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Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

sheldrake.org

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Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#251

Post by kipchak »

mannykannot wrote: post #150
nimbleal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure this makes sense. Lots of phenomena — including those possessed by biological organisms — exist without there being any evolutionary imperative for their existence. For your argument to work, would you not have to demonstrate that consciousness is necessarily more like, say, animal fur than possessing mass or heat.

> Lots of phenomena — including those possessed by biological organisms — exist without there being any evolutionary imperative for their existence. There are certainly many things, such as the specific patterning of a moth's camouflage, where a certain amount of chance is involved, and there are Gould's "spandrels" - features that exist, not for themselves, but because constraints on what is possible require them -…

I have trouble seeing the definite utility of consciousness in terms of evolutionary fitness.

Assuming consciousness isn't somehow necessary for intelligence or associative learning and that it plays a somewhat subserviently role to unconscious mechanisms, consciousness seems potentially less efficient than unconscious mechanisms. For example when physically avoiding a collision while driving conscious thought is often too slow.

Intuitively the role of consciousness as a supervisor of faster unconscious mechanisms seems to be to review the unconscious and perform some sort of steering or review of it. But I'm not sure it's obvious consciousness is effective at doing this.

For example in ironic process theory trying to consciously will away a thought takes resources which increases the prevalence of that thought. "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."

Some of the concerns for consciousness in a evolutionary model are better outlined here.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#252

Post by kouru225 »

visarga wrote: post #229

When you pray to the sun god it won't hear for 8 minutes, and then you need to wait for another 8 minutes for the response. Just basic physics. If it's an emergency the sun can't help you, better luck praying to the moon.

This makes me think of a concept for a story: It’s the end of a dark age and science is becoming popular again. They’re in a constant battle between the religious forces but at least they have unity and political power of some kind for the first in known human history. However, they keep coming up with solutions to problems that seem to line up perfectly with the strange little details of religious superstition in a way that just doesn’t make any sense. Things exactly like “it takes 8 minutes for the sun god to hear you.” As the battle between the religious forces begins to get worse and worse, they realize the obvious conclusion: there used to be scientists that discovered all this before, but they all “died out.” In fact, this cycle has happened many many times over

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#253

Post by [deleted] »

zaphod420 wrote: post #243
visarga wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a strong believer that consciousness has a purpose. It is related to self-replication because consciousness necessitates evolution to come about, and evolution necessitates consciousness to keep the organism alive. They need each other. Evolution is the outer process, consciousness the inner process. Celestial bodies lack the reason & means. Not to mention the slowness of light at cosmic distance. Any consciousn…

I am a strong believer that humans only experience a limited amount of the full experience that is available with consciousness. We have no idea what perceived sensations a start might have. Maybe stars operate on a quantum level that we don't understand yet.

[deleted]

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#254

Post by haswell »

lukan wrote: post #206
layer8 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Want" is not a concept of evolution. Evolution is not a teleological mechanism. You'd have to argue how mutation and selection pressure works for stars, and how their traits would be passed from one star generation to the next, so that they would develop a consciousness with "wants". Given that the sun is a third the age of the universe, it seems unlikely that the sun is the evolutionary result of an ancestry of sta…

I am not sure, if our concept of evolution can be applied to the stars, assuming they have consciousness. Asking why they evolved consciousness, would be the same to me as asking why the big bang happened and what was before that. No idea, this is way beyond my understanding. But I doubt there is any human who has these insights. So to clarify, I do not claim anything here, I just state how little we know about the g…

> which I am aware is entering theological realms

Theological realms are where people tend to go when they feel they must have an explanation to something unexplainable.

I think it’s important to preserve a non-theological space that allows one to acknowledge how little we know without defaulting to a theological position, and to highlight that acknowledging these unknowns does not make one a believer in deities.

