Tim Duffy
@timfduffy.com
I like utilitarianism, consciousness, AI, EA, space, kindness, liberalism, longtermism, progressive rock, economics, and most people. Substack: http://timfduffy.substack.com
My MRW when discover feed shows me nude Tayne
November 10, 2025 at 9:39 PM
My MRW when discover feed shows me nude Tayne
TBH I'm surprised this post got a good deal of agreement, I thought this was one of my more out there consciousness takes.
November 10, 2025 at 7:57 PM
TBH I'm surprised this post got a good deal of agreement, I thought this was one of my more out there consciousness takes.
I lean much more towards consciousness being a real thing, but I think that whatever we have, it's probably pretty similar to what dogs have.
November 10, 2025 at 7:55 PM
I lean much more towards consciousness being a real thing, but I think that whatever we have, it's probably pretty similar to what dogs have.
Mostly unrelated but I can't believe it's been more than 10 years since the /r/fatpeoplehate ban.
November 10, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Mostly unrelated but I can't believe it's been more than 10 years since the /r/fatpeoplehate ban.
How's the macroblog coming along?
November 10, 2025 at 7:29 PM
How's the macroblog coming along?
I don't recall whether this started under Pao, but IIRC Reddit actually had someone who's job it was to coordinate AMAs with big names. I think that position was eliminated a few years back though.
November 10, 2025 at 7:25 PM
I don't recall whether this started under Pao, but IIRC Reddit actually had someone who's job it was to coordinate AMAs with big names. I think that position was eliminated a few years back though.
Really the reason I am skeptical of a purely physicalist account is that it doesn't seem capable of explaining the one thing I'm most intimately acquainted with.
November 10, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Really the reason I am skeptical of a purely physicalist account is that it doesn't seem capable of explaining the one thing I'm most intimately acquainted with.
My views on emergence suggest it is either fundamental or not real. If joy is reducible to only physical properties and not mental ones, where does it get its goodness? Perhaps my strongest intuition is that my conscious experience is a real thing, and this is a nearly universally shared intuition.
November 10, 2025 at 5:36 PM
My views on emergence suggest it is either fundamental or not real. If joy is reducible to only physical properties and not mental ones, where does it get its goodness? Perhaps my strongest intuition is that my conscious experience is a real thing, and this is a nearly universally shared intuition.
In the posts below the one you responded to above I explain why I don't think monism/idealism suffer from that arrow A/arrow B problems Graziano raises.
But some other theories can address this as well. In addition to panpsychism as you note:
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
November 10, 2025 at 5:28 PM
In the posts below the one you responded to above I explain why I don't think monism/idealism suffer from that arrow A/arrow B problems Graziano raises.
since those physical things are just emergent features of mental things.
November 10, 2025 at 4:37 PM
since those physical things are just emergent features of mental things.
But some other theories can address this as well. In addition to panpsychism as you note:
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
November 10, 2025 at 4:37 PM
But some other theories can address this as well. In addition to panpsychism as you note:
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
- Russelian monism can account for seeming causation between the two since physical and mental are aspects of one thing that underlies both
- Idealism can account for mental things causing physical ones,...
I do think this line of argument is important. Mental stuff seems to cause physical stuff (reports), (and vice versa!) and it seems our theories of consciousness should account for this. One way to do so is to say consciousness is just a weakly emergent physical phenomenon, and so not fundamental.
November 10, 2025 at 4:37 PM
I do think this line of argument is important. Mental stuff seems to cause physical stuff (reports), (and vice versa!) and it seems our theories of consciousness should account for this. One way to do so is to say consciousness is just a weakly emergent physical phenomenon, and so not fundamental.
Is it really peak throughput that OpenRouter reports though? I'd expect it would be either median or mean throughput across requests, probably not weighted by number of tokens.
November 8, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Is it really peak throughput that OpenRouter reports though? I'd expect it would be either median or mean throughput across requests, probably not weighted by number of tokens.
which the proton ceases to exist. This make me lean towards the view that reducible things generally don't have a single true nature but are instead patterns that can be described in different ways.
November 8, 2025 at 8:49 PM
which the proton ceases to exist. This make me lean towards the view that reducible things generally don't have a single true nature but are instead patterns that can be described in different ways.
To this is elementary particles, which are reducible to the wave function but seem to have harder boundaries than most emergent things. There's still some possible sources of fuzzy boundary, like whether virtual particles count or not, and if if proton decay is real is there one precise moment at...
