Grady Booch on consciousness: it's a spectrum, 'you know it when you see it'
Grady_Booch · x · 2026-10-09
Grady Booch responded on X to a question about which animals are conscious, saying he has no meaningful threshold or test to offer, offering only two observations: consciousness is a spectrum, and it's "like pornography — you know it when you see it."
The exchange is part of a broader thread probing the boundaries of subjective experience; Booch later noted that even within a known-conscious organism, such as humans, it's hard to pinpoint when the threshold of consciousness is crossed.
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