Lots of materialist reductionism in this thread. Funny that you guys consider yourselves super “scientifically minded” but your beliefs are purely faith-based and contradict what most actual researchers on the field think. You’ll be very hard pressed to find a scientist studying consciousness that believes it’s purely a mechanistic and chemical process fully localized on the brain.
Is it ghosts? I’m gonna pick ghosts.
Lots of pseudo science mental masturbation going on in this comment section
An LLM Writes A Headline—And It’s Not Deviating From The Usual Formula
tbf the machine learned it well from decades of human journalists who already applied this one trick that doctors hate.
Is this the game where we stretch the meaning of words beyond usefulness to force an exciting story. Consciousness is a peculiar state, if everything is then nothing is, is that the point of the exercise.
People stretch the word “consciousness” to include things like free-will, human-level intelligence, articulating an understanding of the world, having ideologies, etc.
It’s very close to the classical greek word ψυχή, soul, from where we get psyche. And very close to how many christians have understood “soul”.
But often scientific inquiry leads us to realize how fictional and self-serving our understandings are. Souls aren’t real and consciousness in the brain is just an information sorting process.
Much of life may exhibit that process to some degree. Unsurprising, really - information sorting as complex as ours should have precursors.
Still we don’t know how consciousness functions, so how come you figure it’s a “sorting process”?
I’m summarizing my understanding of these panpsychism type theories.
Consciousness is a peculiar state, if everything is then nothing is, is that the point of the exercise.
nah i don’t think that everything is conscious but all living beings are.
My point is that if you do accept that human consciousness is a special case then you would still need a word for that level of sentience, and why not keep consciousness as that word and find another for the more general appreciation of environment that non-human terrestrial organisms possess. In truth I think there is already a word for that general condition and the word is life, I think an awareness of your place and a feeling for its beauty is a defining characteristic of all life.
I think part of the idea of this theory is that much of life shares the key elements that make up the scientific definition of consciousness.
I personally don’t see value in preserving the popular definition of consciousness as the human soul, but regardless of personal takes i hope we can agree that scientific theories should be based on the scientific use of the term.
Is this the game where we stretch the meaning of words beyond usefulness to force an exciting story. Consciousness is a peculiar state, if everything is then nothing is, is that the point of the exercise.
No, you just don’t know what you’re talking about…
A simple aromatic ring can experience two states and prefer one or the other, they’re not only a basic conciouness, but they’re OCD too. Whichever state they prefer, they start organizing shit like that. And that leads to biological life.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10068-4
That paper covers a lot of what you’ll need to know for that to make sense.
But that’s also why true alien life is a 50/50 death sentence no matter what, if they have “left hand biology” any contamination would be a total wipeout. At the base level the new addition would outcompete the host base level, because nothing would be capable of using it as food.
Like that shit in the 80s with Revinar, it was an HIV medication that was liquid, however a crystalline molecule was created accidentally. Which made an entire production facility inoperable, no matter what they did they kept getting crystals not liquid.
Then it started spreading to other facilities and they could track it from specific people moving between locations.
Because just a single molecule in a lab was enough to make all future distiliations copy it.
Revinar is like a brick mansions, “left hand biology” is the scale of a single brick.
And an Aromatic ring can just be some kid who spends all day making little bricks for fun.
this is like the thing about prions which are proteins that make other proteins fold into a copy of themselves, thereby spreading.
they’re not alive as we understand it (they don’t have genetic code), they’re just a single big molecule copying itself all over the world.
another example, as you’ve already said, is crystals growing over time (metabolism) in aequous solutions.
Got a source for this “Revinar” crystal business? I wasn’t able to find what you are mentioning when I search for it, and it conflicts with my understanding of chemistry.
