71–80 of 83 posts
"What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last, exhaust his power of t…
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Consciousness and life are two miracles of existence that neither the galaxies, nor the atoms seem to manifest. Probably most life forms on earth are not conscious either. From that point of view we seem to be a miraculous needle in the haystack of the universe as we know it.
At this point I think current opinion is that pretty much all mammals are consciousness. It's not that rare.
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At this point I think current opinion is that pretty much all mammals are consciousness. It's not that rare.
Yah I read that silly article too. They call them conscious because they redefined the term. It's nonsense.
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> We are, as far as we can tell, the only thing that actually notices the universe! Yes, but that could be quite common as well. The universe could be littered with intelligent beings who all think exactly this.
Consciousness and life are two miracles of existence that neither the galaxies, nor the atoms seem to manifest. Probably most life forms on earth are not conscious either. From that point of view we seem to be a miraculous needle in the haystack of the universe as we know it.
As for animal consciousness, there are probably degrees of that. Humans are probably the only living beings on Earth that are capable of higher order reasoning and self reflection (meta-thinking). That's not to say animals aren't conscious; they probably just aren't able to reason about the world and their own existence the same way we are (since their brains aren't as developed). In the same vein, who is to say there aren't beings in this universe capable of reasoning on such a high level that even with sufficient explanations, our brains wouldn't be able to accommodate such reasoning on the biological/hardware level due to a lack of proper circuitry.
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I disagree that any part of the universe is insignificant. We're all important.
If everyone is important than no one is.
Trying to comprehend the scale of the universe is deeply unsettling, especially when thinking about our minute, insignificant part of it. Anyway, I hope the startup you're killing yourself over is going well!
> to comprehend the scale of the universe is deeply unsettling, especially when thinking about our minute, insignificant part of it Humans are 10^27 times smaller than the observable universe, and 10^24 times bigger than the neutrino, presently the smallest observable thing, and 10^35 times bigger than the smallest theoretical distance, the Planck length. That puts humans around the center of the Universe's scale, ha…
And besides why would our "centrality" be particularly interesting? Maybe all the fun stuff is happening on million year time scales, or at the quantum level?
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Consciousness and life are two miracles of existence that neither the galaxies, nor the atoms seem to manifest. Probably most life forms on earth are not conscious either. From that point of view we seem to be a miraculous needle in the haystack of the universe as we know it.
The property of the universe to become capable of self reflection after billions of years of non-intervention is just mind blowing. Life is the most amazing thing. It's as if life and consciousness are inherent emergent properties of certain systems. If you create a complicated enough state machine with low enough entropy (i.e. the universe), the ability to self reflect simply seems to emerge after a while. It's as i…
The universe is not the mathematics or physics that we use to describe it.
"What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last, exhaust his power of t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The property of the universe to become capable of self reflection after billions of years of non-intervention is just mind blowing. Life is the most amazing thing. It's as if life and consciousness are inherent emergent properties of certain systems. If you create a complicated enough state machine with low enough entropy (i.e. the universe), the ability to self reflect simply seems to emerge after a while. It's as i…
Life and consciousness are not the properties of a complex state machine, but the properties of the universe. The universe is not the mathematics or physics that we use to describe it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life and consciousness are not the properties of a complex state machine, but the properties of the universe. The universe is not the mathematics or physics that we use to describe it.
Universe is just a complex digital state machine transitioning from one state to another. This existence is digital in nature.