Listening to a dialog between Gordon Pearson and Roger Penrose on consciousness, I recall similar arguments among my classmates in medical school. We found the mass of human physiology and pathophysiology unending. We even attempted autohypnosis to develop total recall. It worked to a degree. We also determined a distinct difference among ourselves in thinking, wherein some had what we called linear thinking, just the rules, while most of us could scan data to form an opinion.
In practice, that difference seems manifest today with our many clinical physicians’ strong objection to the rigid one-dimensional guidelines and algorithms imposed by bureaucratic medical directors. It’s as if all the linear thinkers became administrators rather than dealing with patients.
As for artificial Inteligence, I cannot see algorithms expanding to the point of consciousness as questioned by Penrose and Peterson. Quantum physics emerges as a new mystery in biology. Might not some form of quantum entanglement account for the matrix of group behavior and extra-data-based cognition, consciousness even to the spiritual?
Civilizations under pressure often produce voices that crystallize their deepest questions. These are rarely kings or generals, but philosophers, teachers, and public figures who step into the square to provoke. Their role is not to rule but to make society face itself. In ancient Athens, that voice was Socrates. He wrote nothing. He simply asked: What is justice? What is virtue? What is the good life? His relentless questioning unsettled his fellow citizens, and Athens condemned him to death. He refused to flee, insisting that the examined life was the only life worth living. His death turned him into a symbol of Athens’ own unease. Our world has its own public voices. In recent years, Charlie Kirk became one of them. Whatever one thought of his politics, he drew large crowds, not only on American campuses but even in London and among Māori in New Zealand. He thrived on dialogue — fielding questions, sparring with critics, drawing applause. The style was different. Socrates aimed a...
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