41–50 of 195 posts
I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.
I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.
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Illusion can be tricky to understand, but not impossible. It means that the referent is not the same as the representation. When something isn't an illusion, it means the referent is the same as the representation. We have different words for different kinds of illusion. I can show you an actual, physical chair, or a picture of a chair. The first is not an illusion, while the second is. You watch a real television sh…
An enlightened yogi, Hindi, or Buddhist would say that the physical chair is also an illusion.
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This is true. You also need to take into account how each day is a smaller and smaller percentage of your life which might be why kids think summer vacation lasts forever but it flys by for parents.
This explanation comes up frequently in these discussions. It makes a certain amount of sense on its face, but is there any evidence that this actually affects our perception of time?
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Why would your brain need consciousness to anticipate the future? A computer, which has no consciousness, would be able to do the same.
> A computer, which has no consciousness [citation needed]
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Why are you thinking? You are anticipating various scales of "the future", using memories of past events. As computers try to anticipate the future more, they may also start to "experience" things.
That's one of the uses of thinking, yes, but it's hardly the only one, unless by some procrustean method you force all my thoughts to 'really' be about the future. In which case I'd say the statement is close to devoid of meaning. Furthermore, thinking and consciousness is not the same thing.
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Consciousness is how the algorithm feels from inside.
Why would we need to 'feel' anything from the inside? We could operate perfectly well as 'machines' without having this 'feeling'. Also, consciousness isn't a feeling. It is what makes it possible at all to have a subjective experience of feelings in the first place. And that is mind-blowing the more you think of it.
“What it is like to be a bat”
“What it is like to experience something”
After having seen descriptions of all the physical components of experience:
“It is Qualia! What it is like to see red”
Having been described all the differences between sensing red and green, and people who can’t tell the difference, and the suggestion that maybe what you call consciousness is the collection of abilities to distinguish various things...
“No, it is something more”.
What is it? How is that different than saying there is a “true essence” of a thing, over and above its properties? This is what greek philosophers asked about.
“It is the sense of identity. Integrating into one experience.”
Ok so what about Theseus’ ship? If all the cells are being replaced? What about your gut brain? Coukd it have a separate consciousness living in the same body?
“These are interesting questions”.
Here is a statement I will make:
If you are careful to define your words unambgiously, in terms of RICH connections to other concepts, you will find that you won’t be able to ask a single question about the following subjects without having a straightforward and simple reductionist-sounding answer:
Morality
Consciousess
Existence
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> A computer, which has no consciousness [citation needed]
Right, as would all statements of lack of consciousness in anything. That way lies panpsychism. Which of course is a valid belief.
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Why would we need to 'feel' anything from the inside? We could operate perfectly well as 'machines' without having this 'feeling'. Also, consciousness isn't a feeling. It is what makes it possible at all to have a subjective experience of feelings in the first place. And that is mind-blowing the more you think of it.
Consciousness is the algorithm. What you call "consciousness" is how the computational processes that are you see themselves. It could work differently, but for some reasons it doesn't, and we don't understand the reasons.
But that's just an assumption and there are many reasons a person, let alone a brain, is not a machine or a computer or an algorithm. That it is like it? Sure, in some insignificant ways, we have the ability to compute things. But is it an algorithm? No.
The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a computer or a machine is an assumption that is extremely popular among people in the tech industry because it confirms their assumptions, and it makes them feel like they have extremely transferable knowledge. "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness."
But there is very little reason to accept that assumption. This review of Harai's Homo Deus does a great job of pointing out the dead-ends that assumption leads you to. [review](https://inference-review.com/article/godzooks#When:00:35:00Z)
I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.