太空与探索

"I think that no tradition, vitalists included, is ever fully wrong about the nature of the things that they’re describing. So a lot of times when I look at different ways that people have described things across human history, across different cultures, there’s always a seed of truth in them. And I think it’s really important to try to look for those, because if there are narratives that humans have been telling ourselves for thousands of years, for thousands of generations, there must be some truth to them. We’ve been learning about reality for a really long time and we recognize the patterns that reality presents us. We don’t always understand what those patterns are, and so I think it’s really important to pay attention to that. So I don’t think the vitalists were actually wrong."

"Well, I think people are going to have romantic relationships with them, and I also think that some people would be convinced already that they’re conscious, but I think in order… What does it take to convince people that something is conscious? I think that we actually have to have an idea of what we’re talking about. We have to have a theory that explains when things are conscious or not, that’s testable. Right? And we don’t have one right now. So I think until we have that, it’s always going to be this gray area where some people think it hasn’t, some people think it doesn’t because we don’t actually know what we’re talking about that we think it has."

"Yeah, let’s talk about it. Well, first of all, of course it can. I mean, it can help, meaning that I’m not saying physics is not helpful. Of course it’s helpful. It’s a very important lens on one slice of what’s going on in any of these systems. But I think the most important thing I can say about that question is I don’t believe in any such line. I don’t believe any of that exists. I think there is a continuum. I think we as humans like to demarcate areas on that continuum and give them names because it makes life easier, and then we have a lot of battles over, you know, so-called category errors when people transgress those categories."

"I think the categorical stuff is actually hurting that search. Because if we try to define categories with the kinds of criteria that we’ve gotten used to, we are going to be very poorly set up to recognize life in novel embodiments. I think we have a kind of mind blindness. I think this is really key. To me, the cognitive spectrum is much more interesting than the spectrum of life. I think really what we’re talking about is the spectrum of cognition. And it is… Well, I know it’s weird as a biologist to say, I don’t think life is all that interesting a category. I think the categories of different types of minds, I think, is extremely interesting."

"And if you say to me, “I care in the linear range, I actively, I’m not just saying it, I can actively care in the linear range about all the living beings on this planet,” I’m going to say, “Well, you’re not a standard human. You must be something else,” because humans, I don’t know, standard humans today, I don’t think can do that. You must be some kind of a bodhisattva or some other thing that has these massive cognitive light cones. So I think what’s scaling from zero, and I do think it goes all the way down. I think we can talk about even particles doing something like this. I think what scales is the size of the cognitive light cone. And so now this is an interesting… here, I’ll try for a definition of life or whatever, for whatever it’s worth."