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Precedents for surprising meta-structures arising from the interaction of a huge number of smaller objects with complex interactions are playing an increasing r

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.

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.