Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#51

Post by layer8 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #46

layer8 wrote: post #26

I think it’s useful to think in terms of what we are conscious of . Meaning, that there is a subject and an object of consciousness. For example, I’d argue that qualia is not an inherent part of consciousness, it’s merely something we are conscious of . It’s plausible that qualia are inner workings in our brain that our brain is itself perceiving, and thus is conscious of. What I think confuses people is that we are…

> It’s plausible that qualia are inner workings in our brain that our brain is itself perceiving, and thus is conscious of. This seems circular. Why would those inner workings not themselves give rise to consciousness, in the way you suppose second-order workings of the brain do? > we are also conscious of our consciousness. That doesn’t need to mean that the subject and the object of consciousness are the same in th…

> Why would those inner workings not themselves give rise to consciousness, in the way you suppose second-order workings of the brain do?

I don’t think that “consciousness” exists other than in the form of “perceiving inner workings”. (That’s basically the point I was trying to make. And that “perceiving” itself constitutes “inner workings”, and is thus partly subject to itself.) In that sense, there is nothing that arises. I’m one of those who don’t think there’s a hard problem of consciousness. My impression is that, for the most part, it’s the recursivity that leads us to believe there is something extra there which really there isn’t.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#52

Post by swader999 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #48

swader999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Tom Campbell's current iteration of the double slit. (I am loosely/poorly summarizing). He's predicting that you'll get wave like behavior with an observer at the slit if the recorder for the observer is turned off. The observer is still turned on. Fascinating implications. Should have results in the coming year. Preliminary reports are encouraging. He's crowd funded this setup and its ongoing: https:/…

I keep on thinking I should get ahold of his book. Oh hey I just checked his site and it's not only on Amazon any more, now a copy is on its way. :)

My Big Toe? It's a tedious frustrating slog. His MBT YouTube series from Calgary is much more rewarding at about 1.5x speed.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#53

Post by mikhailfranco » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #9

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #5

If consciousness is "the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings" then it depends on dualism, ie, this and that. Is the fabric of the universe dual or non-dual? If it is non-dual it can have no consciousness. Because the universe would be able to see a "non-universe". IMHO, consciousness arises out of the universe via the creation of duality by the human mind. The fabric is unknowable and that frustrates…

Unfortunately we will never truly know, as the only way we can experience the universe is through our consciousness, in that sense, from a human perception perspective, the universe and our consciousness are inextricably intertwined and any theory or explanation we try to come up with is just our own subjective observations

No, there is another way (perhaps the only way) to find some objective knowledge - by the interaction of many consciousnesses. This is the scientific method.

Comparison of experiences, with agreement, or refutation, can produce more reliable knowledge than any individual. See Popper, Lakatos, et many al that you seem unaware of.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#54

Post by swader999 » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:10 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #4

jasfi wrote: post #3

I suspect so. But we need a way to find out what it's made of and measure it. It seems to be very elusive in that regard.

Maybe some things are just inmensurable Consciousness is not even well defined, in that sense it is ineffable

Individual consciousness: self aware, memory, can make choices and remember.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#55

Post by MaxBarraclough » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #38

This has the feel of Michelson's assertion in the 1890s that all the principles had been discovered. LLMs and AGI seem poised to give us a huge and expanding space in which to discover how consciousness works, and predeclaring that nothing will be found seems like a voluntary mistake.

> LLMs and AGI seem poised to give us a huge and expanding space in which to discover how consciousness works

How?

My own intuition is that LLMs will contribute precisely nothing to the philosophy of consciousness. Philosophers have been considering the consequences of intelligent machines for some time.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#56

Post by mikhailfranco » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #18

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not experience the universe through our consciousness. We cannot comprehend the universe through consciousness. Consciousness is a subset of the universe.

What I meant is that whatever we experience of the universe (thinking in dualistic terms as us being a separate thing from “the rest of the universe”), then that experience is happening through, or in, our consciousness And sure, we are technically not separate from the universe, we are very much immersed in, and inseparable from it

Are you really Philosophy TrollGPT?

That is certainly how your utterances appear. All language games, as Wittgenstein might have said.

