Of course, I'm cheating a bit here by bringing up something by a genius like Scott Aaronson. But my general point is that combining previously disconnected fields can yield new insights or at least new questions.
Another example, it's from religion, but hopefully silly enough not to ruffle any feathers:
As far as I know Catholic doctrine says that all humans have one soul and free will. Also, ensoulment happens at conception. The problem is identical twins come from the same fertilized egg.
Does the fertilized egg start with two souls, or does the soul split later? Normally, whether identical twins happen is sort-of random. But we also have enough technology that for in-vitro-fertilisation a human lab worker can use their own free will to spontaneously decide whether to produce identical twins or triplets long after conception has occurred.
Similar issues occur when you clone a human from an adult's cells. (But it's somewhat easier to deny that clones have souls than to deny souls to identical twins.)
Honestly, I don't think anyone is losing sleep over this conundrum.
I'll be honest, I lack the scientific literacy to understanding much of what Scott Aaronson is saying in that essay. But I will take your word for it that he has some surprising insights.
The Catholic egg question is pretty fascinating to me. I am not religious at all but I would be curious to ask theologians for their take on it.
The nice thing about Catholics, from the perspective of these doctrinal brain teasers at least, is that they are fairly centralized. Centralized enough that they can have official positions. Unlike Jews or protestants or Muslims. (Perhaps Orthodox Christianity also has enough structure to have official positions?)
In any case, from what I remember when I last looked into this topic the Vatican's official position on this is issue is that they don't have an official position. (Disappointing, I know.)
Your new thoughts will likely not be as good as John von Neumann's thoughts, of course.
Have a loot at eg 'Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity' https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=735
It many novel and good ideas on classic problems.
Of course, I'm cheating a bit here by bringing up something by a genius like Scott Aaronson. But my general point is that combining previously disconnected fields can yield new insights or at least new questions.
Another example, it's from religion, but hopefully silly enough not to ruffle any feathers:
As far as I know Catholic doctrine says that all humans have one soul and free will. Also, ensoulment happens at conception. The problem is identical twins come from the same fertilized egg.
Does the fertilized egg start with two souls, or does the soul split later? Normally, whether identical twins happen is sort-of random. But we also have enough technology that for in-vitro-fertilisation a human lab worker can use their own free will to spontaneously decide whether to produce identical twins or triplets long after conception has occurred.
Similar issues occur when you clone a human from an adult's cells. (But it's somewhat easier to deny that clones have souls than to deny souls to identical twins.)
Honestly, I don't think anyone is losing sleep over this conundrum.