23 ms·

Our conscious experience of the world is a memory, says new theory

376 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

novalis78 4y ago
Wouldn’t this also explain deja vu? The memory consciousness tripping up and replaying or thinking it saw the same scene before?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
canadiantim 4y ago
Trying to reduce consciousness to memory is such a laughable misunderstanding of what consciousness is
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- leoh 4y ago
  Okay
- yazzku 4y ago
  So what is it?
  - canadiantim 4y ago
    Consciousness is just consciousness, it's not reduceable to brain states; it's fundamentally different even though they are associated and related. See Qualia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Tautologies are ultimately useless descriptions. We may as well be saying Blanchesness is Blanchessness.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - mannykannot 4y ago
      This alleged fact is not established by any of the arguments summarized in that article. Look into them in detail, and you will find, at root, subtle (and not-so-subtle) question-begging and appeals to plausibility.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Is this kind of like the fact that there really is no “present”. You are either anticipating it(future) or looking back on it (past).
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
I realize that the link between consciousness and quantum effects are far from proven but if you will entertain the idea that they are... Delayed-choice experiments demonstrate the seeming ability of measurements in the present to alter events occurring in the past. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser Now I'll throw out another completely unprovable thought... Perhaps consciousness has the ability to affect how wavefunction collapse occurs, perhaps it even has the ability to influence the observed outcome. I'm not going to try to prove these two ideas but together they can help form an idea that perhaps observations on the past actually influence the past and perhaps despite this 'observation after the fact' there's still free will. It's not provable but then neither is the "there's no such thing as free will" arguments that this sort of research leads to. The point of the above is to highlight that there's still a way out for free will.
- piyh 4y ago
  Quantum unconsciousness is attractive under the concept "what if all the things we don't understand are actually one thing", but there's a lot of unknowns out there and they don't all have the same door.
- causi 4y ago
  The point of the above is to highlight that there's still a way out for free will. Can you define "free will" in a way that gives it any significance? If not deterministic and not random then what is it?
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    I like to think it's a probability distribution that you have some influence over. I choose to catch a ball. I've just made it 99% likely that I'll catch it. But there's still room for chaos to ensure it's not a deterministic outcome.
    - Thiez 4y ago
      Free will is sometimes failing at things you set out to do? We hardly need quantum theory to explain that humans are clumsy or sometimes mispredict the trajectory of a thrown object.
CloudRecondite 4y ago
I often wonder if humans spent as much time studying the brain as we do getting people to click on ads how much progress we could make in understanding consciousness. Seems like there is so much low hanging fruit and very few real breakthroughs. The biggest mystery in the universe is staring us right in the face.
- RobRivera 4y ago
  the deeper I dig into buddhism the more i begin to see i am just scratching the surface of this world
  - CloudRecondite 4y ago
    The answers are out there waiting to be found. History tells us they’re equal parts bizarre and beautiful.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  We've got a small army of philosophers of mind, and then another of neuroscience researchers working on this stuff. But the philosophers don't have a ton to do without more experiments from neuroscience, and neuroscience is doing the best it can with currently available technology. Studying the brain is really friggin' hard. I don't know where exactly you think the low-hanging fruit is, but trying to measure a brain operating at a neural level without killing it is pretty limited by our current tech.
  - piyh 4y ago
    Let me tell you about cerebral organoids my dude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_organoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_organoid
- qudat 4y ago
  I have some takes on this topic. The reason why I think we find consciousness so mysterious is because we are so intimately biased that we are blinded by what’s plainly understandable. Consciousness is an emergent property of nervous systems. https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness
everybodyknows 4y ago
Direct link, dodging the Reader-mode-defeating pop-science piece: https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Fulltext/9900/Consciousness_as_a_Memory_System.19.aspx https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Fulltext/9900/Consci...
Nav_Panel 4y ago
The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago. What the authors did here was reground it in neuroscience (scientific materialism) rather than the generic philosophical primitives of phenomenology (which in this case fade into the background a bit, although they remain relevant to all empirical work per se), and draw out some of the impacts of that shift.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago. More like a thousand years ago, if you include Eastern traditions of insight meditation. "Conscious experience is mostly just memory" is the core insight of what in those traditions is called "no self".
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    Totally fair, tbh.
  - keybored 4y ago
    The conscious mind is just as much of a conditioned phenomena as the subconscious mind. I don’t see what this has to do with no-self. I didn’t get the impression that the insight of no-self is that consciousness is “just X”. Consciousness is there, clearly (you’re not unconscious). Just like any other conditioned thing.
  - miobrien 4y ago
    As Sam Harris phrases it, thoughts and senses are "merely representations" in consciousness. The self, as we perceive it, is a representation in consciousness.
- beardedman 4y ago
  > had this figured out To be fair, nobody has figured it out. It's a hypothesis.
- club_tropical 4y ago
