happy to be sat in the back of the limo dozing off
― as the crows around me grows (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 20 March 2018 12:48 (six years ago) link
Maybe it's just handwaving "I can't believe it's not epiphenomenalism" but to me the conscious-actor and the conscious-experiencer are one and the same entity. I think the consciousness that drives the boat feels the wake as well - the two are not in sync but I think this allows us to "own" our bodily actions regardless of their driver - if I roll my ankle, stumble and recover I still feel like "I" did it when my awareness catches up and processes it all. Even though my body would have performed the same movements if the descending pathways were cut at the midbrain (more or less). So I think the stuff we do ranges from the purely-automatic stretch-reflex type stuff, up to actions and strategies which are the result of consciously setting up conditions and mental states which lead to outcomes we want. I think of awareness as the feedback loop from that process - what are we doing now, what's next. And I think it's possible to be conscious and volitional without being aware in that way, whether you're a goat or just really stoned.
― startled macropod (MatthewK), Tuesday, 20 March 2018 13:52 (six years ago) link
as a super clumsy dude i totally disown the majority of bodily actions.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 20 March 2018 17:10 (six years ago) link
This thread has gotten really good. Some very evocative musings on consciousness here.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 01:52 (six years ago) link
in all seriousness can you guys recommend some books on this? i find this fascinating.
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 05:11 (six years ago) link
Probably something by Daniel Dennet
― valorous wokelord (silby), Wednesday, 21 March 2018 05:22 (six years ago) link
know yr enemy
― lana del boy (ledge), Wednesday, 21 March 2018 12:32 (six years ago) link
I should probably read Dennett’s big consciousness book even though he seems to say baffling things in interviews. I suspect materialists and dualists are saying similar things just in a different language. It seems like arguing about that turns into a shouting match and misses the nuanced texture of conscious experience that both sides could agree on.
― o. nate, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 17:19 (six years ago) link
the oliver sacks books aren't explicitly about consciousness but are pretty good in illustrating the aspects of consciousness that maybe shouldn't qualify as consciousness (which lends support to the idea that almost none of it should qualify). It's really odd he never mentions his own face-blindness in them.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 17:30 (six years ago) link
recommended reading
http://i.imgur.com/SaTCn8x.jpg
― the late great, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 17:41 (six years ago) link
PASCAL LEMAITRE sounds like suitable name for this kind of thing.
― wmlynch, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 19:13 (six years ago) link
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-consciousness/
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 22 May 2018 21:22 (five years ago) link
A quick search of that article shows it contains neither of the phrases, "freaky shit" or "no big deal".
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 22 May 2018 22:54 (five years ago) link
Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery
uh-huh, go on...
― lana del boy (ledge), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 08:03 (five years ago) link
I shouldn't be too dismissive, it's easy to be scornful of scientists doing philosophy but there there is actually some interesting and useful science in that article, and in this particular subject I don't think you can say that philosophers are any better informed or their theories less wildly speculative.
― lana del boy (ledge), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 08:17 (five years ago) link
otm
― startled macropod (MatthewK), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 08:34 (five years ago) link
ITT seems intriguing, borderline panpsychist plus this prediction: a sophisticated simulation of a human brain running on a digital computer cannot be conscious - I think they mean at a very high level - even if it can speak in a manner indistinguishable from a human being. And it puts Fela Kuti in my head.
― lana del boy (ledge), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 09:46 (five years ago) link
Peter Watts, sci fi author and Biology PhD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I
― They Bunged Him in My Growler (Sanpaku), Sunday, 11 November 2018 15:07 (five years ago) link
Trying again:
Peter Watts, sci fi author and biology PhD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4uwaw_5Q3I
― They Bunged Him in My Growler (Sanpaku), Sunday, 11 November 2018 15:08 (five years ago) link
starts really well, ending is perhaps slightly disappointing
mind-blowing as the "Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect" study sounds, it seems it's been hard to replicate the findings
anyone read his books?
