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It feels really weird to say that Roger Penrose is being dumb.

It's accurate. But it feels really weird.

It's not uncommon for great scientists to be totally out of their depth even in nearby fields, and not realize it. But this isn't the hard part of either computability or philosophy of mind.




We really ought to stop mythicizing people into superhuman heroes/geniuses.

Penrose is an authority in some fields of theoretical physics, but that doesn't give any value to what he has to say on consciousness or AI.

On that topic, he has clearly adopted an unscientific approach: he wants to believe the soul exists and is immaterial and seeks evidence for it.


hes a damn good mathematician. it is indeed weird to experience him not breaking down the exact points of assumption he makes on arriving at his conclusion. he is old though, so...


No, Penrose is not dumb. He gives a very good argument in his books on limitations of AI, which is almost always misrepresented including in most of this thread. It is worth reading "Shadows of the Mind".




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