That's what I was taught at Illinois Tech! The student newspaper was called Technology News except for April's edition of Technology Moose. Cartoon moose appeared in many articles and were referred to as "moosi"
(FYI, there are these cool new things called hyperlinks, great for reporting on debates, sharing multiple perspectives, supporting one's claims, giving due credit, and saving reader time.)
Meanwhile, in the field of neuroscience, people who have no clue what consciousness is are calling out other people who have no clue what consciousness is for not having a clue what consciousness is.
I think it is unfair to say #IIT is pseudoscience & the letter is a cheap shot at further closing down the scientific mind, especially since people who signed represent views of consciousness which are equally unsupported by evidence.
My bet is that consciousness, whatever it will turn out to be, will have absolutely NOTHING to do with information or information-processing.
Also, of course, #panpsychism is silly. Everybody knows that, right?
... are equally bad in the current academic system. Too much pressure, too little variation. Plus a flood of bullshit that is obviously not worth pursuing. Not a good situation.
The main problem with #IIT, in my opinion, is not that it is not testable, but that it is based on fundamentally flawed philosophical assumptions. We really need to get away from the idea that physics is computation, and that consciousness has anything to do with information processing. That's ...
Though dogged in his desire to confirm the below pictured "pseudoscientific" (plain false tbh) model of the solar system, #Kepler also stuck to the data and thus ended up elaborating three robust laws of planetary motion which paved a significant part of the way towards Newton's later laws.
If I've understood the now (imo) become distasteful dispute between #IIT advocates and critics, then I believe this historical example contains important lessons for both.