6 ms·

I went through the whole indoctrinated-religious, "devout" atheist, "scientific" agnostic, and now I guess I'm a theist. Why? Because I read a book on conscio

I went through the whole indoctrinated-religious, "devout" atheist, "scientific" agnostic, and now I guess I'm a theist. Why? Because I read a book on consciousness that came like a bolt out of the blue and I understood that we do not understand. I don't buy this "emergent property of the mind" thing because while I understand evolutionary theory I am not sure how you bridge that gap to subjective experience. I have absolutely no clue what this "god" is that I accepted, but I know I'm not going to be punished for leaving this comment. EDIT: just read the comments. I've been to BNL and CERN.

xamuel 7y ago
"The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)
byproxy 7y ago
Which book did you read?
- eternalny1 7y ago
  I think it may have been Fire in the Mind by Johnson although Paul Davies pushed me along.
jhedwards 7y ago
What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? I study evolution quite a bit and, while there are many details about behavior and learning that are still missing, AFAICT it seems to explain consciousness and subjectivity pretty well.
- eternalny1 7y ago
  > What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Brain teaser: Take absolute nothingness (not the "void" of space, true nothing) then have that create something that allows me to reply to you on HN.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - z3t4 7y ago
    Given infinite time and infinite space, anything can happen. Time is a weird thing, but it seems more of it is created every day, increasing the possibilities.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    You're not the first to consider this possibility, as you know. The novelist Peter Watts, in Blindsight, has a remarkably interesting, if also remarkably dark, take on the same idea. I won't spoil it here, since the book is an enjoyable read and freely available from the author's site: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ("Philosophical zombie" would be a more precise term than "robot", btw, and might make soi-disant rationalists take you slightly more seriously because it's closer to the sort of language they like to use. I don't know why that would be a desideratum for anyone, but if it is for you, this may be worth considering.)
  - greiskul 7y ago
    > We could and should be robots. What do you mean with robots? Describe how our actions would be different if we were robots, compared with our reality where we are not. Brain teaser answer: Well, that's more of a question of physics, and the origins of the big bang. We are talking about brains here. They came about some billions of years later.
  - jhedwards 7y ago
    I think evolution explains that fine. It's the same story as for physical development: the extrapolation and refinement of living organisms via natural selection over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Consciousness is hard to define, but if we examine animal intelligence it unsurprisingly seems to exist at various levels of complexity. So even worms have intelligence (and consciousness IMO) that isn't quite robotic: they react in predictable ways to light, but the reaction is modulated by other factors like temperature, moisture and what they are doing at the time. Their behavior can be described by a simple neural net, which is in fact what they have. (see Darwin 1881) Larger animals evolved the ability to evaluate multiple such signals simultaneously, and to do so it's necessary that lower level consciousness (like what the worm has) can send signals to higher levels of consciousness for evaluation. So if my foot is cramping a lower level system sends an appropriate pain signal to a higher level system, which can then aggregate that signal with other signals and cross reference it against current active behavioral plans. If I am meditating, I might ignore the pain, but if I'm working I might get up and stretch. This is similar to how the reaction of a worm is modulated, but just filtered up through higher levels of consciousness. Why would we develop higher levels of consciousness? Because any change to animal brains that allowed them to be aware of sensory input and evaluate it with reference to behavioral goals (instead of just reacting like a robot) would increase that animals fitness, and any marginal increase in fitness will result in those traits being passed on. The most significant one for human consciousness in particular is that the appearance