In general:
It is hypothesized that contact with a single microscopic seed crystal of the new polymorph can be enough to start a chain reaction causing the transformation of a much larger mass of material.[5] Widespread contamination with such microscopic seed crystals may lead to the impression that the original polymorph has “disappeared”. In a few cases, such as progesterone and paroxetine hydrochloride, the disappearance gradually spread across the world, and it is suspected that it is because Earth’s atmosphere has over time become permeated with tiny seed crystals. It is believed that seeds as small as a few million molecules (about 10−15 grams) are sufficient for converting one morph to another, making unwanted disappearance of morphs particularly difficult to prevent.[3] It is hypothesized that “unintentional seeding” may also be responsible for a related phenomenon, where a previously difficult-to-crystallize compound becomes easier to crystallize over time.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_polymorph
The actual thing I was thinking of and not my butchered spelling:
During development—ritonavir was introduced in 1996—only the crystal form now called form I was found; however, in 1998, a lower free energy,[54] more stable polymorph, form II, was discovered. This more stable crystal form was less soluble, which resulted in significantly lower bioavailability. The compromised oral bioavailability of the drug led to temporary removal of the oral capsule formulation from the market.[53] As a consequence of the fact that even a trace amount of form II can result in the conversion of the more bioavailable form I into form II, the presence of form II threatened the ruin of existing supplies of the oral capsule formulation of ritonavir; and indeed, form II was found in production lines, effectively halting ritonavir production.[52] Abbott withdrew the capsules from the market, and prescribing physicians were encouraged to switch to a Norvir suspension.[55] It has been estimated that Abbott lost more than US$250 million as a result, and the incident is often cited as a high-profile example of disappearing polymorphs.[56]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritonavir
But thanks for actually asking.
And sorry I guess for being off a decade, names and dates aren’t as easy for me as concepts and science.
@givesomefucks @TriplePlaid Veritasium did a video about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn5yrsC3Wg
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There was a recent Verstasium video about it.
Consciousness is more like gravity or electrical charge than a cognitive state. It permeates space and is an inherent property of matter and energy. I think the narrow definition we have had for it is in need of expanding, and the science keeps going in that direction.
Sounds a little hippy to me but ‘there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ so if it is the case we will still need a word for what consciousness did mean. Why not leave consciousness alone and find a new word to mean the interconnectedness of grifting ideas to make a living.
if it is the case we will still need a word for what consciousness did mean
awareness
Science isn’t a philosophy, its a process for approaching the truth. Yes, I can’t prove what I am saying and it is based more on a strong feeling than direct proof. I think the question of consciousness is a particularly important one, and we know very little about it still.
Your first line is science is a means to find truth, your second line is I have no proof I just feel it.
Edit. I did not mean for that to sound so aggressive, I disagree with some of what you said but you are genuine.
The science is the means, not the truth.
Well, the scientific method is, not sure if that also applies to the definition of science as s singular word.
You treat science/knowledge as a philosophy when it is inherently incomplete and always will be.
Sounds a little hippy to me
Yeah…
Because it is?
Quantum physics has been proposed to be part of the solution for the mystery of consciousness. In particular the holistic character of quantum entanglement might provide an answer to the binding problem14. In the 1990s, Penrose and Hameroff proposed a theory of consciousness based on quantum computations in MTs15,16,17,18. Computational modeling suggested that electron resonance transfer among aromatic amino acid tryptophan (Trp) rings in tubulin (subunits of MTs) in a quantum electronic process could play roles in consciousness19. Craddock et al. showed that anesthetic molecules might bind in the same regions and hence result in loss of consciousness20. In a recent experiment, Zhang et al. observed a connection between electronic states and vibrational states in tubulin and MTs21. However, quantum electronic coherence beyond ultrafast timescales demands more supporting evidence and has been recently challenged experimentally22. In contrast, quantum spin coherence could be preserved for much longer timescales23. For example, Fisher has proposed that phosphorus nuclear spins could be entangled in networks of Posner molecules, , which could form the basis of a quantum mechanism for neural processing in the brain24. However, this particular spin-based model also requires more supporting evidence and recently has faced experimental challenges25.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10068-4
Most people just can’t understand that shit, so when someone talks about it in easy to use terms, it sounds “a little hippy”.
Like, that’s where the hippies got their words from in the first place bro…
“Vibing” is an accurate scientific description of two consciousnesses that are agreeable with each other. The people saying it don’t always understand it, but most of what “hippies” say about consciousness is pretty fucking accurate.
Why not leave consciousness alone
Why keep insisting the people who always used the term correctly stop because it doesn’t match the simplified version you were taught decades ago in jr high?
