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I think this has been proven, kinda.
Alien hand syndrome makes me believe this. Usually occurs when something traumatic happens to the brain. The way it’s described seems like the dominant consciousness losing control of that motor function to the lesser consciousness.
I’m pretty sure the reason we even came up with this is because of a treatment to epilepsy, which the treatment is literally cutting the connection between the two segments of the brain.
Basically only for people with an internal monologue. Stupid-ass meme.
I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.
Yeah, and come to think of it, I bet you that each one has its own characteristics. Perhaps they may be full blown individuals themeselves from another time and place, and I too will one day join them…
Brb gonna go sailing…
And the underlying animal is still there too. It’s fully in control at birth, and gets drowned out as we mature (for some people, less than others).
Small children are little more than animals, which is why they’re so unreasonable.
It’s my belief that the reason the written word or things like clocks are usually unreadable in dreams, is because the animal is both illiterate and innumerate. Dreams are the animals understanding of our waking experience. It knows these patterns are important and how they relate to other things, but it has no fucking idea what any of it actually means.I do find myself reading and writing words in dreams quite a lot. I’ve never seen a clock though, not as far as I can remember.
But sometimes I can even remember signs with street names or banners / short paragraphs.
Dynamic lighting sadly doesn’t work tho. Light switches do nothing. For example if I turn on the lights in my bathroom in a dream, I can even hear the bathroom fan turn on, but the room remains dark. Ive heard thst this is apparently quite common though.
You would like Global Workspace Theory, basically says your consciousness is the result of components of the brain broadcasting their information to the whole.
I also like Integrated Information Theory which measures the conscious experience of a system by how integrated it is, which means that you can’t reduce the system to the sum of it’s parts without losing the emergent properties.
Thanks for the links, very interesting indeed!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat is a fantastic exploration of this idea, focusing on people who have lost specific parts of their brains due to tumors or strokes. The human mind is very much like a complex modern website- take Amazon for example, if everything is working, it’s the website where you buy stuff, but if certain specific systems are offline, you lose specific features, like your order history, or your cart, or your recommended products, etc… Missing one or two of of those components diminishes the site somewhat, but it’s still more or less Amazon. Your brain works the same way!
Stupid brain running micro-services.
At least it’s on-prem, I’d hate to see the AWS bill for running a conscious human brain 24-7
So if I run enough different AI LLM models and let them communicate, I can create consciousness?
No, because LLMs are just a mathematical blender with ONE goal in mind: construct a good sentence. They have no thoughts, they have no corrective motion, they just spit out sentences.
You MIGHT get to passing a Turing test with enough feedback tied in, but then the “conciousness” is specifically coming from the systemic complexity at that point and still very much not the LLMs.
In my opinion you are giving way too much credit to human beings. We are mainly just machines that spit out sentences.
No, you are giving too much credit to LLMs. Thinking LLMs are capable of sentience is as stupid as thinking individual neurons could learn physics.
So you’re saying it’s not good enough for a sentient personality, but it might be good enough for an average politician?
Oh, if we’re talking about what it takes to replace politicians, technology has been capable of that for years.
Hell, maybe even above average if the model can update itself in real time.
If you gave them all access to real world, realtime sensor data… Over an extended period of time…hmm
No there’s no need to posit cutesy sounding things, that’s how misinformation starts :) If you have any sources or can cite stuff you’ve read which may point to it, that’s cool though
No, people are allowed to speculate and throw out ideas they have without needing some “expert” or paper to back up what they are saying. The mistake is treating such as if it’s a fact. Sure, there’s always going to be idiots out there that will take ideas like that and run with them, but I reject the idea that we should censor those speculations and random thoughts because idiots might believe them.
The real problem are the con artists who work those idiots up into a frenzy of fear and distrust by deliberately presenting shit they can’t back up as a fact and threat to drive donations or sell snake oil to “protect” from it.
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think.
I agree that hypotheticals and thought experiments are fun, but I disagree that any random speculation is a good idea. Everything should have a kernel of originating known fact, or some reasonable foundation. You can’t do science without starting with some known facts, or stating your assumptions based on such facts.
Edit to say:
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think
Is this speculation harmless? I am not sure we can qualify that, so it’s wrong to assume that it’s harmless.
Anywho, anyone and everyone should be able to participate in a discussion! I just think it’s nice to ground hypotheticals with some kind of known or observed phenomena. The funny thing is that science validates itself, so maybe this person is accurately describing an unknown cognitive model.
