What if consciousness is a field that surrounds us and our brain is an antenna?
twitter.com
twitter.com
The brain is very much an antenna, though not only an antenna. The Cosmic Serpent (book) does a good job speculating how this might work, using 2D crystalline DNA as “fractal antennas.” The brain stores it’s own information locally.
Consciousness is not computation (or intelligence). Consciousness is the carrier platform from which intelligent systems arise not the other way around.
The advantage of consciousness (other than the existential potential inflecting upon itself) is non-linear “computation”. As consciousness (through constructive and destructive interference) acts as a sieve (information is pushed into and pulled off of the “stack” by electro-chemical biotechnology.) a mechanism far more efficient than linear computation.
However this technology resolves itself, the single scope’s domain would be a virtual hyper-dimensional “sub-universe”. An echo chamber which simulates whatever constructive and destructive interference interacted upon it. These combine into “your universe”, and best guess behavioral response is activated.
The virtualization layer (through constructive hyper-dimensionality) would mean the information does not have to linearly propagate through every parsing and rendering necessary to functionally relate.
What might the resolution be for such a scope? Is one neuron enough, or do these couple and entangle, producing higher composite resolution?
As for “things” doing hyper-dimensionalization (or hyper-parameterization) , what is obvious is of (efficient) virtualization layers influencing their evolutions.
Whatever we’re doing is economical for our headspace.
With respect to consciousness, Joshua Bach has an interesting view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3K5UxWRRuY
But indeed is true the fact that without interaction will be no physical world (and even brains and consciousness)
Remind the buddhist concept of the brain as the door capable to let the (universal)mind enter the physical reality, this, at the philosophical level, appear more robust.
Simulate it with enough hardware. Even Minecraft has properties amenable to simulate itself.
We just don't know what the "first version" of our software brain would look like, in order to simulate itself.
Or will we always tell our electronic brethren, "No, no--you came from silicon, not carbon: therefore, you may only augment us."
And we add, "Immortality, or the knowledge of good and evil--but not both."
There's many things we don't know how to explain and it's natural to see connections.
I don't see that as a bad thing; I see that as a good thing: both a chance to exercise our curiosity and "connection making" ability (a cognitive exercise, if you will; but it can encompass so much more than just cognitive; so many more 'psychic fronts' if you will--in the psyche, not the psi, sense here--emotional, and so on),
as well as a way to explore the unknown--the original sense of wonder, the rare treasured experience of being in "I don't know" and even being wrong. I think this kind of stuff is wonderful! Fascinating! Critical to understanding reality!
And I find it really fun. :)
I’m not so sure that these kinds of thought processes are critical to understanding reality though.
I guess from that point of view, it wouldn't sound like it would help understanding reality. But I think the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things, often across a chasm of unknown, is critical to dealing with the unknown. And at the frontier of science, it's all unknown.
Scientists are often called crazy by their peers, then turn out to be correct.
I think it’s important to remember that ideas have validity independent of the people who hold them.
It’s understandable to be cautious of new theories that are similar to ideas held by people with mental illness (you may for instance fear contagion by “wrong” ideas), but becoming mentally ill by engaging with various theories is unlikely, and more likely to be the result of underlying causes unrelated to those ideas!
(Related: I have a theory that some people who are thought to be mentally ill, are in fact misdiagnosed with mental illness simply because they have access to psi abilities without a framework for understanding, developing or controlling them! And my hope is that the burgeoning psychedelic therapy will allow more people to unlock capacity for engaging with these abilities in a healthy and sustainable way)
While it’s true there may be correlation between certain ideas and certain types of mental illness, it doesn’t make those ideas false or not worth considering. It’s important to consider ideas based on their merits, explanatory power and connection with evidence, rather than on who holds them.
And the ability to consider new ideas that mark a radical departure from commonly accepted ones is a hallmark of science and discovery. To be able to invoke, create, engage with and “try on” new ideas and thought processes, including to make connections across gaps in knowledge, is critical to understanding reality.
The relationship between new ideas, socially accepted theories, and notions of mental illness is fairly complex and multifaceted, and while it’s completely understandable to be cautious of ideas held by people with thought disorders, it’s key to note that you’re unlikely to get sick simply by considering them.
To conclude, it’s important to observe that embracing new explanations of the unknown is not for everybody, but is critical to understanding reality, and that while these ideas can be held by many people, including those with mental illness, that does not make them less true or relevant.
I need to cook now so maybe I'll come back later, if you'll think about it? :)
Maybe they know something we don’t!
Also, isn’t sense of control something that normal people are trying to get all the time? :)
So people adopting some religious practice or ritual because they feel that it’s going to please the gods who control the world and bring them something good or stop something bad?
Yeah, I understand that. That’s probably what you meant.
I guess what I was thinking more was say specific to this context, say someone thinking “all the ideas I have thoughts I have, the feelings I have are not mine they come from someone else” you know someone else’s consciousness.
I suppose that could be a form of magical thinking too. that’s where I was going with that a, little bit riffing on you, but for me that’s more of—if it’s used pathologically—a way of abdicating control, rather than gaining it.
So, trying to blame outside sources and try not take responsibility for whatever is going wrong with you because you can always say it’s something else’s fault outside of yourself.
