I agree; Curious to see what hexbears think of my view:

Firstly there is no “theory of consciousness”. No proposed explanation has ever satisfied that burden of proof, even if they call themselves theories. “Brain = computer” is a retroactively applied analogy, just like everything was pneumatics 100 years ago and everything was wheels 2000 years ago and everything was fire…

I would think that assuming that if you process hard enough you get sentience is quite a religious belief. There is no basis for this assumption.

And materialism isn’t the same thing as physicalism. And just because a hypothesis is physical doesn’t mean it’s automatically correct. Not being a religious explanation is like the lowest bar that there’s ever been in history.

“Sentience is just algorithms” assumes a degree of understanding of the brain that we just don’t have, equates neurons firing to computer processing without reason, and assumes that processing must be the mechanism which leads to sentience without basis.

We don’t know anything about sentience, so going “well you can’t say it’s not computers” is like going “hypothetically there could be a unicorn that shits out solid gold bars that lives on Pluto.” Like, that’s not how the burden of proof works.

Not to mention the STEM “philosophy stoopid” dynamics going on here.