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Sorry but you always forgot that when you sleep your consciousness disappeared. Please take account for this fact. When all sensory shut down, really you feel

Sorry but you always forgot that when you sleep your consciousness disappeared. Please take account for this fact. When all sensory shut down, really you feel nothing and of cos think nothing.

_moof 4y ago
Until you start dreaming.
- kazinator 4y ago
  It's when you're anaesthesized for surgery that your consciousness goes away. No dreams, nothing. You don't exist during those hours. You cannot account for them later; they are deleted.
  - lowwave 4y ago
    Or that we just don't remember the dream states. Have you ever woken up and the dream rapidly fades away?
  - mongol 4y ago
    When I had surgery, I had very lucid dreams. And they were actually quite arousing. Afterwards I heard that it was actually common.
  - Tor3 4y ago
    When I woke up after surgery I felt that 1.5 hours had passed. But in actuality it was something around 4 hours since I went under. It turned out that 1.5 hours before I woke up I had been brought out of anesthesia and after that I simply slept. I didn't have any dreams at all, but at least my internal clock had started working. A clock presumably doesn't need consciousness, but there's definitely a qualitative difference between anesthesia and sleep. And as I sometimes suddenly wake up with a solution to some problem, with no recallable dream preceding it, my personal subjective opinion is that there's some level of consciousness going on even in sleep. That anesthesia experience was so very different from anything I had experienced before, with no recall whatsoever of the time that had passed.
    - psychoslave 4y ago
      How do you estimate time elapsed without external inputs? Experiments where people cut themselves from external stimuli seem to show that on the contrary, we don’t good internal clocks on this regard.
      - Tor3 4y ago
        I nearly always "know" how long I have been asleep, unless there's been excessive drinking involved (and that would be long ago). "Normal" drinking doesn't seem to affect this. And for shorter naps (less than two hours) it's pretty accurate.
      - kazinator 4y ago
        People probably do this based on experience. You know from the wall clock time that you slept, say 7 hours. So on a daily basis, you know what 7 hours of sleep feels like and from that you can extrapolate: if you think you slept about half as much, maybe it was 3 hours. Kind of thing.
nanomonkey 4y ago
My consciousness doesn't seem to disappear when I fall asleep, only my awareness of my bodies sensations. I often go to sleep reading, and the thoughts I'm having about the book I'm reading will continue for quite some time, even after my eyes close. I know this because I often startle myself awake by dropping my book. I also have similar experiences as I wake up, my consciousness slowly starts to incorporate my sensations of reality with the thought process that is continuously going in my head.
whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Consciousness can end temporarily, perhaps permanently. This in no way suggests that it’s an illusion. The claim that consciousness is an illusion has always seemed like nonsense to me; for, if consciousness is an illusion, who experiences that illusion? Answer: the conscious mind.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  Consciousness is a trick for human neural network to simplify some calculations about the world. It was developed as an evolutionary trait and proved useful to survive. That's my opinion. It's not an illusion, it definitely exists as an particular configuration of neurons.
  - hnthrway 4y ago
    Why put the cart before the horse
- criddell 4y ago
  > Answer: the conscious mind. It's a controversial idea, but depending on the state of the brain, there may be more than one consciousness. Maybe "you" are actually a committee.
  - Seb-C 4y ago
    I like the opposite idea, that maybe we are all the same consciousness, projected in bodies that have different subjective experiences and memories.
plutonorm 4y ago
I think memory shuts down when you sleep. So that it still feels like something to be sleeping, only we cannot recall it when we awake, because it is not persisted in memory. This is the same reason we cannot remember what it is like to be a rock, even though it does feel like something to be a rock.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Waking consciousness disappears. But sleeping people are not even close to being unconscious. They can dream, and they're aware enough to know they should probably wake up if they're prodded hard enough. Conveniently this metaphor works at multiple levels. Not even medically unconscious people are guaranteed to be completely non-sentient. Ask any anaesthetist.
jusssi 4y ago
No it doesn't. When you actually pass out, there's a very real sense of discontinuity. You find yourself on the floor, unsure how long you've been there (even if it was just seconds), and how exactly you got to that position (the previous recorded memory being you standing there and feeling woozy). It's very different from just sleeping, where you still retain a feeling of continuity with both place and time.

