
The Hard Problem of Breakfast - prostoalex
http://nautil.us//issue/88/love--sex/the-hard-problem-of-breakfast
======
anikan_vader
>> The stubborn fact remains that, no matter how deeply we probe into the
nature of bacon, eggs, oatmeal, and avocado toast—to say nothing of shakshuka,
grits, bear claws, or dim sum—or the interactions between these fundamental
building blocks and, say, orange juice or coffee and the morning paper, we
simply have no convincing theory to explain how such disparate, seemingly
inert components give rise to the phenomenon we subjectively experience as
“breakfast.”

That's the best sentence I've read in a long time, despite the fact that the
pandemic has me spending too much time surfing HN.

I think the author makes a very solid, implicit, argument regarding the
problem of consciousness. The "problem" is hard to pin down. It doesn't seem
any more implausible to me that consciousness is an emergent property from our
brain bio/chem/physics then that hurricanes and diamonds and stalagmites
naturally emerge from their respective environments. Or that massive
spaceships emerge from Conway's Game of Life. Of course humans claim that
we're special - "My consciousness is more important than a darned stalagmite!"
\- thinking of ourselves as more important than rocks and hurricanes, as more
special, gives us a desire to survive. Our predecessors who genuinely thought
they were no more "special" than a stalagmite were ineffective at passing down
their genes.

So I claim that the hard problem of consciousness is not such a hard problem,
but rather just a case of us humans being obsessed with ourselves.

~~~
radley
It's like asking "why is a flopping disc the icon for Save? Still today?" It's
because it's the easiest approach to understanding "this means _Save_ ".

If eggs are what's for breakfast, fine. Don't make me think. It's too early.

~~~
the_other
Here, take this coffee...

------
djrobstep
I'm an atheist with zero spiritual inclinations whatsoever, but it does seem
to me that science has not properly grappled with the hard problem of
consciousness.

Everything I've read that tackles it from a science perspective seems like
side-stepping, weasel words ("emergent property"), or wholesale denial ("it's
an illusion"). Not very scientific!

There seems to be a collective hubris at play, where people are afraid to say
"I don't know".

~~~
082349872349872
Here is my _Blindsight_ inspired hypothesis, that consciousness has been an
accidental application to ourselves of mechanisms that are useful for
predicting the behaviour of others:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475069)

In breakfast terms: if it has been fitness-increasing in the past to note that
all the other animals go down to the water hole at similar times (thereby
freeing up some desirable carcasses for scavenging? or at least making it
easier to cross over to far away trees while the predators are busy
elsewhere?) we may start to model mealtimes. Once we notice that others have a
morning feed that affect our actions ("breakfast" is followed by "rush hour"),
it isn't that big a jump for our grey cells to experience our own morning feed
in the same category, as breakfast.

------
grawprog
HN needs to lighten up sometimes that article went over pretty easy. It might
be a little scrambled, but you can poach meaning from it if you try. Things
don't always have to have such a deep hard boiled meaning.

~~~
dbtc
Puns are my bread and butter but even I'd have to say you're really milking it
there. And I suppose this kind of humor is not just everyone's cup of tea.

~~~
blaser-waffle
I think this thread is toast.

------
darawk
This article perfectly articulates my sentiments about the "hard problem of
consciousness". It's a made up problem. There is no such thing as
consciousness. It's a term we made up to differentiate ourselves from the rest
of the matter in the universe because we wanted to feel special. There is no
mystery of consciousness, the only mystery is why humans are incapable of
accepting the fact that they are just stuff, like any other matter in the
universe.

~~~
kranner
You've made a huge leap from there-is-no-hard-problem-of-consciousness to
there-is-no-consciousness. Consciousness is the experience of being something.
I know it exists, because I'm experiencing it right now. The experience is
consciousness, despite being illusory in many ways. Even a completely illusory
experience _is_ a conscious experience. In no way does it preclude my just
being stuff, or other forms of stuff experiencing things too (and thus also
being conscious). The mystery _is_ how I can feel anything at all _despite_
being just stuff.

~~~
darawk
But there is no mystery. Feeling is a self-referential concept. The concept of
'you' or 'me' 'feeling' presupposes a self, which smuggles in the conclusion
that consciousness is related to some immaterial element.

Feeling is just how we experience reward and punishment. It's an epiphenomena
of our machinery for interpreting and interacting with the world. An
intermediate representation, essentially.