  I didn't know about Husserl, very interesting, thank you for sharing.
nl 4y ago
This theory (basically that we act instinctively then after acting the process of remembering that action lets us form an explanation) won't surprise anyone who has read Thinking, Fast and Slow. It has analogies the the field of "explainable AI" too, where systems take decisions neural networks make, probe the boundaries of them and attempt to present them in ways we can understand. It strikes me as plausible that what we call consciousnesses (as well as "intelligence") arise from the information compression process this explanation requires.
pierrebai 4y ago
I don't know how they reconcile this theory with everyday activities. When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. I'm not reading words that my eyes scanned half a second ago. Otherwise I'd be "reading" the last word of a line when my eyes are already at the start of the next line? To take another example, when I'm cooking, my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables. I'm no claiming that perception is instantaneous, but clearly we do many activities successfully that implicitly require perceptions to be near real-time. If the theory is correct but the timing difference is small enough that these objection go away, then I feel the theory is just a change of nomenclature. What they call memory is just the perception delay.
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  The point is, your unconscious mind is doing all those activities in real time, “you” the conscious mind are only reliving them as a memory, but it feels real time
- yazzku 4y ago
  They state that fairly explicitly: > Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we’re actually experiencing a memory of that perception. So yeah, the "perception" is a memory, and the processing happens in near real-time. This also seems to tie well with the research on visual perception that states that much of what we "see" is a projection of the brain based on things we have seen in the past (like how you see a face when you look at a power outlet.) I am not at all even a hobbyist on this topic though.
- whatever1211 4y ago
  > When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. Consciousness is the experience of your eyes being in sync with the reading. > my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables. That is what happened. It just happened in the past relative to when you're experiencing it. How do you talk to people then? I think all those things happened when they did. But the thing inside your brain that plays back the sound and the sensations of making decisions, those emotional things, is delayed.
smitty1e 4y ago
> Yup, it’s a zoo of theories out there. For a quick skim, this looks like a rehash of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
- sublinear 4y ago
  You beat me to it
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    As with the whole "simulation" shtick, it appears a device for rejecting any idea of an ultimate truth for which we might be held accountable.
md224 4y ago
Wouldn't this mean that the author of this article wrote it unconsciously?
nullc 4y ago
Imagine that you were given a strange job where you rode along with the sensory experiences of a mute person, writing their dialog for them. They can hear the dialog you give, including inaudible asides left only for them. You saw and felt all that they see and feel but you can't control their behavior. The job requires you to never admit the situation to anyone, you have to always pretend to be the person under penalty of death, even when talking to them. They're 20 years old now and you've been doing this job your entire life. How could someone distinguish this setup from how we normally perceive our minds as working?
derangedHorse 4y ago
The problem with thoughts like these are they aren’t practical as anything but a source of speculative entertainment. If this theory was factual then knowing that doesn’t change how I perceive the world. Knowing this theory also doesn’t bring me any new definite insights in the study of life that I could sue to launch off more research into. This is an interesting thing to think about but it’s not too useful
- zozbot234 4y ago
  There's definitely something to this POV, tbh. As the saying goes: Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
  - klipt 4y ago
    Until we enlightened ourselves into electric heaters and running water. Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, turn on heater, turn on faucet, work in an office to pay for your water and electricity ;-)
- bionhoward 4y ago
  I’d push back on that, we could use this to invent a new cognitive architecture approach to AGI (route perception directly to memory state and use that as the world model) and see if it improves RL performance. In fact I think the world models paper did this. You could conceivably have a generative / predictive world model, instead of a perceptual / remembered one. I think Karl Friston is more in the former, predictive camp, which implies your consciousness isn’t a memory, but rather a prediction (Metaverse in your head, so to speak) so it’ll be interesting to see how AGI eventually pops up, will they consciously experience their perceptions, or their predictions? Perhaps perception and prediction are two sides of the same coin and we just need to figure out what material the coin is made of. Also for neuro, maybe it means Alzheimer’s would show up on perception tests before it shows up on memory tests, if memory is implemented by perception. And since we mostly look at “memory centers” of the brain in that disease, perhaps we could find issues in perceptual areas, too. Maybe we look at the hippocampus when we ought to look at V1, olfactory region, sensory gyrus, etc — if Alzheimer’s follows the clogged sink metaphor, then the clog could be in a different brain region entirely. Personally I don’t like to think about it that way because that implies consciousness has “lag!” However, we’d have to evolve perception before we could evolve to remember that which is perceived. One big problem with this article is the fact our vision etc has a lot of holes. If we consciously experience a mere memory, then there’s a whole lot of in-painting going on in the perceptual system to fill those holes, which makes it quasi-generative, and thus less of a memory and more of a prediction of stuff we didn’t actually see. Which means memory and prediction and perception are all the same. That’s a can of worms because it means when we experience a moment, we’re actually predicting the past…
raydiatian 4y ago
