[MD] Consciousness a la Platt

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Krimel]
Frankly, given the quality of his answers, I am beginning to think Platt "is"
an AI bot.

[Arlo]
C'mon, Krimel mi amigo, you can't honestly tell me you were surprised by
Platt's inability to answer these questions? Nor can you tell me you were
surprised by the empty evasions he has tried to counter with.

Way back, a contributor to this forum pegged Ham's Essentialism as "a thinly
veiled theism". Its essentially (pun intended) religion with Essence as God and
a goobledygook of words who seem more designed to obfuscate than enlighten. In
this last go-round, that is precisely all he could offer, although he has been
less that honest and upfront, saying instead "consciousness is a gift from on
high". So, into our timeline, Essence waved a magic wand, said "Abracadbra!"
and "Poof!" there appeared consciousness in primates. This same theism is his
account of how consciousness has evolved over historic time, namely the God
Essence simply "poofs" new and improved models of consciousness into man each
generation. It's absurd, to be sure, and this is why Ham can only run from my
honest, simple questions about HIS claims.

Platt on the other hand is worse, because Platt claims to represent the MOQ.
However, the MOQ Platt expounds is a theistic MOQ, governed by Qualigod, who's
plan the entirety of history enacts. Notice his recent glibs about my phrase
"unintended consequences". Fine, I say, so Platt proposes instead "intended
plans". The atoms "planned" to make cells, cells "planned" to make bodies.
Bodies "planned" to make consciousness. Or maybe everything is simply
Play-Dough fashioned as per Qualigod's Great Plan.

To the same questions I asked Ham, Platt could only allude to the same theistic
theme as Ham; Qualigod went "Abracadabra" and "Poof!" there was consciousness.
The only difference appears to be that Platt's Qualigod is enacting a Great
Plan. Ham's has yet to reveal its planning intensionality. As for the question
concerning the historic evolution of consciousness, Platt has tried to avoid
Ham's mistake of answering, as either answer "yes, consciousness has evolved"
or "no, it has not" both open up a tree of logical subsequent questioning that
his Qualigod concept is too bereft to handle. And so he does all he can, hide
behind evasion and rhetorical devices to try to deflect away from this.

Sadly, both have been too weak to even stand up and fess up to these views. Or,
answer my questions and tell me how I am wrong. My guess is that even they are
embarrassed by the absurdity of their answers, or perhaps they can see that
answers to these questions lead to an inevitable conclusion they simply can't
ideologically stomach. So instead they resort to the appalling rhetoric we have
seen. 

But again, is this really a surprise for you? For anyone??