Not saying this is what you’re doing by the way, but it’s a kind of binary choice that many people seem to force on the situation.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#255

Post by gamepsys »

zaphod420 wrote: post #243
visarga wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a strong believer that consciousness has a purpose. It is related to self-replication because consciousness necessitates evolution to come about, and evolution necessitates consciousness to keep the organism alive. They need each other. Evolution is the outer process, consciousness the inner process. Celestial bodies lack the reason & means. Not to mention the slowness of light at cosmic distance. Any consciousn…

I am a strong believer that humans only experience a limited amount of the full experience that is available with consciousness. We have no idea what perceived sensations a start might have. Maybe stars operate on a quantum level that we don't understand yet.

I am extremely skeptical about all things regarding consciousness, and nothing stated in this thread has done anything to reduce my skepticism. We barely know anything about human consciousness, I feel we are under qualified to speak with conviction about anything else's level of consciousness.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#256

Post by visarga »

smokel wrote: post #180
vik0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the case of humans and animals, consciousness is a way to adapt to the environment to protect their lives, fulfill their needs and eventually reproduce. Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing. You sound overly confident with your statement about a topic that has eluded thinkers for millennia and (probably) millennia to come

Evolution does not explain consciousness, but it does explain that the article we are discussing is rubbish.

Yes, it does. Let's think step-by-step like LLMs. We have self replicators, the most basic form of life. They start to multiply and conquer the environment. This makes resources scarce and competition ensues. In order to compete, they need to adapt, hence they develop consciousness. Its role is to protect the body, and essentially, itself.

And they don't have to adapt just to the physical world but also the other agents, which further pushes consciousness to become more sophisticated. Wait a few billion years, and here we are.

Why was self replication necessary? To gradually sculpt the consciousness hardware and record what gains it makes, copying the code into the future. The mechanisms in consciousness are the result of many small changes over time, they can't appear suddenly in one single step. Without a copying mechanism (self replication of DNA in our case) it is impossible.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#257

Post by swader999 »

visarga wrote: post #229

When you pray to the sun god it won't hear for 8 minutes, and then you need to wait for another 8 minutes for the response. Just basic physics. If it's an emergency the sun can't help you, better luck praying to the moon.

Rookie move. My prayers with the sun are entangled.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#258

Post by cess11 »

fylham wrote: post #179
cess11 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a lot to figure out but we can phenomenologically and cognitively grasp the structures of consciousness by the use of drugs and modern science, which leaves very little room for the remnants of christian dualism, whether as 'the hard problem', 'panpsychism' or the trans-/consubstantiation of the eucharist. Maybe there is a demon in my head giving me the illusion of reality being perceived as a projectio…

You might be interested in this well-written paper on this subject: https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/24/8/615/6275567?login...

Thanks, a skim says it's a pretty good overview of where the lab folks are at. I'll read it more closely later.

Science moves very slowly and very fast in this area, slowly with regards to psychoactives due to stuff like politicians, fast in neuroscience where new technology has allowed leaps for decades, since the eighties or so.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#259

Post by iamthepieman »

kouru225 wrote: post #252
visarga wrote: post #229

When you pray to the sun god it won't hear for 8 minutes, and then you need to wait for another 8 minutes for the response. Just basic physics. If it's an emergency the sun can't help you, better luck praying to the moon.

This makes me think of a concept for a story: It’s the end of a dark age and science is becoming popular again. They’re in a constant battle between the religious forces but at least they have unity and political power of some kind for the first in known human history. However, they keep coming up with solutions to problems that seem to line up perfectly with the strange little details of religious superstition in a…

A Canticle for Lebowitz has many of the themes you mentioned.

Re: Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]

#260

Post by Retric »

edgyquant wrote: post #171
Retric wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason to use the derogatory euphemism "thinkers." How about people chasing a dead end to nowhere.

How about: your views on the world aren’t objective and all of those thinkers have way more credibility than you

What credibility? As you yourself pointed out they accomplished nothing.

Some are quite famous, but that’s irrelevant in the face of thousands of years of utter failure to be more than pure entertainment. Try and find any philosophical statement from all that navel gazing which both means something and is generally accepted as true.

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