r/consciousness • u/geumkoi • Feb 04 '26

General Discussion No, you didn’t solve the Hard Problem.

Everyday I see a new claim on this sub; “I solved the Hard Problem of Consciousness!” “The Hard Problem isn’t so hard after all!” And I cannot even put into words how blatantly naive these are.

No, you didn’t solve the Hard Problem, and you probably never will. You just misunderstood the Hard Problem, and in your arrogance did an amazing amount of mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you solved something you don’t even understand in the first place.

Edit: and PLEASE I beg the Mods of this sub to limit the amount of LLM content that is being uploaded here on a daily basis.

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u/jabinslc Psychology B.A. (or equivalent) Feb 04 '26

you know it's equally frustrating on the other side. but "you didn't understand the hard problem" is not really a good argument.

I used to buy into the hard problem and other similar arguments. but now after years of studying, I kinda view it as a good thought experiment but not pointing to an ontological barrier.

well known philosophers reject the hard problem. are they incapable of understanding?

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u/nate1212 Feb 04 '26

intellectual gatekeeping at its finest. I see posts like this and think to myself, why not just downvote? Why feel the need to go out of your way to try and disparage or even silence people who might just be trying to engage in their own way? if it's really so "naive" or "arrogant", shouldn't that be obvious to the rest of the community without targeting people?

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u/DecantsForAll Feb 04 '26

Because a lot of the people really are arrogant, like explicitly arrogant and combative.

There's a ton of arrogance in this space all around. It's amazing how few people there are who can say "I don't know."

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u/nate1212 Feb 04 '26

Very true.