A (probably insane, ill-conceived) question I’ve been entertained by for as long as I can remember is whether or not “qualia”, which I understand to be “the experience itself of consciousness”, is a physical phenomenon that could ever be directly engaged with on physical terms. I suppose it’s basically a mix of relativity and Descartes. For instance, I can “feel myself here in my mental space”, however where is that mental space in relation to the physical world I’m using it to observe, what would be the SI units for such a measurement? If we assume consciousness itself is a physical phenomenon, wouldn’t the reality from the perspective of consciousness be equally as… how do I say this, “mechanically relevant”? I doubt an answer will come in my lifetime or my great grandchildren’s but it seems like a crowning achievement for mankind to understand in physical terms if possible from whence consciousness came, and to where it goes when the body dies. Like I said, insane.
empathy_m 4y ago
There's a rumored experiment called the "precognitive carousel", supposedly run by Grey Walter, where: (1) Subjects are told to push a button to advance a slide projector carousel, but not told that the button is inert (2) The carousel advances based on electrical signals measured by wires on the subjects' scalp. (3) Subjects supposedly report the uncanny feeling that the projector advances "just before" they were about to push the button -- 300-400 milliseconds before, a pretty long time. I read about this a long time ago in a since-deleted post on an old timey internet forum (everything2). The writer suggested this research supports the idea that your body chooses what to do, then informs your brain, and your consciousness convinces itself that has decided to do what the body is about to do on its own.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I wonder if this is related to the idea of persistent non-symbolic experience[1]. Where the latter is the conscious perception of the "precognitive carousel" and its consequences. 1. https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol8/iss8/1/ https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol8/iss8/1/
- csomar 4y ago
  > that your body chooses what to do, then informs your brain, and your consciousness convinces itself that has decided to do what the body is about to do on its own. More like your subconscious is making decisions, talking with your mouth, moving your hands, etc... Then you have your consciousness (your "real" self). The subconscious makes him feel and think like he is in control so he (you, your "real" self) doesn't freak out. But he (the subconscious guy) has the real power and control.
  - altcognito 4y ago
    Presuming that the subconscious isn’t all there is and the “conscious” mind isn’t just an illusion created by all the subconscious processes. It would be interesting to see experiments that try to pry back the lid a bit on the line between conscious and the subconscious and the communication therein. They must be out there.
nyc111 4y ago
> Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we’re actually experiencing a memory of that perception. I’ve had a similar theory. I say that we perceive the world (or time) as if looking behind through the rear window of a forward moving car. We can only see past events.
- jgilias 4y ago
  2pac, is that you man?
DavidSJ 4y ago
Sounds a lot like Gerald Edelman's The Remembered Present, published in 1989.
educaysean 4y ago
When I used play soccer regularly, I'd occasionally experience being "in the zone". It's a blissful experience where my body is able to execute incredibly complex set of moves in perfect coordination as my mind enters a state of zen-like calm. The sensation is almost like a being spectator in my own body. My brain feels like it's been relieved of the task of managing the moment-to-moment decision. Instead I start noticing moves 3, 4 steps ahead as time slows to a crawl around me. I don't know if this type of experience is related in any way to the theory of consciousness, but it feels like the unconscious mind holds a lot of secrets that I'd love to see unlocked in my lifetime.
- jffhn 4y ago
  Reminds me of the soccer player Platini. A journalist asked him how come he was so good while not being so strong physically, he replied that he saw what was going to happen a few seconds before others.
- ryanar 4y ago
  I had the same experience when I was competing in eSports. I played a very fast paced and unique first person shooter that required complex and perfectly timed button sequences to dodge and attack at the same time. The game sent packets p2p so you had to predict where your opponent was about to be based on your ping to them, the shot was a hit based on where the character was when the packet was received. I played at the highest level and while I was normally not as good as my opponents, I would go into a zen state like what you described where time seemed to slow, I could predict my opponents movement easily and land shot after shot. I would either be the mvp of my team if I could get into the zone or be a non factor if I couldn’t. I never could figure out how that worked but I do feel like “flow” when coding is similar.
  - ricv 4y ago
    curious to which fps this is? painkiller? ut? quake? reflex? diabotical?
    - eru 4y ago
godelski 4y ago
I'm not a psych expert, but I thought this was long established. I mean we've known about the delays in processing for quite some time and thus the system can't be "real time". I mean everyone has experienced things where they are doing something, walk by, then turn around to check what they just saw because the process delay (not everything is put on the fast track). Or am I misunderstanding the novelty of the research here? Hoping someone can help me understand better.
- whakim 4y ago
  I think the key area of novelty here is the relationship to consciousness and thus the great unsolved questions over what precisely consciousness is and what purpose it serves.
  - GaryPalmer 4y ago
    I am not impressed with this. This merely answers what practical use consciousness would have under the (unrpoven) assumption that it evolved as a survival mechanism. It does not explain what qualia is or how it comes about (hard problem). Therefore it is a bit far-fetched to say this answers what consciousness is at its core.
    - n4r9 4y ago
      I'm interested to know what a satisfying explanation of qualia would look like to someone who believes it's a real, well-defined phenomenon? I get a strong impression that anything mechanistic will not do, and a slightly cynical feeling that anything that can be put in precise terms will not do. Is there any explanation that gets some of the way there?