No more discussion with you, just downvotes, troll.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#57

Post by mikhailfranco » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #47

mikhailfranco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a great insight by Boltzmann, and his intellectual heirs. But that was circa 1877, around 150 years ago. It is not a great insight today. Please keep up.

You mean it’s not a novel insight to you It’s still a great insight, regardless of who is remembered in history for coming up with it first

[flagged]

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#58

Post by fishtacos » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #42

gchamonlive wrote: post #30

I have been imersing myself in this subject and the gist of what I got is that consciousness collapses under the reductionist process currently employed in the scientific method. Moreover, the very framework in which the current scientific work is done might well be just an emergent data structure used by what we understand as consciousness to navigate whatever the objective reality is in a way that is simpler and mo…

You have a good grasp on this. Have you looked at Tom Campbell? He has a separate angle than Hoffman but very similar conclusions. The batshit crazy thing about Tom is that he shows you ways that you can individually experiment and prove through your own experiences the things he's positing. His My Big Toe trilogy goes into all this, but I shudder to recommend it. Tedious slog. If you really want to prove it to yours…

If I could, I would. Most of what you wrote is anathema to evidential scientific conversation. If you've got no evidence for it besides the subjective, then it's not provable.

I've no idea who Tom is, so I followed up on what you wrote and believe I have enough of a glimpse to see he's a crackpot theorist. Being a physicist doesn't abscond one of the burden of proof. Apparently he's been cooking up a new double slit experiment for the past decade+.

Yeah... OK... let's not even get started on falsifiability.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#59

Post by gchamonlive » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

swader999 wrote: post #42

gchamonlive wrote: post #30

I have been imersing myself in this subject and the gist of what I got is that consciousness collapses under the reductionist process currently employed in the scientific method. Moreover, the very framework in which the current scientific work is done might well be just an emergent data structure used by what we understand as consciousness to navigate whatever the objective reality is in a way that is simpler and mo…

You have a good grasp on this. Have you looked at Tom Campbell? He has a separate angle than Hoffman but very similar conclusions. The batshit crazy thing about Tom is that he shows you ways that you can individually experiment and prove through your own experiences the things he's positing. His My Big Toe trilogy goes into all this, but I shudder to recommend it. Tedious slog. If you really want to prove it to yours…

I think it is because this is the few times where mysticism and science meet and wrestle. How to communicate something inherently transcendental without talking about this inward journey through consciousness? It might take sometime to separate fact from fiction, but at this point we are in, untethered exploration is essential.

Re: Is consciousness part of the fabric of the universe?

#60

Post by gchamonlive » Sat, Sep 30, 2023, 4:49 PM UTC

fishtacos wrote: post #58

swader999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good grasp on this. Have you looked at Tom Campbell? He has a separate angle than Hoffman but very similar conclusions. The batshit crazy thing about Tom is that he shows you ways that you can individually experiment and prove through your own experiences the things he's positing. His My Big Toe trilogy goes into all this, but I shudder to recommend it. Tedious slog. If you really want to prove it to yours…

If I could, I would. Most of what you wrote is anathema to evidential scientific conversation. If you've got no evidence for it besides the subjective, then it's not provable. I've no idea who Tom is, so I followed up on what you wrote and believe I have enough of a glimpse to see he's a crackpot theorist. Being a physicist doesn't abscond one of the burden of proof. Apparently he's been cooking up a new double slit…

I think maybe the only thing separating the guesswork involved in producing things like the amplituhedron is the fact that they are able to reproduce results in space-time that we can understand and verify. However, if this is true that we perceive space and time through the evolution of senses that are bounded by fitness functions unrelated to the real world, then the only verification method could deceive us.

Maybe other expressions that don't match our observations might not be entirely invalid, they might just represent different emergent worlds not unlike the one we perceive through our senses. Maybe they could map to these transcendental or mystical experiences, I don't know, only guessing here.

In any case, it serves us well to have untainted clarity in our objectives. If we intend to create abstractions that correlate to the real world and help us create tools that somehow explain or help manipulate the perceived reality (which I believe is the only reasonable goal), then falsifiability and proof in this sense is essential, and I have to agree with you.