of language pushed evolution in the direction of favoring a large working memory. If you can tell me "the bananas are down the hill, to the right, across the stream, next to the big stone" and I can remember that information and go find the bananas, then my fitness is improved. Darwin also pointed out that this increased working memory allows people to reason that if I help someone, that other person might help me back, allowing altruism to emerge from the cognitive space allotted to planning, which evolved from the pressures related to holding large chunks of linguistic data in the mind. So there are two things: first is subjective experience, which to me seems to be easily explainable as being like "system signals" from lower systems to higher systems. It's important to remember here that the appearance of information itself and intelligent responses to the environment is one of the defining features of all life, even the most basic (Adolf Heschel 2002). The smell of rotten eggs (example from the article) is simply a chemical signal that we have, understandably, evolved an aversion to. My reaction to ice-cream is similarly a chemical signal filtered through a lower biological system which interprets it as something REALLY GOOD and sends the appropriate signals to my higher level cognitive systems. The fact that it's a subjective signal and not a "robotic" reaction means that I can respond to it differently depending on other factors, which is clearly advantageous from the POV of natural selection. If I have diabetes I can resist the temptation of "deliciousness" to my great advantage. The second thing is that humans have a great memory, so we can hold lots of these signals in our minds alongside memories, plans, ideas etc. Since that ability was associated with increased fitness over millions of years, it has increased to the level we see today.
naasking 7y ago
> I don't buy this "emergent property of the mind" thing because while I understand evolutionary theory I am not sure how you bridge that gap to subjective experience. So you don't know, or aren't aware of any existing scientific theory, therefore it's magic? The attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0050...
- eternalny1 7y ago
  > So you don't know, or aren't aware of any existing scientific theory, therefore it's magic? Possibly magic, would depend on your definition of "magic". It's odd to see tech-minded people comment on this, because for us, every 0 and 1 is controllable and we hopefully get the expected output. And here we are commenting on this "thing" that we clearly understand because X, Y, and Z study that affirms our beliefs says it's so. I digress. And don't get me started on solipsism. In that case, I'm not real and this comment is, because it has to be.
  - brankoB 7y ago
    > And here we are commenting on this "thing" that we clearly understand because X, Y, and Z study that affirms our beliefs says it's so. No one is claiming to understand. In fact the whole point of the article is about how much we don't understand the problem.
    - eternalny1 7y ago
      What gave you the ability to logic all of this out? Don't take that as flippant. Laws do not create laws. Want a brainfuck? Sorry for the language. Prove to me that I did not create you.
      - brankoB 7y ago
        I can't prove that you didn't create me. Where are you going with this?
Voloskaya 7y ago
> I understood that we do not understand There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God? Do you go back and forth between atheist/theist every time a new answer is discovered and a new question is asked?
- eternalny1 7y ago
  > There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God? How did it start?
  - VyperCard 7y ago
    Nothing cannot exist. Therefore everything that can exist exists.
- vlunkr 7y ago
  This idea is called "God of the gaps" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps.
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    Good link. If anyone who has a true understanding of the concept of "nothing" can point me towards a Big Bang Theory I'd be happy to entertain.
  - dogofthegasp 7y ago
