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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a psych expert, but I thought this was long established. I mean we've known about the delays in processing for quite some time and thus the system can't be "real time". I mean everyone has experienced things where they are doing something, walk by, then turn around to check what they just saw because the process delay (not everything is put on the fast track).

Or am I misunderstanding the novelty of the research here? Hoping someone can help me understand better.

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We know consciousness is not "real time" if for no other reason than eye saccades. Our consciousness is essentially off while our eyes move, and when they stop we guess at what we think happened and our consciousness catches up. We don't experience the lost time.

Seems that not only is our conscious mind a passenger, it lies to itself to pretend it is in control, by rationalizing decisions made by the unconscious. Quite jarring when your subconscious decides decides to do something your consciousness can't fathom, like attempt to catch a falling knife.

I highly recommend this book from 30 years ago. It was based on works from much earlier, but I think some part of the field kind of still haven't caught up to it yet (I agree with you).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2069.Consciousness_Expla...

For a shorter read, "Fame in the brain":

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Multiple_drafts_model

I'm not a psych expert either. But I was put-off by the use of phrases like "mind-bending".

It's old-hat that the experience of intention/will follows the "willed" action. It's not surprising that our "real-time" experience is really a replay. That's how I've supposed it worked for 20 years. I'm not expressing a view about free will, just that our awareness of our mental states seems to have the benefit of hindsight.

I think the key area of novelty here is the relationship to consciousness and thus the great unsolved questions over what precisely consciousness is and what purpose it serves.

I am not impressed with this. This merely answers what practical use consciousness would have under the (unrpoven) assumption that it evolved as a survival mechanism. It does not explain what qualia is or how it comes about (hard problem). Therefore it is a bit far-fetched to say this answers what consciousness is at its core.

I'm interested to know what a satisfying explanation of qualia would look like to someone who believes it's a real, well-defined phenomenon? I get a strong impression that anything mechanistic will not do, and a slightly cynical feeling that anything that can be put in precise terms will not do. Is there any explanation that gets some of the way there?

I would be interested in an explanation that understands the mechanism to the point where one could arbitrarily insert information into a qualia experience. E.g. controlling what someone is imagining by placing objects there, etc.

I suspect no such explanation can exist and therefore the hard problem does not exist in the sense of a solvable problem in pyhsics. It's really a question of metaphysics.

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