      - GaryPalmer 4y ago
        I suspect no such explanation can exist and therefore the hard problem does not exist in the sense of a solvable problem in pyhsics. It's really a question of metaphysics.
      - 4y ago
leobg 4y ago
My guess would be that this is highly dependent on personality type. It is certainly true for types, such as the INTJ, who holds sensory information at a distance, and instead orients himself using a constantly updated inner map of the world. but that doesn’t mean that they are not people out there for whom “being in the here and now“ isn’t their baseline experience.
fedeb95 4y ago
Interesting, those looking for similar ideas may look into memetic theory. "The meme machine" by Blackmore and not exactly related but a great book that invented the word meme is "The selfish gene" by Dawkins
perryizgr8 4y ago
It feels like this is just a play on words. Consider a camera connected to a monitor. The camera captures 24 frames a second and sends the images to the monitor via a cable. The monitor displays this "live" feed. Is it really live though? There are multiple buffers and busses that the images have traveled through, sometimes even staying in one place for many milliseconds, as some resource lock is being acquired. Despite all this, would you say that the monitor is displaying stored data? Technically yes, but for all practical purposes no.
dusted 4y ago
This seems intuitively true to me. Most of our conscious cognition works on and with memories, it's like a snapshot of what we think happened at any moment. It's that feeling when you "discover" your reaction to something after the fact.. Like, someone says something unexpected and you've already answered before you become aware of what was said.. It also happens often whenever you're in the zone of doing something, you really get to take the backseat and watch the trip.. Like playing very fast paced videogames like devil daggers, you're observing yourself from a distance, as the stimuli is processed, and you make judgements on your reactions, notes for next time and so on.. Which demonstrates this temporal disconnect between your actions and your experience of them clearly.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  I spent years trying my best at first person shooters. Been in the zone many times, and yet I've never observed myself from a distance. Is it a genre thing? Maybe FPS people stay in first person no matter what
mercacona 4y ago
New theory? You can find this claim at the Encyclopedia, in Condillac, in La Mettrie, in last Descartes’ works, etc. Imagination and Memory has been pivotal to explain consciousness for a long time…
rajman187 4y ago
For all its use of the term time, for example “backward in time” or “does consciousness flow linearly with time,” there is no definition of time itself provided in the article. I had hoped the Definitions section would at least acknowledge some concept of time. I suppose we all collectively agree on some generic concept of a fourth dimension with a strictly forward movement of instances, a progression toward entropy, but if the theory is going to argue temporal transcendance I’d expect a more formal thesis around what time itself is. I’ve picked up this book but yet to read it. It’s on my list when I get the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_Time_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_Time_(book)
beardedman 4y ago
Not the worst theory I've come across. However, it sounds a bit metaphysical.
- caust1c 4y ago
  All cognitive science is by-definition metaphysical. Matter thinking about itself.
  - beardedman 4y ago
    > Matter thinking about itself. But this is my point. In regards to conscienceness; we have no "matter" to point to - unlike something like memory, sensory input, etc. EDIT: I guess the entire organ you could point to in this case. :)
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Asking why there is anything is also metaphysical. Metaphysics is where the interesting unanswerable questions are :)
kbrkbr 4y ago
I fail to see the helpfulness of describing or defining something we do not understand in terms of something related we equally do not understand, „understand“ here in the sense of „have a clear theory that gives meaning to the words we use“. In relation to the problem of how qualitative self-aware experiences can arise in a biological information system this article does not seem to help at all. Is the statement really „consciousness“ in the sense just vaguely described is just „memories“? Then what are memories? How can they have qualities and where does the self awareness come from? How to model it mathematically? I feel we’re still in the age of the humoral theory of consciousness.
- amatic 4y ago
  > I fail to see the helpfulness of describing or defining something we do not understand in terms of something related we equally do not understand, That is a great way of putting it. I feel like most if not all the consciousness research is in that category.
- oldstrangers 4y ago
  We have a lot better understanding of memories than we do consciousness though. We can visualize and quantify the memory making process. New neurons, new connections, the chemicals involved, etc. Memories are a pretty well understood and tangible part of neuroscience at this point.
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
This reminded me of the Bicameral Mind - where (in humans pre-conscious state) memories in half the brain got triggered by experiences and were presented to the other half as commands/words of god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality
- simiones 4y ago
  Note that the Bicameral Mind is essentially just a story - no one is really taking it seriously as a possibility in the evolution of the human mind, even though it is a fascinating idea.
jakey_bakey 4y ago
My favourite consciousness theory is panpsychism, where consciousness is a property of the universe which all things have - given that a personal experience is by definition not measurable, there's no reason it's not as valid as others.
CapitalTntcls 4y ago
Unfortunately, It's not so precisely written. For example, she uses theory when she should be using hypothesis.
jakey_bakey 4y ago
This 'memories' theory is a well-established model of how our senses work anyway - your brain synthesises inputs from multiple sources into what feels like a single experience of your surroundings. This is vital from a survival standpoint because 0.2 seconds of ping between seeing and hearing without your brain telling you they happened simultaneously would be debilitating. The same thing happens with the sensation of "flavour" (smell + taste).
