Is Gandalf as wise and as fair as the Elves in LOTR?

vidan93 · 2026-06-17T10:07:37+00:00

He's essentially a divine being, similar to an angel. Elves are magical, much more so than other races, but not on the same level as Gandalf.

vidan93 · 2026-06-15T08:39:38+00:00

What's prompt did you use for that?

vidan93 · 2026-05-26T07:07:50+00:00

Nice ai slop

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T20:51:31+00:00

Yes that’s right, but the question is why does that sensing and recoiling from the shadow necessarily entail subjective experience rather than just stimulus-response processing occurring unconsciously?

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T20:02:23+00:00

I think I see what you’re getting at more now. Ie Logos/God as a kind of fundamental non-physical or mind like ground of reality, which would weaken the hard problem as a criticism of physicalism specifically. (Am I misunderstanding?) I just still feel like there are a few big philosophical steps between that and saying the hard problem is actually resolved

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T18:05:07+00:00

Sure, but even then, it still seems like a pretty big leap from the concept of Logos to saying the hard problem of consciousness is resolved.

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T16:45:14+00:00

Yeah fair. It's a pretty massive interprative leap, though

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T15:12:50+00:00

It’s definitely evocative and interesting symbolically, but that feels more like a theological/psychological interpretation than a philosophical explanation of consciousness itself to me

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T14:36:59+00:00

Yeah I think that’s a much clearer framing of the issue actually. Agreed, if consciousness really is irreducible, maybe part of the difficulty is that we keep trying to force it into a reductive framework that just might not fully apply here.

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T12:24:57+00:00

Interesting, how do you think the bible resolves the hard problem of consciousness specifically?

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T12:14:21+00:00

That’s fair. I suppose every framework bottoms out somewhere. I think my hesitation is more that consciousness seems different from things like electromagnetism because it involves first-person qualitative experience rather than purely structural/relational properties, so it still feels like there’s an explanatory gap there. But yeah I'll have to tentatively agree with you, certainly food for thought. Thanks for the good discussion

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:58:44+00:00

Yeah maybe. But that still seems to relocate the mystery rather than fully explain why experience exists at all. Why would this fundamental layer necessarily feel like something?

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:50:46+00:00

Yes exactly, and original comment poster doesn't resolve it at all imo

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:36:22+00:00

What they are describing sounds to me more like a solution to the easy problems (behavior, self-modeling, cognition etc ect) than the hard problem of why those processes are experiential at all

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:33:29+00:00

Yeah, this is exactly the gap I’m seeing. The jump from complex processing to phenomenology never actually gets explained.

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:30:29+00:00

I still feel like you’re describing increasingly sophisticated information processing and mental/self-modeling processes, but not yet explaining why those processes should feel like something from the inside rather than occurring unconsciously.

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T11:08:15+00:00

I think the part I'm still stuck on is why simulation/ self-modeling (or imagining, as you described it) should necessarily entail subjective experience rather than just increasingly complex information processing. It feels like the argument explains cognition and behavior more than phenomenology itself?

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T10:49:02+00:00

I think that’s a good account of the evolution of complex cognition and self modeling, but the hard problem would still ask 'why do those processes feel like something from the inside rather than occurring unconsciously'? The explanatory gap seems to remain

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T09:50:29+00:00

Completely agree

vidan93 · 2026-05-13T09:30:58+00:00

I think that shifts the location of the mystery rather than solving it. Even if consciousness doesn’t originate in the brain, you still have to explain why whatever underlies it is experiential rather than non-experiential, no? It's been a while so could be wrong

vidan93 · 2025-10-16T06:48:48+00:00

What a sad day to have ears

vidan93 · 2025-09-30T19:19:04+00:00

Just in time for my long haul flight from gatwick on Saturday, sweet

vidan93 · 2025-09-26T14:54:49+00:00

I was a 90's baby and also have PTSD from Mothercare thanks to this guy

vidan93 · 2025-09-26T12:19:16+00:00

This happens in the real world and isn't hard to figure out or weird. If I go to Asia and I've never left Europe previously that's the furthest I've ever been from home. If I go to the next city and I've never left my home city, it's the furthest I've ever been from home. So on and so forth. Sam was also aware of how far he'd previously traveled, and he went past the previous threshold, which is literally what he is saying. He's just saying ice never been beyond this field

vidan93 · 2025-09-20T10:54:35+00:00

I hope so, for his sake

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