― niels, Monday, 12 November 2018 09:19 (five years ago) link
I enjoyed that, especially the ending! He was suitably sceptical about current theories & informative of the current state of the art in actual neural augmentation. Just wish he hadn't repeated the old canard of driving somewhere and arriving with no recollection of how you get there = you were unconscious. Not remembering being conscious doesn't mean you were unconscious.
― Toss another shrimpl air on the bbqbbq (ledge), Monday, 12 November 2018 10:34 (five years ago) link
I have read blindsight, I don't recall anything about it. Does that mean I wasn't conscious when I read it?
― Toss another shrimpl air on the bbqbbq (ledge), Monday, 12 November 2018 10:35 (five years ago) link
Blindsight is really good
― latebloomer, Monday, 12 November 2018 16:48 (five years ago) link
Just wish he hadn't repeated the old canard of driving somewhere and arriving with no recollection of how you get there = you were unconscious.
lol yeah I guess I was unconscious during several lunches last week then
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 12 November 2018 18:43 (five years ago) link
hope it wasn't soup or a big plate of spaghetti
― Evan, Monday, 12 November 2018 19:42 (five years ago) link
Wow- thanks for posting that video. I thought it started well and ended well (the part where Elon Musk made a surprise cameo as the advance guard of the cyber-borg was a real-life lol).
― o. nate, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 03:11 (five years ago) link
Yo consciousness is wild shit
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 03:21 (five years ago) link
on the whole it's a great tool, but it's sneaky as hell and tells a lot of lies
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 14 November 2018 04:08 (five years ago) link
O Tru Mind
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 06:24 (five years ago) link
enjoyed that Peter Watts talk, however terrifying
― rip van wanko, Wednesday, 14 November 2018 14:14 (five years ago) link
Good, sceptical, pessimistic piece about understanding the brain in general:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-a-computer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness
Reverse engineering a computer is often used as a thought experiment to show how, in principle, we might understand the brain. Inevitably, these thought experiments are successful, encouraging us to pursue this way of understanding the squishy organs in our heads. But in 2017, a pair of neuroscientists decided to actually do the experiment on a real computer chip, which had a real logic and real components with clearly designed functions. Things did not go as expected. [...] Eric Jonas and Konrad Paul Kording – employed the very techniques they normally used to analyse the brain and applied them to the MOS 6507 processor found in [the Atari 2600] [...] As Jonas and Kording put it, the techniques fell short of producing "a meaningful understanding"
― Paperbag raita (ledge), Thursday, 27 February 2020 09:34 (four years ago) link
That’s an awesome paper, they do recordings and try to correlate the activity with what’s happening onscreen in Donkey Konghttps://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Thursday, 27 February 2020 10:03 (four years ago) link
The Visual6502 team reverse-engineered the 6507 from physical integrated circuits [11] by chemically removing the epoxy layer and imaging the silicon die with a light microscope. Much like with current connectomics work [12, 13], a combination of algorithmic and human-based approaches were used to label regions, identify circuit structures, and ultimately produce a transistor-accurate netlist (a full connectome) for this processor consisting of 3510 enhancement-mode transistors. Several other support chips, including the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) were also reverse-engineered and a cycle-accurate simulator was written that can simulate the voltage on every wire and the state of every transistor. The reconstruction has sufficient fidelity to run a variety of classic video games
I find this pretty amazing in itself!
― Paperbag raita (ledge), Thursday, 27 February 2020 10:13 (four years ago) link
They’ve done that with a few CPUs outside of this context - I think there is an online Intel 4004 simulator showing voltage changes on every line as it runs.
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Thursday, 27 February 2020 22:23 (four years ago) link
Ledge that Guardian book excerpt is so fucking otm, thank you for linking it
― an incoherent crustacean (MatthewK), Tuesday, 3 March 2020 12:31 (four years ago) link