    Christian mystical theology has never had a problem with the god of the gaps argument. It's always postulated that God was something so utterly alien from us (prior to time itself!) that we can know him only through revelation. The nature of God lies in the realm of the unknown, for our finite minds cannot grasp the infinite. Knowledge of God is given only through experience and his grace. What has been revealed is logic-defying and mind-bending, although it has a certain paternicity of its own. Whether the God of the Gaps points you towards atheism or theism depends on your concept of the unknown. If you think of it as a fixed sized bucket of things gradually trending towards zero due to the effort of science, then you are an atheist. If you think of the unknown as practically limitless in size and our process of discovery as barely scratching the surface, then you are pointed towards theism. Generally, materialists trend towards the former and phenomenologists towards the latter.
acchow 7y ago
What you're saying essentially boils down to "we don't get it... ergo god"
- eternalny1 7y ago
  Pretty much that. Sorry if I left my fact-checking behind but that stopped once I visited CERN in search of the "truth". You might be surprised at how many quantum physicists agree with my odd world-view. It gets to a point where you can't go further (literally) ... then you get this.
  - iagreewithyou1 7y ago
    .
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - eternalny1 7y ago
      It was Fire in the Mind by Johnson if I could pin it to one book. It's been a path. And if I fit into one place, it's HN ... software engineer for too many decades. This is the one question I still have, and that will likely remain unanswered.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - monktastic1 7y ago
        Just wanted to say: I like the way you think. In fact, I'm writing up a piece about how to arrive at (what is presumably) a similar realization. In brief: (1) notice consciousness, (2) notice that it's impossible (in a well-defined sense) to know what is causing it. If done right, there can be an epiphany.
    - eternalny1 7y ago
      > I know most will not agree with me and that is fine, life is a path of discovery You're god-damn right (don't worry about the religious repercussions of that, me and god are OK). Discover, enjoy.
a_wild_dandan 7y ago
Unless I've misunderstood you, it sounds like you're advocating the "god of the gaps" argument. Don't understand something? Hide it behind the ol' God Band-Aid and call it a day. But that's just ignoring the problem with extra steps. As a side-note, there are some radical, fascinating attacks on the hard problem of consciousness, such as dual-aspect monism.[1] I'd love to hear y'alls thoughts. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious
- eternalny1 7y ago
  Not to get all "Matrix" on you but yes to my feeble mind it would seem to require a "god" to create god. Then all things break down, as they do now at the quantum boundary.
DidISayTooMuch 7y ago
What was that book? Irreducible Mind?
- eternalny1 7y ago
  Commented earlier, either Fire in the Mind by Johnson or something by Paul Davies.
glitchc 7y ago
You’ve committed a mental shortcut. It’s too hard, therefore God, or magic, or whatever. I’m convinced the ability to form short and long-term memories is crucial to our consciousness. Take that away and a human being is little more than a fruit fly, mentally.
- hsbaut76 7y ago
  It really depends on his theology. I'd agree if he succumbed to a prescribed framework of dogma. But for those freethinkers seeking inner truth there are no shortcuts. I think it's invalid to say he casts it in the "too hard basket" because he chooses theology. On the contrary, I think you cast it into the too hard basket because you're so steadfast on believing in the rational.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    On the contrary, it’s a problem that I would like to work on but lack the bandwidth to do so at the time being. Just because I don’t have the bandwidth to work on it doesn’t make it unsolvable. Theology lacks proof. I’m happy to believe in God if there’s proof. It should be easy to prove the existence of a singular being with unlimited power, no?
  - chrshawkes 7y ago
    It is after all the unifying question all Humans have pondered for possibly hundreds of thousands of years now. We still have no answers, maybe that's why we have religion? In any case, humans can't answer this fundamental question no matter how good our science has gotten so in my book, he's okay to give up on that. Life is too short. If theism works for someone, especially after such a great effort to find answers, he sounds like an ideal human to me. Probably a really level headed individual, but I'm just guessing like everybody else.
drevil-v2 7y ago
What was the book?
eternalny1 7y ago
I kept an eye on my own comment. From +14 to negative whatever. There was a noticeable trend. You may want to believe you're not "sheople". Studies suggest otherwise.

