What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
writings.stephenwolfram.com
What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
1–10 of 103 posts
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#2No explanation of consciousness cuts it if it does not address how first person perspective comes about. No computation results in first person perspective.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#3I'd take more seriously Mr. Wolfram's ideas if he pointed out research by others too, not just himself.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#4This seems to follow a theme I've observed lately around the underlying laws of physics and the quantum nature of consciousness, here's some research that's more on the theoretical side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26505858
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#5To add one more critic: A couple minutes into the text, I still didnt read something of substance/consequence.
Lots of hand waiving and describing the usual phenomena in other terms.
I will follow this thread hoping someone points out that good stuff is coming later in the text, but I doubt it.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#6I'd take more seriously Mr. Wolfram's ideas if he pointed out research by others too, not just himself.
I understand, but please let's avoid going to the place that all Wolfram threads go. It's not that it's wrong, necessarily, but it's utterly predictable, and therefore uninteresting, and we're trying for something else here.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Wolfram articles are a perfect medium-difficulty exercise for this community: can we respond to the interesting parts while leaving the provocative bits where they are? Both are present every time.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#7I think of consciousness as a feeling and nothing more. Similar to the feeling of free will, both are an "illusion" and we're not actually aware or free. The universe is made of instructions that everything follows and including us. We believing in awareness is just instructions for how we operate as subsystems of the Universe and like or unlike other subsystems of the universe. I find the idea simpler to grasp if you think of the Universe just bruteforcing every possible sequence of patterns and where we eventually have subsystems assuming they have awareness & free will.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#8To add one more critic: A couple minutes into the text, I still didnt read something of substance/consequence. Lots of hand waiving and describing the usual phenomena in other terms. I will follow this thread hoping someone points out that good stuff is coming later in the text, but I doubt it.
> Lots of hand waiving and describing the usual phenomena in other terms.
Not even that. These are impressionistic attempts to describe physics. I suggest people look into how Wolfram says he derived special relativity from his theory.
Spoiler, had you not know special relativity you won't have the slightest idea of what it is after he claims to derive it.
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#9No explanation of consciousness cuts it if it does not address how first person perspective comes about. No computation results in first person perspective.
Wouldn't that be the default? Like in it's limited way a Tesla must think something like darn I'm going to hit that truck rather a red Tesla that is me is going to...
Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project
#10No explanation of consciousness cuts it if it does not address how first person perspective comes about. No computation results in first person perspective.
What does this even mean? A computation that results in the thought "I am seeing blue" could be defined as first-person perspective without any problem, and I don't think it's possible to prove this definition differs in any way from your first person perspective.