The forced degradation of words is unhelpful, a word will still be needed to differentiate the unparalleled state of mind from the emerging properties of complex systems. Concepts like consciousness and God are often commandeered to peddle tenuous ideas to the great unwashed and it is ultimately unsustainable. And while we are about it computational modelling is a license to find what you want to find.
The forced degradation of words is unhelpful
Then stop doing it…
You’re trying to make people who use the word correctly stop, because you never knew what it meant.
And of fucking course youre plugging chat it’s now.
Source?
There isn’t enough hard science to prove it either way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnessThen I choose to support the way that isn’t woowoo space magic.
What is it about non-materialism that you guys seem to find so upsetting? Is it that it decenters your experience of the self? Is it the idea of unknowable truth? Its like I have attacked you personally by suggesting another way of looking at reality.
Edit: One of the reasons I have rejected materialism/physicalism is that you can’t have free will under it. Its deterministic. I think most people, even those that turn to that way of thinking for comfort, find the idea of no free will disturbing.
I reject it for the same reason I am staunchly anti-religious: I think the acceptance of magical thinking is a net negative for society.
Free will is overrated. It feels like we have it and whether it’s real or not has no impact on our actions. You’ve traded one illusion for another.
I would contend that believing all can be known is magical thinking on its own.
Humans have consistently moved the goalposts on “sentience” explicitly to ensure that we are the only living thing that fits into the category.
I remember the first time I did mushrooms too…
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Every time I see a headline like this, I think without even having to look, “Popular Mechanics, you crazy bastards are at it again.”
Can we ask them to take us out before WE destroy our planet
Paywall
Thank you!
very interesting take. so, i do think that other species are sentient, like insects and plants.
the exceptional treatment that humans claim for themselves has to do with other things, not sentience. humans fulfill an important role in nature, because we do work that nobody else could do. with human’s effort it’s possible to make life multi-planetary which would not be possible otherwise. so the plants kinda should pay us for the service that we do for them.
plants should pay us on the off chance we pull our collective heads out of our asses to stop committing global ecocide and switch to benevolent stewarship of life itself instead some day? youll be pleased to learn the value of plants’ lives is paid out in extracted value and we compensate them by basically encouraging the plants to be grateful for the exposure.
It’s not just plants…
A cell is part of your body, but is still it’s own unique thing.
And it is conscious.
That’s 30-40 trillion cells per person.
What matters is how big of a microtubule racetrack can be built to support higher consciousness. But even what we think of as human consciousness is just a middle manager summarizing and reacting to shit.
Most people just don’t know shit about how any of it works because science spent 40+ years saying the smartest mathematician alive had a flawed premise. Since humans can’t maintain the quantum superposition in laboratory setting, we insisted evolution couldnt figure out how to do it in a human body.
But we can, and we do.
And those microtubules that link up to create that race track where quantum superposition is possible, are in literally every living cell. They’re the same thing that pulls DNA apart for replication, they’re fucking everywhere, in every living cell.
This is exactly where my thoughts have been leading. Consciousness is a fundamentally INTRA-cellular process, that is augmented by INTER-cellular effects. Neurons are merely specialized to support (among other things) higher consciousness, but every cell participates in some form of it.
These ideas go a long way to explain things like the somatic effects of trauma, personality aspects being transmitted through organ transplant, the obviously aware and self-interested behavior of micro-organisms, the way mental complexity doesn’t really seem to scale with organism size, and a lot of other things that I have been thinking about that perhaps get a bit more metaphysical.
I suspect that consciousness is not generated but rather captured and exploited by biological systems.
I’m writing a game that explores a lot of these concepts.
If that game isn’t too large, I’m definitely interested in seeing it/participating.
Haha! Thank you so much for this comment!
I am currently writing a Master’s thesis on complex adaptive systems and have been having such a hard time coming to terms with how the reductivist worldview completely dominates western science, including neurobiology.
To be fair, I think even Penrose still holds this Platonic view and is desperate to find the mechanistic process of wavefunction collapse through gravity, somehow suggesting that gravity is responsible for the appearance of our conscious thoughts in our heads?? I don’t know, I’m probably interpreting it all wrong, I’m not an expert on Quantum Gravity.
