alt Hacker News> However, this parrot can't hope to emulate any serious form of consciousness, and therefore can't ever be capable of intelligent judgment
I often hear this asserted, but never with any actual justification.
Why can it not?
Replies
It has been generally agreed since at least Plato that it’s up to people making a positive assertion to present evidence, not up to skeptics to prove it’s not possible. N.B. Russell’s Teapot Analogy.
You have to prove it is/can be conscious, not the other way around.
I am going to say it with only a trace of mild bemusement in no specific order:
- careers, nay, nearly whole industries may ride on that being the case - classifying it as conscious intelligence opens a range of ethical questions no thinking, conscious, intelligent ( and likely non-evil ) life-form would want to comprehend - being able to ascribe judgment to it without intelligence undermines a lot of what we do on a daily basis and puts into question what it is that makes us human - I am saying this part in the nicest possible way: hardcore cope of biblical proportions, where seemingly conscious, intelligent individual, who makes an argument for lack of consciousness manages to ( in the same sentence! ) to anthropomorphize the parrot and imbue it with hope - average human tendency to fear the unknown
Because people who say this are always begging the question. They're already at the conclusion and work backwards to justify it.