this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Okay but you can probably ask someone that is not a biologist to learn about certain aspects of the brain and how it works. While you can't ask a plumber how the brain works for example, you can probably get his perspective on things related to blood flow (to some extent). Maybe you ask a chemist about certain chemicals in the brain and so on.
It might not be the best idea however to claim as a plumber that consciousmess is a series of pipes, but it's fine to give a view of something through a different lens.
Hell, neither me or you are experts in any of this, or experts in something to do with debating scientists or socials in gneeral, but here we are giving perspectives anyway.
My perspective is that someones' opinion isnt worth anything unless they actually have relevant expertise in what they are talking about. I do not need a degree in neuroscience to point that out.
Some opinions are worth more than others. Opinions based on facts and relevant expertise matter more than ones that arent. Penrose DOES NOT have the expertise needed to be taken seriously when it comes to consciousness.
My perspective is that someone's opinion is to be heard even if they have no expertise in a field. I am not saying their opinion should be more valued than one of an expert's, but i am not going to criticise or disregard them completely just because their field is something else.
What I am saying is we might simply miss out on some things if not for an opinion from someone in a different field. Even if that opinion is insane 90%, it might give us a push in a direction we haven't considered before. A biologist, a chemist, a physicist can look at a table and say different things about said table that hold true, without having an expertise in making tables.
That's not how any of this works. You see in science you have to actually do the work needed to support your hypothesis. And that hypothesis needs to be based on you understanding all the material that went into that hypothesis. Penrose hasn't done any of that. He doesn't have the expertise needed to form a good model for consciousness and he hasn't done the work to support that model.
In science, ideas that aren't supported by evidence are thrown in the trash not treated as worthy of further discussion. That's why we don't give astrology or young earth creationism the time of day. Because there is nothing to support them and a mountain of evidence against them. Just like there is nothing to support Penrose's ideas about consciousness.
Science is not a safe space. You have to actually defend your ideas against scrutiny.