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My comment wasn't about dualism, it was just about the idea that matter doesn't create consciousness. Consciousness can create matter, and that is not dualism.

My comment wasn't about dualism, it was just about the idea that matter doesn't create consciousness. Consciousness can create matter, and that is not dualism. And what is more magical thinking than the idea that consciousness can come from a ball of matter? To me, that is much more the crazier idea

deleted 11y ago
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nhaehnle 11y ago
Precedents for surprising meta-structures arising from the interaction of a huge number of smaller objects with complex interactions are playing an increasing role in science (think Wolfram's book, biology and the understanding of the genome, and material science for example). Discoveries of completely unknown fundamental laws of physics that have a significant in-your-face and obvious impact on our everyday lives are playing a decreasing role in science (depending on where you draw the line, one might even argue that the last such discovery was made by Newton). What you call crazy has become increasingly normal :)
- ca98am79 11y ago
  Consciousness is not a "meta-structure" created from little pieces of things, and anyone who thinks so is fooling themselves. Just take a moment to be present and aware of your own consciousness to realize this. It IS crazy to think that something as profound as consciousness comes from lots of legos put together in just the right way. That sounds like magic to me. Everything makes a lot more sense if you look at it the other way around - that consciousness makes everything else. All the difficult problems become much easier. Here's a blog post I wrote about it a while ago that got on the front page on Hacker News: http://hack.ly/articles/why-consciousness-may-not-come-from-the-brain/ http://hack.ly/articles/why-consciousness-may-not-come-from-...
  - armitron 11y ago
    Science is the religion of the 21st century. I think it's quite funny that the so-called hard problem of consciousness has been with us for millennia, yet so few of us tackle it in the right way, instead choosing to wait for others to give us all the answers or (at worst) endlessly chewing and regurgitating the same useless conjectures and pontifications. Geeks and math nerds (and anyone who is seriously interested in tackling consciousness) need to be doing more psychedelic drugs, I feel, and looking INWARDS, but how often does that happen? Drugs are the easy way there. There are other ways, but require dedication and commitment and possibly utter disregard for material concerns and "consensus reality". As the ancient wise ones said regarding mysticism (direct experiential knowledge), one needs to know, will, dare and keep silent. The answers are here, the consciousness problem has been solved more than 2000 years ago, across cultures and civilizations. As Aleister Crowley once said, "By doing certain things certain results will follow." Yet very few feel the need to do anything these days.
cousin_it 11y ago
Well, you can move your hand, right? So consciousness can affect matter. And you can see stuff, so matter can affect consciousness as well. It's not a great leap to say that consciousness is a program running on a computer made of matter, rather than something mystical high and above. Also we can knock out parts of the brain and affect the corresponding parts of consciousness, so the conclusion is kinda obvious. Some people try to rescue dualism by saying the brain is a kind of radio talking to an outside consciousness, but we were never able to detect the signals, so I wouldn't trust that theory too much.
- ca98am79 11y ago
  If you break a light bulb do you destroy light itself? No, you just break a light bulb. Similarly, if someone's brain is hurt, it may not affect consciousness, just the person's brain. People have a closed mind about these things and say words like "obvious" etc.. when it may be valuable to think about things differently or from another point of view.
  - randallsquared 11y ago
    > If you break a light bulb do you destroy light itself? You certainly destroy the process of light creation in that bulb, which is the proper analogy with the consciousness of a single mind. No one is claiming that messing with a single brain affects consciousness itself, only the consciousness of that brain.
    - ca98am79 11y ago
      What I propose is that the light bulb doesn't create electricity, in the same way that the brain doesn't create consciousness

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nhaehnle 11y ago

Precedents for surprising meta-structures arising from the interaction of a huge number of smaller objects with complex interactions are playing an increasing role in science (think Wolfram's book, biology and the understanding of the genome, and material science for example). Discoveries of completely unknown fundamental laws of physics that have a significant in-your-face and obvious impact on our everyday lives are playing a decreasing role in science (depending on where you draw the line, one might even argue that the last such discovery was made by Newton). What you call crazy has become increasingly normal :)

ca98am79 11y ago
Consciousness is not a "meta-structure" created from little pieces of things, and anyone who thinks so is fooling themselves. Just take a moment to be present and aware of your own consciousness to realize this. It IS crazy to think that something as profound as consciousness comes from lots of legos put together in just the right way. That sounds like magic to me. Everything makes a lot more sense if you look at it the other way around - that consciousness makes everything else. All the difficult problems become much easier. Here's a blog post I wrote about it a while ago that got on the front page on Hacker News: http://hack.ly/articles/why-consciousness-may-not-come-from-the-brain/ http://hack.ly/articles/why-consciousness-may-not-come-from-...
- armitron 11y ago
  Science is the religion of the 21st century. I think it's quite funny that the so-called hard problem of consciousness has been with us for millennia, yet so few of us tackle it in the right way, instead choosing to wait for others to give us all the answers or (at worst) endlessly chewing and regurgitating the same useless conjectures and pontifications. Geeks and math nerds (and anyone who is seriously interested in tackling consciousness) need to be doing more psychedelic drugs, I feel, and looking INWARDS, but how often does that happen? Drugs are the easy way there. There are other ways, but require dedication and commitment and possibly utter disregard for material concerns and "consensus reality". As the ancient wise ones said regarding mysticism (direct experiential knowledge), one needs to know, will, dare and keep silent. The answers are here, the consciousness problem has been solved more than 2000 years ago, across cultures and civilizations. As Aleister Crowley once said, "By doing certain things certain results will follow." Yet very few feel the need to do anything these days.

cousin_it 11y ago

Well, you can move your hand, right? So consciousness can affect matter. And you can see stuff, so matter can affect consciousness as well. It's not a great leap to say that consciousness is a program running on a computer made of matter, rather than something mystical high and above. Also we can knock out parts of the brain and affect the corresponding parts of consciousness, so the conclusion is kinda obvious. Some people try to rescue dualism by saying the brain is a kind of radio talking to an outside consciousness, but we were never able to detect the signals, so I wouldn't trust that theory too much.

ca98am79 11y ago
If you break a light bulb do you destroy light itself? No, you just break a light bulb. Similarly, if someone's brain is hurt, it may not affect consciousness, just the person's brain. People have a closed mind about these things and say words like "obvious" etc.. when it may be valuable to think about things differently or from another point of view.
- randallsquared 11y ago
  > If you break a light bulb do you destroy light itself? You certainly destroy the process of light creation in that bulb, which is the proper analogy with the consciousness of a single mind. No one is claiming that messing with a single brain affects consciousness itself, only the consciousness of that brain.
  - ca98am79 11y ago
    What I propose is that the light bulb doesn't create electricity, in the same way that the brain doesn't create consciousness