~~~
klipt
I think this comes down to a semantic dispute
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_dispute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_dispute)

We may be meat robots, but we are social meat robots, so it's not surprising
many of us feel a desire to discuss our shared meat robot-ness, aka
"consciousness".

~~~
GeneralMayhem
It is a semantic dispute, but in this case, it's an interesting one. The words
in question are "I" and "feel". You even used the word:

>many of us feel a desire

Can you restate that clause without using any synonym for experience,
subjectivity, consciousness, etc.? I posit that you can't, and the fact that
you can't explain the most basic fact of existence except recursively is
itself interesting.

~~~
FeepingCreature
Okay, first of all the fact that people cannot explain their experience does
not invalidate their experience. Second of all, that is totally possible to
explain if you know about the map-territory distinction and how it plays out
psychologically.

Basically, humans are meat robots whose brain contains a symbolic-experiential
map of their surroundings, meaning it (among many other things) associates
symbolic concepts with sensations. Since humans self-model as part of their
social behavior, the map contains a representation of themselves. The map also
contains a sensory input and associated symbolic representation for its own
operation; the meat robot calls "the meat robot sensing in the map that the
meat robot is modelling itself" consciousness or "being itself". Separately,
it calls the concept it associates with itself "I" and the sensory input of
operating the map "being".

~~~
GeneralMayhem
I don't disagree with your first point. I meant that it's interesting that
there is a phenomenon that is undefinable _despite_ (in my view) self-
evidently existing

I'm familiar with the map-territory distinction, but I still don't think
that's sufficient. I'll grant that it's possible to define "I" as an
arm's-length name for a representation - basically the same as "my body" or
"my hands". And we can, without any philosophical complexity, do that with
consciousness itself - I can talk about "my state of consciousness" in the
third person.

That doesn't, to me, explain subjectivity. The simplest factory robot will
have a model of self - likely a much more accurate one than mine. Is it
conscious? Does it subjectively experience?

~~~
FeepingCreature
If it has a (recursive?) model of itself and a sensory input representing its
operation, I would argue it's conscious. For instance, I believe computers are
conscious in this sense; not in the sense that anything that computes is
conscious but in the sense that `top` (or the Windows Task Manager) fulfills
many of the listed traits - self-awareness, self-modelling, discrimination. Of
course, computers can't actually _do_ nearly as much as we can with their
consciousness, but that's a question of skills that are not themselves
consciousness.

For the closest example, I think there's probably something it is to be like
the Linux OOM killer.

------
anu7df
What is this supposed to be? I am with Animats on this one. Surely no better
than GPT-2

~~~
alicemaz
it's an extremely poor attempt at a joke about consciousness

~~~
stewbrew
Not on consciousness but on the contemporary scientific treatment thereof.

~~~
szemet
So is it a joke on _" Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind"_?

But it just reiterates his first example using _breakfast_ instead of
_university_...

 _' The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the
colleges and library, reportedly inquired "But where is the University?"[3]
The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category
"units of physical infrastructure" rather than that of an "institution".'_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake)

~~~
stewbrew
Thanks for the reference. Interesting twist.

------
Animats
Was this written by GPT-2? (Not GPT-3; it's not coherent enough.)

~~~
NhanH
I was about to downvote this comment, but I went and checked the first 8
citations in the articles. None of them exists, and yes, the article makes
very little sense as well.

~~~
crooked-v
It's a satirical article, and thus has satirical citations.

------
skybrian
You might prefer this description of breakfast:

[https://meaningness.com/eggplant/routine](https://meaningness.com/eggplant/routine)

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jaza
While I laud the analysis, the methodology seems questionable at best. Lacking
strawberry, quinoa, chia, and even paprika. Where's the rigour?

~~~
paulie_a
It's lacking everything. Eggs and paprika are cheap as hell. The amazing egg
is healthy despite 40 years lies

------
aaron695
I honestly thought it's a bit silly but I get the idea how complex breakfast
is.

And I thought it was nice philosophers still have something useful to do and
talk about these things because science will soon find out what makes
breakfast, or if it even exists.

It's great HN is discussing this stuff.

Come to comments, oh, it's just about consciousness again.

------
tus88
> It has long been understood that no breakfast can exist in the absence of
> its constituent foods and their related supporting structures such as plates
> and bowls, utensils, and toasters

How did this pass review?

~~~
crooked-v
It's a satirical piece.

------
dstroot
Is it April 1st already?

------
klipt
This is a satire of "the hard problem of consciousness" in philosophy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness)

~~~
internet2000
It’s very unfunny, even as satire.

~~~
FeepingCreature
Unfortunately, it is accurate to the questionable nature of that debate.

~~~
spanhandler
I took it in the spirit of questioning one’s questions, and thought it was
rather good. Russellian, even. Judging from the general reaction in here this
may just mean I’m a dim bulb with a bad sense of humor.

~~~
aaron-santos
You're fine. HN is uniquely unsuited to judging the quality of humor.