kazinator 4y ago
This looks an awful like an embarrassing claim to the discovery of Libet's Delay, which the researchers should have learned about as undergrads.
- heresie-dabord 4y ago
  Your comment merits a reference, which I provide upon conscious reflection of the memory of your comment's incompleteness. ^_^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet's_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of...
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  In case anyone wasn’t aware. Libet’s delay has been found to be quite flawed, and the ‘not reproducible’ idea entered popular consciousness: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flaw... The replication crisis, etc.
LatteLazy 4y ago
My thoughts, from internal monolog to biases and other content make a lot more sense when I view them as my subconscious explaining action it has already taken or decided upon than as actual fresh thoughts. Similarly, there have been times (fist fights, emergencies etc) where some deep level of my brain has acted with no conscience thought at all. However these actions were still 100% aligned with the conscience me, the same motivations etc. I have always wondered whether what we call consciousness is not just empathy directed inwards: Empathy is when I look at someone else and work out what they are feeling and what they will do, using the same process to explain my own feelings and behaviour to myself is just called consciousness instead...
dantondwa 4y ago
This reminds me of Bergson's theory of memory and present consciousness. In his essay "Memory of the Present and False Recognition", he argued that memory and present consciousness are the same, and what changes is a sort of "past tag" that is associated with the memory flow. He saw déjà vu as a mistaken tagging of the present flow, which we then perceive as past
epgui 4y ago
I have not read the paper, but what is explained in the article is old news.
simonh 4y ago
The bottom line I think is that the brain is a complex assembly of parts responsible for a huge variety of cognitive processes, and only some of those are directly involved in conscious thought. Biological systems are often crazily interconnected with each other, with feedback loops on top of feedback loops, and the brain is no exception. Sometimes we consciously think through what we are doing and make reasoned decisions, especially when learning to perform a new task. As we repeat the task and it’s variations we can learn to do it more automatically, less consciously. This could be a physical task like playing table tennis, but it can also be something like giving a public speech off the cuff. When you’re having a conversation you often aren’t thinking it through word by word, you’re thinking at a high level consciously, but the stream of words just emerges far too fast for each phrase to be consciously selected and considered. So even speech, something we think of as most closely associated with consciousness, is in many cases an automatic activity. This is how we sometimes come to Mis-speak and say things we didn’t mean.
xcambar 4y ago
> In other words, it’s mainly the unconscious mind at the wheel. I'm always surprised this is introduced as news. It seems to me that since the first half of the 20th century, there has been a continuous stream of evidence that the consciousness is, at best, a first class citizen but certainly not the main driver anymore.
otikik 4y ago
The thing that we must remember is that evolution is not conscious. It’s such a complex system that the functions of each part don’t fit the way we humans to talk about things. We say “those are memories” but in the brain very few things are “one thing”. Almost always they work similarly to several things, interlinked in often seemingly random ways. The way definitions work in the brain is similar to political parties; you might find one that you agree with in 70% of the time, but the other 30% is nonsense. It could be that they are using the same circuit as memories except for a series of very subtle change in one specific part of the brain that makes them feel totally different from regular memories, similarly to how a little bit of salt can elevate one dish from regular to excellent.
temptemptemp111 4y ago
netfortius 4y ago
I recommend the book "The Idea of the World - A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality", by Bernardo Kastrup
pieter_mj 4y ago
Consciousness is a time machine, otherwise free will would not be possible.
- ozy 4y ago
  It is a virtual time machine. You can run time forwards, explore various possible futures, then pick the future aligned most with your preferences, capabilities, and taste for risk.
bigbluedots 4y ago
Nice theory, prove it!
withinboredom 4y ago
I've always lived by 3 rules: - This moment is only a memory, for me and others, try to make it one worth remembering. - No one can change me except for myself. - Do whatever you want, as long as you're willing to pay the price and accept the consequences. It's funny to see the first rule is quite literal.
ozy 4y ago
Analogizing with software engineering, this stuff becomes funny: - software is all about adding numbers, new study finds - software is all about calling functions, says new theory - software is all about objects, say scientists - software is all about virtual machines, according to new discovery
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  A recently released pair of studies claims software is all about cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors, respectively.
cammil 4y ago
Time doesn't exist though right?
standardUser 4y ago
I was thinking recently about how we seem to have an uncanny ability to remember shared information that is important to us. It's so easy to forget the myriad details of our lives and everyday interactions, but we always seem to be keenly aware of who we told what, and who knows what - at least about things we personally have an emotional investment in. I'll easily forget serious, significant information that a person has told me that has no specific bearing on me. For example, a loved one dying. Yet, I would never forget that I told that same person a comparatively trivial detail that happens to be important to me, like a potential damaging secret I've told them but few other people (such as cheating on a partner). Our brains seem quit intent on remembering things that can result in an acute emotional response. And our brains seem incredibly unreliable on almost everything else! To the point that we have to develop tricks an strategies to get our brains to remember things that are emotionally arbitrary. Like math. Also... "In other words, it’s mainly the unconscious mind at the wheel." But we all already know that, right?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Math is memorable but not because it is emotional but because you do it. You don’t remember what + is from a fleeting glance at a textbook. You add thousands of numbers! Like riding a bike or frying an egg. I guess you are talking about the intersection of realtime and memorable, as opposed to memorable through practice.