xamuel 7y ago

"The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

byproxy 7y ago

Which book did you read?

eternalny1 7y ago
I think it may have been Fire in the Mind by Johnson although Paul Davies pushed me along.

jhedwards 7y ago

What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? I study evolution quite a bit and, while there are many details about behavior and learning that are still missing, AFAICT it seems to explain consciousness and subjectivity pretty well.

eternalny1 7y ago
> What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Brain teaser: Take absolute nothingness (not the "void" of space, true nothing) then have that create something that allows me to reply to you on HN.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- z3t4 7y ago
  Given infinite time and infinite space, anything can happen. Time is a weird thing, but it seems more of it is created every day, increasing the possibilities.
- throwanem 7y ago
  You're not the first to consider this possibility, as you know. The novelist Peter Watts, in Blindsight, has a remarkably interesting, if also remarkably dark, take on the same idea. I won't spoil it here, since the book is an enjoyable read and freely available from the author's site: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ("Philosophical zombie" would be a more precise term than "robot", btw, and might make soi-disant rationalists take you slightly more seriously because it's closer to the sort of language they like to use. I don't know why that would be a desideratum for anyone, but if it is for you, this may be worth considering.)
- greiskul 7y ago
  > We could and should be robots. What do you mean with robots? Describe how our actions would be different if we were robots, compared with our reality where we are not. Brain teaser answer: Well, that's more of a question of physics, and the origins of the big bang. We are talking about brains here. They came about some billions of years later.
- jhedwards 7y ago
  I think evolution explains that fine. It's the same story as for physical development: the extrapolation and refinement of living organisms via natural selection over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Consciousness is hard to define, but if we examine animal intelligence it unsurprisingly seems to exist at various levels of complexity. So even worms have intelligence (and consciousness IMO) that isn't quite robotic: they react in predictable ways to light, but the reaction is modulated by other factors like temperature, moisture and what they are doing at the time. Their behavior can be described by a simple neural net, which is in fact what they have. (see Darwin 1881) Larger animals evolved the ability to evaluate multiple such signals simultaneously, and to do so it's necessary that lower level consciousness (like what the worm has) can send signals to higher levels of consciousness for evaluation. So if my foot is cramping a lower level system sends an appropriate pain signal to a higher level system, which can then aggregate that signal with other signals and cross reference it against current active behavioral plans. If I am meditating, I might ignore the pain, but if I'm working I might get up and stretch. This is similar to how the reaction of a worm is modulated, but just filtered up through higher levels of consciousness. Why would we develop higher levels of consciousness? Because any change to animal brains that allowed them to be aware of sensory input and evaluate it with reference to behavioral goals (instead of just reacting like a robot) would increase that animals fitness, and any marginal increase in fitness will result in those traits being passed on. The most significant one for human consciousness in particular is that the appearance of language pushed evolution in the direction of favoring a large working memory. If you can tell me "the bananas are down the hill, to the right, across the stream, next to the big stone" and I can remember that information and go find the bananas, then my fitness is improved. Darwin also pointed out that this increased working memory allows people to reason that if I help someone, that other person might help me back, allowing altruism to emerge from the cognitive space allotted to planning, which evolved from the pressures related to holding large chunks of linguistic data in the mind. So there are two things: first is subjective experience, which to me seems to be easily explainable as being like "system signals" from lower systems to higher systems. It's important to remember here that the appearance of information itself and intelligent responses to the environment is one of the defining features of all life, even the most basic (Adolf Heschel 2002). The smell of rotten eggs (example from the article) is simply a chemical signal that we have, understandably, evolved an aversion to. My reaction to ice-cream is similarly a chemical signal filtered through a lower biological system which interprets it as something REALLY GOOD and sends the appropriate signals to my higher level cognitive systems. The fact that it's a subjective signal and not a "robotic" reaction means that I can respond to it differently depending on other factors, which is clearly advantageous from the POV of natural selection. If I have diabetes I can resist the temptation of "deliciousness" to my great advantage. The second thing is that humans have a great memory, so we can hold lots of these signals in our minds alongside memories, plans, ideas etc. Since that ability was associated with increased fitness over millions of years, it has increased to the level we see today.

naasking 7y ago

> I don't buy this "emergent property of the mind" thing because while I understand evolutionary theory I am not sure how you bridge that gap to subjective experience. So you don't know, or aren't aware of any existing scientific theory, therefore it's magic? The attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0050...

eternalny1 7y ago
> So you don't know, or aren't aware of any existing scientific theory, therefore it's magic? Possibly magic, would depend on your definition of "magic". It's odd to see tech-minded people comment on this, because for us, every 0 and 1 is controllable and we hopefully get the expected output. And here we are commenting on this "thing" that we clearly understand because X, Y, and Z study that affirms our beliefs says it's so. I digress. And don't get me started on solipsism. In that case, I'm not real and this comment is, because it has to be.
- brankoB 7y ago
  > And here we are commenting on this "thing" that we clearly understand because X, Y, and Z study that affirms our beliefs says it's so. No one is claiming to understand. In fact the whole point of the article is about how much we don't understand the problem.
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    What gave you the ability to logic all of this out? Don't take that as flippant. Laws do not create laws. Want a brainfuck? Sorry for the language. Prove to me that I did not create you.
    - brankoB 7y ago
      I can't prove that you didn't create me. Where are you going with this?

