throw a grain of sand into the Grand Canyon. Keep going and when you've filled up the canyon with sand, remove one ounce of rock from Mt. Everest. Now empty the canyon and start all over again. When you've leveled Mt. Everest, look at the timer, you still have 5.364e67 seconds remaining. Mt. Everest weighs about 357 trillion pounds. You barely made a dent. If you were to repeat this 255 times, you would still be looking at 3.024e64 seconds. The timer would finally reach zero sometime during your 256th attempt. Exercise for the reader: at what point exactly would the timer reach zero?”
https://boingboing.net/2017/03/02/how-to-imagine-52-factorial.html#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20Scott%20Czepiel%20has%20a,number%20is%20beyond%20astronomically%20largeNow can you see how easy it is to “compare the probability of randomly shuffled cards coming out in a particular sequence to the probability of
physically driven naturalistic subconscious brain activity coming up with rationally thought out conclusion “? As you now accept that it’s improbable rather than impossible, can you now see that he odds against any specific sequence of 52 cards being dealt randomly are likely many, many times greater than the odds against consciousness emerging, probably over and over and over (and etc etc) again?
And yet deal a deck of cards randomly now and there in front of you will be a sequence of 52 cards whose improbability is so fast that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.
Do you get it now?
It is a meaningless label in the context of using it as an explanation of conscious awareness.
All the examples of emergence you quote comprise well understood functionality of what emerges which can easily be replicated in material terms.The functionality of conscious awareness does not exist in material terms and is impossible to replicate.
Yet again, you’re telling me
what you think but not
why you think it. These statement are called assertions or declarations, but not arguments – there’s simply nothing there to justify them
Why not finally then attempt at least to give me a “why rather than only a “what”?
What’s stopping you?
As indicated above, no one has been able to demonstrate awareness of reactions outside the human mind - because no one can define what awareness comprises in material terms.
That may or may not be true, but it’s irrelevant in any case. There are lots of well-understood phenomena we can’t replicate in a lab, but that doesn’t mean we have to resort therefore to magic thinking as our alternative.
Try to understand this.