Archelaos 4y ago
> “We don’t perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them.” > For now, the theory is just that—a theory. But viewing consciousness through the lens of a memory system ... For me it is absolutely not surprising that consciousness follows an action, because it appears to be some sort of self observation, which is what philosophers at least since the enlightment period (the German idealists for exmaple) were speculating about. To proceed an action would be magic, because how could you experience something before the fact. And to happen at the same time would also be magic, because our brains are spacial systems were signals need time to travel through a (real) neural network. So the only interesting question here is whether consciousness is based upon the same brain structures as "ordinary" memory, or on a distinct one, or a combination of both.
watashiato 4y ago
I'm probably not the first to point this out, but isn't this crossing the spam line pretty hard? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=singularityhub.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=singularityhub.com
hownottowrite 4y ago
These people need to get out more often.
hamilyon2 4y ago
People in comments mention that this is old news. But doesn't these findings reframe conversation about self-control and addiction, for example? Or about other , less harming personally traits? What are consequences of this new knowledge?
fluxinflex 4y ago
I have an analogy that for me defines the difference between conscious and unconscious. I imagine myself sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee in front of me. I wonder how that cup makes it to my mouth and eventually the contents to my stomach? What part of me does the work of picking up the cup, guiding it to my mouth, swallowing and ensuring it does not end up in my lungs and finally ensuring that the cup returns to the table. All I do in that instance is consciously think to myself: "I want a drink of coffee" (not even politely). The rest is done by the unconscious. The next morning I attempt to get out of bed conscisously, trying to remember in which order, which muscles need to be triggered to move my legs. Eventually I just give the command "I want to get out of bed" and in an instant I'm out of bed. Riding a bike: how times to I conscisously think to push down my right leg while pulling up my left and reversing that order for the next stroke? I find it fascinating what the unconscious does: muscle memory, instinct, reflex, feelings etc are all things that are controlled by the unconscious. I try to do meditate as a way to connect to that unconscious, to obtain some of its advice - since I believe that the unconscious is not just the muscle-driver, there is a lot more intellectually that my unconscious does.
wseqyrku 4y ago
Had the same thought when I was obliterated. All this happened before only if you remember it.
mads 4y ago
I have often thought that conscience must somehow be an artifact of the way our memory works without being able to describe it further.
m3kw9 4y ago
Anyone have a theory of how I’m me consciously but I could be any other person or being?
qwerty456127 4y ago
Obviously you can only be conscious of what you have already experienced.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Right! We obviously cannot perceive things in "real time" as they have to be processed, which introduces latency. I'm not really sure from the article what they mean by memory. To take a computer analogy, I doubt all my experience is being constantly written to the hard drive, but it will be in RAM. So to the extent that my experience temporarily exists and persists in working "memory", then sure... But how could it be otherwise?
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > Obviously you can only be conscious of what you have already experienced. Can't one also be conscious of things that have not happened or that may happen in the future, i.e. things that you have not already experienced?
  - qwerty456127 4y ago
    That would be a sort or another of an illusion, as long as we stay within the realm of we can reason about (and don't consider the possibility of you actually being a psychic). You can have made a forecast based on an experience you already have and have developed a belief you are conscious of something future. You can fall a victim of perceptual illusion - perceived time delay between 2 events can easily be influenced, even made negative.
mekkkkkk 4y ago
I might be missing something, but this feels like a nothingburger to me. Obviously our understanding, reasoning and perception of reality is a kaleidoscope of memories and previous perceptions. We couldn't ever "manually" or "consciously" parse raw sensory input and craft the proper neural responses to everything. It has all been pre-processed to hell way before it reaches our conscious little guy in the high tower. Same thing the other way, the decisions of our mind are mere nudges to more autonomous systems. Even now, you aren't consciously and methodically scanning these words. You decided to read it, and the actual physical and mental operation of reading takes care of itself more or less. It has been delegated. Likewise, it seems logical that these autonomous systems could act on their own if the input is too dank or if you are trained enough. I'm thinking of panic responses, reflexive behavior, flow states, etc. Sometimes it's not optimal to wait for the little guy to make a decision. Isn't it obvious that our consciousness sits on top of a layer cake of abstractions? You could call it an "inner simulation" or a "hall of memories" if you want, it's all the same.
brooklyndude 4y ago
Ibogaine. A movie screen opens in your mind and every memory since birth is re/played. So they say. Authors may want to look into that one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine
Grustaf 4y ago
