COUNTERFEIT PEOPLE. DANIEL DENNETT. (SPECIAL EDITION)

<aside> 💡 my notes with section, timestamp and paraphrasing or direct quotes from presentation

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<aside> 💡 indented parts are my commentary and questions

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Overall IMO:

The philosophy of science parts are quite compelling and clear. The ML/AI Theory of Mind “counterfeits” parts are a hot mess.

min 2:30 TS reading from DD warn of “acquiescing to our own subjugation”

min 4:30 TS defines intentional stance… a heuristic to make sense of the behavior of complex systems. Physical stance, design stance, intentional stance.

min 6:50 TS defines knowledge argument via Mary's black and white room analogy… from that establishes there are intangible, nonphysical knowledge. DD points to importance of “cherry picking.” In both individual consciousness and communication.

Interview to focus on Theory of Mind and ethics

min 11 DD is a computationalist… describes what gives rise to subjective experience

min 13:30 llm/gpt is dangerous turn because it suggests suckers and interlocutors

min 16 DD a lot of bemoaning how foolish people feel and can be made to experience their lack of authenticity as (my word, not his)

min 16:30 TS talks about importance of reversibility in understanding communications (by text, for example, that might be from a non-person)

min 17:40 DD cautions against “bad actors” and then goes on the specify “thoughtless actors”

the later indicates the same phenomena in humans when on “autopilot”

min 18:10 DD cites recent mention of a “post-epistemic world” and calls it a chilling thought

this strikes me as an overemotional reactive stance to ANY prospect of losing the control we have become accustomed to… perhaps even simply through our “station” in life… such as being a well-regarded academic on the subject of epistemology [read: he doesn't want to lose his job, but that doesn't make it the tragedy he's painting]

min DD bemoans deception… appeals to notion that sensory input such as sight is “pure” and “tuned”… appeals to survival and wellbeing as evidence. Sights technology “out of our control” as the problem with

min 21:15 TS pivots to reontologizing of Floridi… re-engineering our everyday perspective of reality due to its presence and influence

DD says it “sounds extreme”… pivots to discuss… sensory input has affordances that are biased in a way that “tune us in” to reality … uses color as evidence that reality is sensory-dependent in a “benign way”

color and human general agreement upon such a thing is too simple to help with the questions at hand

DD cites his own work Real Patterns… which people in the sciences like… because it means distinguishable from random… says “that's what reality is”