So for me, that’s more of a way to not be in control, for people to refuse to take control.
But I get how that sort of fake payoff can give people a kind of reassurance which could feel like control because they’ve sort of decided to take their hands off the the reins so to speak and surrender to this Inevitable outside influences, as they see it.
But it’s interesting how much that seemingly pathological reaction has overlap with things that are very much encouraged and in fact, sacred to various spiritual traditions, you know the idea of surrender.
I’m sure there’s nuances there that we’re not covering here but it’s interesting to think about.
However, another aspect I think it’s noteworthy is you could think that by coming up with theories to explain the unknown such as the one you’re replying to here (and I’m riffing off you saying it’s yeah it seems like magical thinking to some extent), is this idea that simply by trying to explain something we don’t understand or something bad that’s happening or even something good that’s happening, just simply by trying to explain that—by coming up with a theory— maybe that is retaining or regaining a sense of control.
But I don’t think that’s a quest That’s unique to pathological use or people with mental illness. I think that the idea of acquiring control is a very natural and human and ubiquitous pursuit that people are constantly doing ( or trying too!)
so I suppose it comes down to that subjective flaw in the diagnosis of mental illness, where it really comes down to what we say reality is versus what you say it is.
So if we think your theories are not good theories because they don’t align with or support ours then maybe we make the mistake of calling you mentally ill when in fact, perhaps you’re the one who’s more in touch with reality than we are.
so that’s this kind of critical subjective flaw I think that’s problematic in the way society tries to approach mental illness.
What if this field exists outside of spacetime, but nevertheless, our nervous system is able to interact with it?
What if we are literally interdimensional beings, and that being conscious, is itself, an interdimensional activity?
So it's not that we have our heads in the sand (except when we close ourselves to such things perhaps!) it's that we literally have our heads (or whatever part of us allows the interface) in another dimension! :)
BTW - thank you everyone for finding this little lost forgotten un-upvoted tiny thread and coming to comment! I appreciate your deep passionate interest in the subject that brought you through the long miles of uninteresting HN new content directly to this wheelhouse. :)
So maybe another way to say this is—because I do think it’s a subtle point, so it may be difficult to understand; I get that—so, say we have a consistent theory of reality that seems to account for all of our measurements, or most of them, and yet say they’re exist other effects that we don’t know how to explain, and other things we don’t know how to measure, but from the viewpoint of having a consistent theory of reality, we can say those other things basically have no effect because our theory is already self consistent.
From a simple view plant that’s kind of like being blinded by your current theory or understanding. It’s simple I suppose, but it can be quite saddle and had words that can be a form of religious like dogmatism.
So, from the larger viewpoint of a more accurate theory, that includes those currently unexplained factors, and unknown aspects which, those things could be having huge effects, we just don’t know how to consider them from our current theory.
It’s an important and subtle point, so it bears repeating in a less technical form, the preceeding is another way of saying that I don’t think from our current position of ignorance we can presume to know nor impose upon the totality of reality our present ignorance. But it’s a subtle and shocking point, so I don’t expect you to see it right away or accept it immediately. It’s not the kind of thing that most people can just take in their stride and get on with their life, accepting that there may indeed be real factors out there really affecting things, that we don’t know or understand but if you’re willing to expand your view of current evidence and unexplained phenomena of all types, maybe one can start to see the outlines of that other larger world, into which we in our current ignorance are free to explore more.
And there’s a positive take on this ontologically, shocking truth, that you know it’s the salvation of our ignorance, that we are free to discover the unknown in which we exist. It’s this great exciting thing I think that we can slowly and gradually to our human comfort level and ability, begin to order, structure, and understand that which now remains the great unknown.
Just because we don't know how to measure it today...You know what I mean. But we can certainly measure its effects! :)
But if you like my original theses, I bet you're gonna love these:
- maybe consciousness, gravity and dark matter are related
- maybe they're all aspects / faces of some underlying thing that we don't know how to measure or explain
But, bringing it back to your level: you could be right, but maybe you're just don't know how to falsify them?
I'm sure a clever enough experimentalist could come up with an experiment.
The reality of remote viewing, retrocausal/precognitive effects in "image exposure" experiments, psi effects on RNGs, etc, means there's something we don't know how to measure (or to shield). At least publicly I guess? The reality is the CIA's stargate project continued after the 1995 public debunking report, it just went black~~because it actually worked.
It may be that we just don't have the words to describe what it is. It may not be a field in the sense that we commonly know that, but what else could it be?
What would you call it--if you could put aside your priors for a sec, and accept that it's true--what would you call some sort of big picture explanatory aspect of reality that's related to this?
This doesn't rule out the brain being an antenna that connects it to a field of consciousness or energy and so on. In fact we could think of those concepts of "a structure containing X" and "an antenna structured to perceive and emit X" as analogous, because a brain doesn't exist unto itself, it's part of the universe and it's subject to the laws of physics. So it's merely environmental configuration of matter an energy that works according to how the universe "wants" it to work.
TLDR: It's worth pondering, but I think we need evidence for it.
I think all complex systems generate their consciousness depending on the patterns within that repeat again and again. The more complex the systems, the more complex the consciousness. Which means in a way computers also are conscious (this does not mean they have emotions, that's another story entirely).