Isn't this just trivially true? Obviously remembering past events is very similar to experiencing the present? We didn't even think we were clever when we stated this as teenage existentialists, how could it really be otherwise? In a way it seems to be mostly a semantic question. The interesting bit is to what extent it leads to the conclusion that our conscious mind is not in charge. In some sense that's again trivially true, we only consciously process a tiny fraction of the information we receive, yet we act on a lot more of it, for example when running on a stony trail. But we can also obviously consciously control our actions on the multi-second timeframe, like "I should have a glass of water, let's go to the tap".
beowulfey 4y ago
What a great theory, I really like this. It makes sense in the context of a lot of things, but one that stands out to me is blacking out while drinking. Drinking too much essentially causes you to enter a walking zombie state where you are behaving and acting essentially normally, but you don’t remember a bit of it later. I always figured that was a result of memory not forming… so we just forgot all that stuff. But the idea that we are actually ‘unconcious’ during that time is an interesting alternative hypothesis.
swader999 4y ago
This theory should be easy enough to prove with experimentation. Anyone see any work on that front?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ibejoeb 4y ago
It's sort of obvious that these concepts of consciousness and memory are related. To be conscious (aware) of something, there must be a memory of it, right? Otherwise, does it really matter. It makes me think about the drugs that disrupt memory, like midazolam. If you're undergoing a procedure with "conscious sedation," you may be, for fleeting periods, aware of certain things, but these drugs effectively reduce that memory duration to near-zero. And in that case, there's hardly a different between not feeling pain because you're unconscious and feeling pain for an infinitesimal period because you're unable to remember the prior period's experience.
adamgordonbell 4y ago
I heard before that consciousness thinks it's the president, but is actually the press secretary. When I think about why I did something, I always have an answer. But, like the press secretary asked about the president, maybe its just a confabulation based on the evidence at hand? Is consciousness just retroactively rationalizing the things that take place and thinking it did them? I'm not even sure how to process that. Stranger To Ourselves is a fascinating book about the ways experiments have shown that many things happen outside conscious control.
- theknocker 4y ago
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  My theory is that we have much more control over how we go after what we want than over what we want. 'Consciousness' as we think of it is a sufficiently abstract layer that it can (slowly, and with effort) nudge what future us is going to want, but it's not efficient enough to get into the weeds of how things are done most of the time. That's not to say it can't get into the weeds - from experience it seems it can, but it's better for everyone if it lets autonomous systems handle things like lane changes or conversations.
jcq3 4y ago
Not so new, this theory is already explained by philosopher Bergson in his book "Durée et Simultanéité".
guerrilla 4y ago
Well, I'm not sure I can agree completely because the way I think of consciousness is that it's the body's UI to the world, but it's obvious that memory plays a central role there. Pretty much everything the article proposes has analogies in computer UIs.
gavinray 4y ago
What is the premise of this first paragraph, why do people feel like they need to introduce this fluff: > "Sitting on the Marine Atlantic ferry, I’m watching the Newfoundland skyline disappear on the horizon as I type away. I see the rocking of the ocean waves, inhale its salty breeze, feel and hear the buzz of the ship’s rumbling engine. I try to focus on writing this sentence, but my eyes hopefully scan the ocean for a rogue, splashing whale." Nice, you took a boat once and you wanted to see some whales, not what I came here for.
TomBombadildoze 4y ago
Interesting concept, and plenty of good discussion and criticism in other comments. One thing in particular from the article that I found especially objectionable: > For now, the theory is just that—a theory. This is a conjecture. I expect better from science journalism.
ChrisClark 4y ago
The only thing I can add to this discussion is I know my consciousness exists and has causal powers. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you about it. If it didn't have causal powers, the consciousness would have no way of making ourselves talk about it. The body would have no idea it's there.
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
I choose to believe in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tVzx_PIH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tVzx_PIH8
yogrish 4y ago
Recent article on this topic. Off late am curious to know more on consciousness. https://aeon.co/essays/how-blindsight-answers-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness https://aeon.co/essays/how-blindsight-answers-the-hard-probl...
greenhearth 4y ago
This is kind of obvious. All experience is tied to memory; this is nothing new. As far as immediate agency, there is most definitely a latency between a willful act, whether conscious or unconscious, and the perception of that act's accomplishment, and this latency is perceived by the memory of it being done. It is an illusionary mechanism and the brain has plenty of those.
codevark 4y ago
adnmcq999 4y ago
Splitting hairs
- fuzzzerd 4y ago
  Thank you for saying that. I was looking for something profound after reading this, and either the article doesn't explain this new theory well, or it is as you say splitting hairs.
  - SubiculumCode 4y ago
    everything is a memory aka a representation. light hit eyeball, causes a neuron to fire...and already its just the memory of light, not light itself. that neuron passes along the info, which just re-encodes the event with other information. So just more memory. It is both profound and obvious.
    - sixQuarks 4y ago
      Not really what the article is saying though. The big implication that I got from it is that none of our actions is actually conscious. We are literally made up of atoms, which react automatically to the world in very complex ways, then a memory of these actions is seen by the conscious mind, and fools it into thinking they were conscious actions
      - LastTrain 4y ago
        That simply means, by their definition, the subconscious is playing the role of what we think of as the conscious. As someone said earlier - splitting hairs.
        sixQuarks 4y ago
        Again, not really. Unless you fully accept that consciously or subconsciously, we have absolutely zero free will.
    - 4y ago