November 8, 2025 at 8:49 PM
To this is elementary particles, which are reducible to the wave function but seem to have harder boundaries than most emergent things. There's still some possible sources of fuzzy boundary, like whether virtual particles count or not, and if if proton decay is real is there one precise moment at...
Another smuggled assumption I have is thinking that reducible things are less real. A primary reason for thinking this is that (almost?) all reducible things seem to be defined fuzzily, such that there is no perfect objectively correct definition of them. The best counterexample I can think of..
November 8, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Another smuggled assumption I have is thinking that reducible things are less real. A primary reason for thinking this is that (almost?) all reducible things seem to be defined fuzzily, such that there is no perfect objectively correct definition of them. The best counterexample I can think of..
about its irreducibility, and it's just another thing like a chair or a thought, and that the sense that it's real in the irreducible way it seems to be is just illusory.
November 8, 2025 at 6:57 PM
about its irreducibility, and it's just another thing like a chair or a thought, and that the sense that it's real in the irreducible way it seems to be is just illusory.
an irreducible nature. If what-its-likeness is not reducible, and if strong emergence is false, then it must be a fundamental component of existence, since there's no other way for it to arise at any other level. That's the first possibility I named. The other possibility is that I'm mistaken...
November 8, 2025 at 6:57 PM
an irreducible nature. If what-its-likeness is not reducible, and if strong emergence is false, then it must be a fundamental component of existence, since there's no other way for it to arise at any other level. That's the first possibility I named. The other possibility is that I'm mistaken...
Ok maybe I should take a step back. I am smuggling in some assumptions about what what-its-likeness is. I have a strong intuition that consciousness is "real" in a way that most things are not. Not just in the sense of being some useful pattern that can be identified like "love", but a thing with...
November 8, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Ok maybe I should take a step back. I am smuggling in some assumptions about what what-its-likeness is. I have a strong intuition that consciousness is "real" in a way that most things are not. Not just in the sense of being some useful pattern that can be identified like "love", but a thing with...
I'm not sure whether this is true of aphantasics broadly, but although my inner life isn't visual, it is sort of spatial. I can't imagine a picture of a bicycle in my head, but I can think about how the parts of one fit together.
November 8, 2025 at 6:41 PM
I'm not sure whether this is true of aphantasics broadly, but although my inner life isn't visual, it is sort of spatial. I can't imagine a picture of a bicycle in my head, but I can think about how the parts of one fit together.
rely more heavily on unconscious processing for me than for others. Object rotation tasks mostly feel like proprioception to me, combined with brute-forcing based on quickly comparing features one at a time.
November 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM
rely more heavily on unconscious processing for me than for others. Object rotation tasks mostly feel like proprioception to me, combined with brute-forcing based on quickly comparing features one at a time.
Wow, I don't realize how strongly correlated aphantasia and anauralia are. I agree that aphantasia is probably about conscious vs unconscious processing, at least in part. I don't know if object rotation is an example of this though, I have aphantasia and I don't feel that object rotation tasks ...
November 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Wow, I don't realize how strongly correlated aphantasia and anauralia are. I agree that aphantasia is probably about conscious vs unconscious processing, at least in part. I don't know if object rotation is an example of this though, I have aphantasia and I don't feel that object rotation tasks ...
Encouraging that the reaction to the post is resoundingly negative despite the woo sounding subreddit name. Gives me an idea: LLM-powered reddit bots that look for folks who have wacky theories form talking with their AI and talk them out of it.
November 8, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Encouraging that the reaction to the post is resoundingly negative despite the woo sounding subreddit name. Gives me an idea: LLM-powered reddit bots that look for folks who have wacky theories form talking with their AI and talk them out of it.
things in the human mind rather than something deeper, then narrativization seems as good a feature of consciousness to require as any, which is a possibility I don't rule out.
November 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
things in the human mind rather than something deeper, then narrativization seems as good a feature of consciousness to require as any, which is a possibility I don't rule out.
consciousness is these fundamental properties, and I'd expect world of smells proto-consciousness to have those. So I place less weight on concepts like narrative. However I should note that if the world is physicalist, and consciousness is just a somewhat arbitrary descriptor of a bundle of ...
November 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
consciousness is these fundamental properties, and I'd expect world of smells proto-consciousness to have those. So I place less weight on concepts like narrative. However I should note that if the world is physicalist, and consciousness is just a somewhat arbitrary descriptor of a bundle of ...