Voloskaya 7y ago

> I understood that we do not understand There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God? Do you go back and forth between atheist/theist every time a new answer is discovered and a new question is asked?

eternalny1 7y ago
> There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God? How did it start?
- VyperCard 7y ago
  Nothing cannot exist. Therefore everything that can exist exists.
vlunkr 7y ago
This idea is called "God of the gaps" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps.
- eternalny1 7y ago
  Good link. If anyone who has a true understanding of the concept of "nothing" can point me towards a Big Bang Theory I'd be happy to entertain.
- dogofthegasp 7y ago
  Christian mystical theology has never had a problem with the god of the gaps argument. It's always postulated that God was something so utterly alien from us (prior to time itself!) that we can know him only through revelation. The nature of God lies in the realm of the unknown, for our finite minds cannot grasp the infinite. Knowledge of God is given only through experience and his grace. What has been revealed is logic-defying and mind-bending, although it has a certain paternicity of its own. Whether the God of the Gaps points you towards atheism or theism depends on your concept of the unknown. If you think of it as a fixed sized bucket of things gradually trending towards zero due to the effort of science, then you are an atheist. If you think of the unknown as practically limitless in size and our process of discovery as barely scratching the surface, then you are pointed towards theism. Generally, materialists trend towards the former and phenomenologists towards the latter.

acchow 7y ago

What you're saying essentially boils down to "we don't get it... ergo god"

eternalny1 7y ago
Pretty much that. Sorry if I left my fact-checking behind but that stopped once I visited CERN in search of the "truth". You might be surprised at how many quantum physicists agree with my odd world-view. It gets to a point where you can't go further (literally) ... then you get this.
- iagreewithyou1 7y ago
  .
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    It was Fire in the Mind by Johnson if I could pin it to one book. It's been a path. And if I fit into one place, it's HN ... software engineer for too many decades. This is the one question I still have, and that will likely remain unanswered.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - monktastic1 7y ago
      Just wanted to say: I like the way you think. In fact, I'm writing up a piece about how to arrive at (what is presumably) a similar realization. In brief: (1) notice consciousness, (2) notice that it's impossible (in a well-defined sense) to know what is causing it. If done right, there can be an epiphany.
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    > I know most will not agree with me and that is fine, life is a path of discovery You're god-damn right (don't worry about the religious repercussions of that, me and god are OK). Discover, enjoy.

a_wild_dandan 7y ago

Unless I've misunderstood you, it sounds like you're advocating the "god of the gaps" argument. Don't understand something? Hide it behind the ol' God Band-Aid and call it a day. But that's just ignoring the problem with extra steps. As a side-note, there are some radical, fascinating attacks on the hard problem of consciousness, such as dual-aspect monism.[1] I'd love to hear y'alls thoughts. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious

eternalny1 7y ago
Not to get all "Matrix" on you but yes to my feeble mind it would seem to require a "god" to create god. Then all things break down, as they do now at the quantum boundary.

DidISayTooMuch 7y ago

What was that book? Irreducible Mind?

eternalny1 7y ago
Commented earlier, either Fire in the Mind by Johnson or something by Paul Davies.

glitchc 7y ago

You’ve committed a mental shortcut. It’s too hard, therefore God, or magic, or whatever. I’m convinced the ability to form short and long-term memories is crucial to our consciousness. Take that away and a human being is little more than a fruit fly, mentally.

hsbaut76 7y ago
It really depends on his theology. I'd agree if he succumbed to a prescribed framework of dogma. But for those freethinkers seeking inner truth there are no shortcuts. I think it's invalid to say he casts it in the "too hard basket" because he chooses theology. On the contrary, I think you cast it into the too hard basket because you're so steadfast on believing in the rational.
- glitchc 7y ago
  On the contrary, it’s a problem that I would like to work on but lack the bandwidth to do so at the time being. Just because I don’t have the bandwidth to work on it doesn’t make it unsolvable. Theology lacks proof. I’m happy to believe in God if there’s proof. It should be easy to prove the existence of a singular being with unlimited power, no?
- chrshawkes 7y ago
  It is after all the unifying question all Humans have pondered for possibly hundreds of thousands of years now. We still have no answers, maybe that's why we have religion? In any case, humans can't answer this fundamental question no matter how good our science has gotten so in my book, he's okay to give up on that. Life is too short. If theism works for someone, especially after such a great effort to find answers, he sounds like an ideal human to me. Probably a really level headed individual, but I'm just guessing like everybody else.

drevil-v2 7y ago

What was the book?

eternalny1 7y ago

I kept an eye on my own comment. From +14 to negative whatever. There was a noticeable trend. You may want to believe you're not "sheople". Studies suggest otherwise.