> Sorry I'm talking about after it's been born and raised. I think we should definitely assume that a grown adult born from an artificial womb has feelings. Though whether the zygote feels is definitely an interesting question too!

Ya I know, I was just teasing pro-choicers (no offence intended if you are one). :)

> Curious if you have any examples here. I have a pretty wide/open metaphysical view--I'm not even particularly committed to realism or physicalism.

As luck would have it, here's one:

> But a world with a hard wall against artificial consciousness would be especially weird

The world is as it is - you are referring to your perception/perspective upon it. If it so happens to be that there is, in fact, a "hard wall against artificial consciousness", that is normal, not weird - it only seems weird.

A common saying for this phenomenon is: "It's turtles all the way down!", but I propose this is also (slightly) incorrect - I would say: "There are turtles throughout the stack" - "is" implies something different, and introduces ambiguity that may not be noticed (people often conflate "is" and "equals").

> You'd need something along the lines of a divine decree to stop it...

That is only if it is in the state you think it is and wanted to change it to a different state. But you do not know if the state you think it is in is the state that it is in. Strangely, it may also be impossible for you to know this! But if you're the guy that writes the blog, I have a feeling you can pull it off! 😋

> ...because you would somehow need to differentiate between brains grown in a human womb and brains grown in a laboratory. The lab can get arbitrarily close to recreating the human womb, up to and including cloning.

Technically, it is not known how close they can get to anything in particular, particularly when it comes to (comprehensive) consciousness (which tends to not allow itself to be seen in a non-distorted manner - now that's weird, imho).

> This seems like a very nihilistic view of truth.

Epistemic strictness does seem to have that appearance, I hear it regularly (but not as often as solipsism).

> You could use the same argument to deny pretty much any line of reasoning.

Close, but not quite. You could use it to question the epistemic soundness of any line of reasoning, but if one was to use it to deny a claim (for which the truth is not known(!)), you would then be committing the very same error, except from the other side.

> It's pretty clear the the earth is not flat, but there's plenty of disagreement there too. Should that stop us from discussing geophysics?

I don't see why it should, and I certainly made no such recommendation.

> Same with Jan 6.

When you say "same", are you using the dictionary meaning ("identical; not different"), or the colloquial meaning ("it seems the same, according to my methodology: sub-perceptual heuristics")?

> There are a lot of facts on the table, and conclusions that can be drawn from them.

Are the conclusions epistemically sound?

Has a competent epistemic analysis of the various claims even been done? [As an aside: does it not seem more than a little strange to you that among all The Experts that guide us, nowhere are (genuine) philosophers to be found, particularly those who specialize in logic and epistemology?]

> Some people--even a majority--might loudly disagree with those conclusions, but that doesn't make them false or "unknowable".

Right: it is the fundamental falsehood (if that is the case) and unknowableness that makes it unknowable. And to make it even harder: consciousness often does not allow access to "it is unknown", presumably due to evolution (but I suspect culture and school curriculum might have more than a little to do with it).

> (Note that I'm not including political narratives, like who deserves punishment or blame, as these are statements based on values, not facts....

Mostly agree, except: your list is non-exhaustive, but you've made no explicit acknowledgement of that.

> ...value statements are indeed unknowable).

Perhaps, but I doubt as unknowable as it may seem!

>> A plausibly even bigger question: to what degree is it optimal that we are even pursuing this [particular goal in the first place, all things considered? Or maybe an even more important question: have we even stopped to consider that question? Just how is it that "humanity" "decides" what it is that we should be doing, and what we should not be doing, anyways? I don't recall that topic being covered.

> I sympathize with this. But I tend much more towards descriptivism over prescriptivism.

Me too, hence my lack of prescription (innuendo is in the perceptual layer 😋).

> IMO these are things that will happen, no matter what you and I think should happen.

We shall see about that.

> Very sympathetic to this feeling. We never vote on the Authority, but it does seem to be consensus-driven.

I have no issues with (actual) democracy, but when it proceeds beyond that to redefining the nature of reality itself, as a "fact", with or without doing it under the guide of using the supreme methodology for truth discovery (doing it this way seems to be the choice...and strategically, it's a shrewd move)....well, this is where my patience runs out. (Actually: j/k - Luke 23:34 and all that).

> Science is at least better than the Catholic Church, in that it doesn't physically torture dissenters. It just publicly ridicules them.

I would say that depends on how one practices epistemology, and how deep one analyzes causality (if one is even aware of that phenomenon - once again: culture and school curriculum, a big part of the causality that underlies me being a conspiracy theorist).

> I'm hopeful a new Authority will emerge over the next century or so. One informed by science but not driven by it.

I am far more ambitious: a new methodology or norm emerges, but:

a) not based on authority

b) using whatever works, rather than artificially constraining oneself to a known (by some) to be incredibly flawed, and not even designed for the problem space in the first place methodology like "science" (and what we'd "probably" get IRL is not science, but The Science, like during COVID).

Also: I think hope is insufficient - someone has to make it happen.

It's certainly plausible that I am biased or have some error in my thinking, so I welcome and encourage you to point out any errors you see in my statements (while doing so: please distinguish between the statements themselves and your interpretation of them).