I’ve just been convinced by my dog that I have a more developed level of conciseness compared to him, just as he has a more developed sense of smell compared to me.
mechanistic process of wavefunction collapse through gravity, somehow suggesting that gravity is responsible for the appearance of our conscious thoughts in our heads??
I mean, it’s the same question as Plato’s cave, or “if a tree falls in the forest…”
It’s not new, we just have more science to describe it.
But that’s a different question entirely.
I’ve just been convinced by my dog that I have a more developed level of conciseness compared to him, just as he has a more developed sense of smell compared to me.
No, what sets human apart is how we can communicate in detail and specifics. A single human conciouness sucks, it needs to learn from others. Just like a well trained dog will seem smart. It can’t speak, but it can listen if someone teaches it.
Which is why shit gets so fucked up when people stop communicating and get tribal about shit. And why nothing speeds up technological advances than increasing communication speed, up to a point which caused the current plateau.
i take it you havent seen the recent studies with dogs and those speech buttons. we are finding them to be very social creatures. we just didnt have the technology to bridge this from dog to human until now.
I don’t always agree with your takes but I’m certainly glad I didn’t block you. Really digging your thoughts itt. Thanks for sharing them.
I mean, it’s the same question as Plato’s cave
Did you read Penrose’s “Shadows of the Mind”? The ‘shadows’ is a specific reference to Plato’s cave.
No, what sets human apart is how we can communicate in detail and specifics. A single human conciouness sucks, it needs to learn from others. Just like a well trained dog will seem smart. It can’t speak, but it can listen if someone teaches it.
I would suggest that, even though they can’t speak using words, dogs most certainly can communicate in details and specifics.
It is our failure, our inability to interpret what the dog is communicating that just makes us feel like we are better at communicating than dogs. The whole point of my piss story is that some animals communicate complex ideas through their pee, a form of communication that we have no ability to properly interpret. Dogs have no ability to interpret the detail and specifics in our words, but they do communicate detail and specifics through pee. There is no distinction in the communication process there, the distinction is that our brains have the ability to create abstractions using words and symbols, and dog brains do not have that ability.
Which is why shit gets so fucked up when people stop communicating and get tribal about shit.
I don’t disagree with you at all that there is a big difference in how humans and dogs communicate. My intention isn’t to ‘argue’ with you or quibble over the semantics surrounding the relationship between consciousness and communication. I just want to point out here that when I saw the word “No,” above I instinctively felt as though I was on the defensive. This defensive reaction to the word “no” is actually “why shit gets so fucked up” and people “get tribal about shit”.
I just want to point out here that when I saw the word “No,” above I instinctively felt as though I was on the defensive. This defensive reaction to the word “no” is actually…
Something you need to work on as a person.
I’ll just block you tho, that way you never have to see me type the big “no no word” again when I’m trying to help you understand something.
I have a more developed level of conciseness compared to [a particular dog].
Can you tell me what that looks like?
I don’t especially believe that humans are maximally conscious, any more than we were any of the other pinnacles of biological development that we always thought we were. Our main super powers are that we sweat, run, and easily consume starch, and you don’t really need more than that to explain us. If consciousness is indeed a gradient, I think it’s just more hubris to assume we are the “most conscious”.
But it’s a really hard thing to discuss, let alone quantify. I’d love to know your kind of feeling of what more or less conscious looks like.
When my dog sniffs a pee stain out in the bush he instantly knows what species left it there, how long ago it was left there, whether there is a threat to him, whether whoever left it is in heat, a whole bunch of actual information useful for his survival. I can only smell stale piss.
My dog knows whether it was an other dog that peed, or a fox, or a wolf, or a lynx, or a marten, he knows there is a difference between them and knows how to react to those differences. He can map their geographical movements over time and establish patterns of his own movements that could give him the advantage in the event that their path crosses his at some point. But he isn’t aware enough to know that that is what he is actually doing when he smells pee.
I can recognize and taxonomically label all of the potential piss perps, look through their geneological history and map out their ancestors over millions of years, and I can describe in detail the fur trade history in the region and how it impacted the European economy over the past 300 years. But no matter how hard I try, it still just smells like stale piss to me.
Maybe the dog can do all that but we have no conscious means of understanding his communication style?
Maybe!