To me, good conversation hygiene in science or related fields is rooted in observations 🤷
I agree that science involves more rigor, but we’re not doing science in here, it’s just an online discussion forum. And OP qualified their comment with “I posit” and didn’t present it like an established fact.
That can’t be because I clearly exist and cannot differentiate between these “smaller agents”, I am either so perfectly unified that I cannot tell, or this emergentism is bullshit
I posit this as well. I’m made up of at least 5 or 6 different versions of me with different biases and personalities. There’s a negative narcissistic version, there’s a happy go lucky version, a pragmatic version, a nihilist with a dark sense of humour, a soppy emotional one, and others and they all fight constantly to have their say. I thought everyone was like this 🤪
Plurality is a thing…
I’m all alone. Which is likely why I crave social activities.
Nah those other assholes won’t ever shut the fuck up.
make us whole
OK but what is a “conscience entity”
I will always held belief that we are part of the spiritual greater universe and our brains are antennas for the consciousness. At the same time I won’t allow this belief to interfere with my daily logic and scientific pursuits.
It’s way more fun to have some nice private things you are contemplating as you enjoy the various psychedelics.
The vibe when you pay monthly tribute to your landed lord. 👌
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I, too, did a heroic dose of mushrooms once
There is the idea that it’d be easier for the universe to spontaneously create a single consciousness that knows and experiences everything and thinks they are you rather than creating a big bang that naturally leads to beings with consciences such as you.
That’s nonsense. Why would that be easier?
And physics tend to reduce energy state (contrary to biology), not make things easier.
That is such a weird way of putting it I believe its more the single consciousness wants to like experience because knowing everything is like pointless so it fragmentes into these piece of its conscienceness and we populate the universe experiencing. Maybe different theories but also not my theory lol
Yeah I read a theory like that, something along the lines of you could not actually have existed until .3s ago but you were created with all of your current memories and experiences
Ah the Soul Antenna theory, yyes I hope that’s valid
oh there’s way more than two minds in your brain.
I too have ADHD
It certainly feels like that at times. The key being the non verbal part, it’s the part that feels things i can’t explain, like I have to poke and probe some part of my brain by imagining, to try and see how it reacts to certain thoughts and observe the emotions, then try to put it into words to explain it to the conscious part of my mind. Like, the subconscious is not unconscious, it’s perfectly conscious just not verbal.
this explains a lot …
Well they’re usually connected with nerves so more like 1 brain.
But if you cut the corpus callosum of the brain in half, it’s possible to have two operating systems that conflict with each other in actions in the body.
if I cut my dick down the middle I dont suddenly have 2 dicks bro
Sadly confirmed: https://www.livescience.com/38371-two-worms-worm-cut-in-half.html
I mean, sure. But your dick isn’t your brain. No matter how much you allow it to dictate your actions.
So not one but two suffering entities?
Somehow that makes it worse.
You’re not gonna give us a source?
It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy.
So unless you’ve had your brain cut in half to treat your epilepsy then you’re probably alright
No conclusive evidence of the proposed phenomenon has been discovered.
The one thing I can think of that approaches support for the idea is “Joe, the split-brain patient”'s case. You can show him stuff on the right side of his visual field, and he’ll tell you what it is. Show him something on the left side of his vision, and he can draw it and react to it, but can’t name it. The speech center of his brain is disconnected from the right hemisphere due to that procedure.
A disconnect doesn’t necessarily imply two separate conscious entities though, right?
In those experiments, the speaking portion of Joe has no clue what the other side is experiencing. Like they show it to him on the wrong side and say “can you see this?” “No”. Then they ask him to draw it, and to his amazement he does. It’s not just being unable to vocalize certain thoughts - they’re not even there to vocalize at all to that part of the brain. But the other half is happily chugging away with that info
This video by CGP Grey goes into it a bit more, but split brain patients have even had their two halves disagree. For example the conscious hand picking out something to wear then the other hand batting it away and picking something else. It’s quite fascinating to read about.
It’s definitely a fascinating subject! I guess the big question is whether we all have two consciousnesses already or that situation only develops after the split. It seems to me that healthy brains have both sides working so well together that they’re essentially one unit, and they only start behaving separately once their forced to.
ooo theres a video where they experiment on a guy that had this procedure, like trying to show different objects to different halves of his brain. its freaky and interesting, wish i could find it.
You mean the wolves?
Bicameral Mentality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality
It’s a concept that is quite well explored by the first season of Westworld.
Either I was too high watching it or no it fuckin wasn’t
I will accept either explanation
Probably the first haha, it’s the name of the finale episode of the first season and it’s even mentioned in the Wikipedia article I linked.
