I'm actually so sick and tired of people treating biology as if it isn't insanely complex. Non-biologists frequently have the arrogance to speak on biological topics they aren't qualified to speak on, and they always get away with it.
If a biologist made claims about quantum physics, people would rightfully question them. But when philosophers or physicists make claims about the human brain, nobody has an issue with it??? Everyone and their mother thinks they're qualified to speak on nutrition or evolution.
This has been on my mind a lot lately because of discussions about AI. Every mainstream discussion of AI (that I've seen) and whether it can become conscious or replicate a human brain has centered around computer scientists and mathematicians. Rarely is the opinion of a neuroscientist even considered.
It strikes me as insanely arrogant for someone who has no expertise in neuroscience to make claims like "we could replicate the human brain using AI" or "AI could achieve consciousness". You're just saying that with literally no expertise at all, beyond maybe having read a few pop science books.
Everyone just assumes biology is either simple or that it's able to be reduced down to chemistry/physics and that therefore chemists and physicists have the expertise to speak on it. WRONG. Biology is insanely complex, and if you haven't studied it, you probably cannot even fathom its complexity. Even if you have studied it, you probably still cannot fathom its complexity.
Like seriously, some of the claims I hear about biology are so obviously ridiculous. The China brain thought experiment, for example. "If we got everyone in China to pass on signals like neurons do, then would the country of China experience consciousness?" Brother wtf are you talking about??? We don't even understand consciousness yet, and you're just asserting that we could replicate the function of the brain with people passing notes to one another?
Biology is complex because there are a near infinite number of different factors and processes, which each took millions of years to evolve, all interacting in countless different ways to produce whatever phenomenon you're looking at. You cannot just go around abstracting everything and reducing it down to the few factors you care about however you like. Did we learn nothing from food webs?
But people LOVE removing nuance and simplifying complexity, then using that to make claims. Maybe that works in your field, but it doesn't work in most of biology. At least not in the way these people think it does.
TLDR: normalise people talking within their field of expertise, and put some respect on biologists
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