Sorry but you always forgot that when you sleep your consciousness disappeared. Please take account for this fact. When all sensory shut down, really you feel nothing and of cos think nothing.

_moof 4y ago

Until you start dreaming.

kazinator 4y ago
It's when you're anaesthesized for surgery that your consciousness goes away. No dreams, nothing. You don't exist during those hours. You cannot account for them later; they are deleted.
- lowwave 4y ago
  Or that we just don't remember the dream states. Have you ever woken up and the dream rapidly fades away?
- mongol 4y ago
  When I had surgery, I had very lucid dreams. And they were actually quite arousing. Afterwards I heard that it was actually common.
- Tor3 4y ago
  When I woke up after surgery I felt that 1.5 hours had passed. But in actuality it was something around 4 hours since I went under. It turned out that 1.5 hours before I woke up I had been brought out of anesthesia and after that I simply slept. I didn't have any dreams at all, but at least my internal clock had started working. A clock presumably doesn't need consciousness, but there's definitely a qualitative difference between anesthesia and sleep. And as I sometimes suddenly wake up with a solution to some problem, with no recallable dream preceding it, my personal subjective opinion is that there's some level of consciousness going on even in sleep. That anesthesia experience was so very different from anything I had experienced before, with no recall whatsoever of the time that had passed.
  - psychoslave 4y ago
    How do you estimate time elapsed without external inputs? Experiments where people cut themselves from external stimuli seem to show that on the contrary, we don’t good internal clocks on this regard.
    - Tor3 4y ago
      I nearly always "know" how long I have been asleep, unless there's been excessive drinking involved (and that would be long ago). "Normal" drinking doesn't seem to affect this. And for shorter naps (less than two hours) it's pretty accurate.
    - kazinator 4y ago
      People probably do this based on experience. You know from the wall clock time that you slept, say 7 hours. So on a daily basis, you know what 7 hours of sleep feels like and from that you can extrapolate: if you think you slept about half as much, maybe it was 3 hours. Kind of thing.

nanomonkey 4y ago

My consciousness doesn't seem to disappear when I fall asleep, only my awareness of my bodies sensations. I often go to sleep reading, and the thoughts I'm having about the book I'm reading will continue for quite some time, even after my eyes close. I know this because I often startle myself awake by dropping my book. I also have similar experiences as I wake up, my consciousness slowly starts to incorporate my sensations of reality with the thought process that is continuously going in my head.

whittingtonaaon 4y ago

Consciousness can end temporarily, perhaps permanently. This in no way suggests that it’s an illusion. The claim that consciousness is an illusion has always seemed like nonsense to me; for, if consciousness is an illusion, who experiences that illusion? Answer: the conscious mind.

vbezhenar 4y ago
Consciousness is a trick for human neural network to simplify some calculations about the world. It was developed as an evolutionary trait and proved useful to survive. That's my opinion. It's not an illusion, it definitely exists as an particular configuration of neurons.
- hnthrway 4y ago
  Why put the cart before the horse
criddell 4y ago
> Answer: the conscious mind. It's a controversial idea, but depending on the state of the brain, there may be more than one consciousness. Maybe "you" are actually a committee.
- Seb-C 4y ago
  I like the opposite idea, that maybe we are all the same consciousness, projected in bodies that have different subjective experiences and memories.

plutonorm 4y ago

I think memory shuts down when you sleep. So that it still feels like something to be sleeping, only we cannot recall it when we awake, because it is not persisted in memory. This is the same reason we cannot remember what it is like to be a rock, even though it does feel like something to be a rock.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

Waking consciousness disappears. But sleeping people are not even close to being unconscious. They can dream, and they're aware enough to know they should probably wake up if they're prodded hard enough. Conveniently this metaphor works at multiple levels. Not even medically unconscious people are guaranteed to be completely non-sentient. Ask any anaesthetist.

jusssi 4y ago

No it doesn't. When you actually pass out, there's a very real sense of discontinuity. You find yourself on the floor, unsure how long you've been there (even if it was just seconds), and how exactly you got to that position (the previous recorded memory being you standing there and feeling woozy). It's very different from just sleeping, where you still retain a feeling of continuity with both place and time.