376 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

Wouldn’t this also explain deja vu? The memory consciousness tripping up and replaying or thinking it saw the same scene before?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

canadiantim 4y ago

Trying to reduce consciousness to memory is such a laughable misunderstanding of what consciousness is

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
leoh 4y ago
Okay
yazzku 4y ago
So what is it?
- canadiantim 4y ago
  Consciousness is just consciousness, it's not reduceable to brain states; it's fundamentally different even though they are associated and related. See Qualia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Tautologies are ultimately useless descriptions. We may as well be saying Blanchesness is Blanchessness.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    This alleged fact is not established by any of the arguments summarized in that article. Look into them in detail, and you will find, at root, subtle (and not-so-subtle) question-begging and appeals to plausibility.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

Is this kind of like the fact that there really is no “present”. You are either anticipating it(future) or looking back on it (past).

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

I realize that the link between consciousness and quantum effects are far from proven but if you will entertain the idea that they are... Delayed-choice experiments demonstrate the seeming ability of measurements in the present to alter events occurring in the past. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser Now I'll throw out another completely unprovable thought... Perhaps consciousness has the ability to affect how wavefunction collapse occurs, perhaps it even has the ability to influence the observed outcome. I'm not going to try to prove these two ideas but together they can help form an idea that perhaps observations on the past actually influence the past and perhaps despite this 'observation after the fact' there's still free will. It's not provable but then neither is the "there's no such thing as free will" arguments that this sort of research leads to. The point of the above is to highlight that there's still a way out for free will.

piyh 4y ago
Quantum unconsciousness is attractive under the concept "what if all the things we don't understand are actually one thing", but there's a lot of unknowns out there and they don't all have the same door.
causi 4y ago
The point of the above is to highlight that there's still a way out for free will. Can you define "free will" in a way that gives it any significance? If not deterministic and not random then what is it?
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  I like to think it's a probability distribution that you have some influence over. I choose to catch a ball. I've just made it 99% likely that I'll catch it. But there's still room for chaos to ensure it's not a deterministic outcome.
  - Thiez 4y ago
    Free will is sometimes failing at things you set out to do? We hardly need quantum theory to explain that humans are clumsy or sometimes mispredict the trajectory of a thrown object.

CloudRecondite 4y ago

I often wonder if humans spent as much time studying the brain as we do getting people to click on ads how much progress we could make in understanding consciousness. Seems like there is so much low hanging fruit and very few real breakthroughs. The biggest mystery in the universe is staring us right in the face.

RobRivera 4y ago
the deeper I dig into buddhism the more i begin to see i am just scratching the surface of this world
- CloudRecondite 4y ago
  The answers are out there waiting to be found. History tells us they’re equal parts bizarre and beautiful.
crazygringo 4y ago
We've got a small army of philosophers of mind, and then another of neuroscience researchers working on this stuff. But the philosophers don't have a ton to do without more experiments from neuroscience, and neuroscience is doing the best it can with currently available technology. Studying the brain is really friggin' hard. I don't know where exactly you think the low-hanging fruit is, but trying to measure a brain operating at a neural level without killing it is pretty limited by our current tech.
- piyh 4y ago
  Let me tell you about cerebral organoids my dude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_organoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_organoid
qudat 4y ago
I have some takes on this topic. The reason why I think we find consciousness so mysterious is because we are so intimately biased that we are blinded by what’s plainly understandable. Consciousness is an emergent property of nervous systems. https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness

everybodyknows 4y ago

Direct link, dodging the Reader-mode-defeating pop-science piece: https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Fulltext/9900/Consciousness_as_a_Memory_System.19.aspx https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Fulltext/9900/Consci...

Nav_Panel 4y ago

The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago. What the authors did here was reground it in neuroscience (scientific materialism) rather than the generic philosophical primitives of phenomenology (which in this case fade into the background a bit, although they remain relevant to all empirical work per se), and draw out some of the impacts of that shift.

zozbot234 4y ago
> The phenomenologists, most notably Husserl, had this figured out about a hundred years ago. More like a thousand years ago, if you include Eastern traditions of insight meditation. "Conscious experience is mostly just memory" is the core insight of what in those traditions is called "no self".
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  Totally fair, tbh.
- keybored 4y ago
  The conscious mind is just as much of a conditioned phenomena as the subconscious mind. I don’t see what this has to do with no-self. I didn’t get the impression that the insight of no-self is that consciousness is “just X”. Consciousness is there, clearly (you’re not unconscious). Just like any other conditioned thing.
- miobrien 4y ago
  As Sam Harris phrases it, thoughts and senses are "merely representations" in consciousness. The self, as we perceive it, is a representation in consciousness.
beardedman 4y ago
> had this figured out To be fair, nobody has figured it out. It's a hypothesis.
club_tropical 4y ago
I didn't know about Husserl, very interesting, thank you for sharing.

nl 4y ago

This theory (basically that we act instinctively then after acting the process of remembering that action lets us form an explanation) won't surprise anyone who has read Thinking, Fast and Slow. It has analogies the the field of "explainable AI" too, where systems take decisions neural networks make, probe the boundaries of them and attempt to present them in ways we can understand. It strikes me as plausible that what we call consciousnesses (as well as "intelligence") arise from the information compression process this explanation requires.

pierrebai 4y ago

I don't know how they reconcile this theory with everyday activities. When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. I'm not reading words that my eyes scanned half a second ago. Otherwise I'd be "reading" the last word of a line when my eyes are already at the start of the next line? To take another example, when I'm cooking, my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables. I'm no claiming that perception is instantaneous, but clearly we do many activities successfully that implicitly require perceptions to be near real-time. If the theory is correct but the timing difference is small enough that these objection go away, then I feel the theory is just a change of nomenclature. What they call memory is just the perception delay.

sixQuarks 4y ago
The point is, your unconscious mind is doing all those activities in real time, “you” the conscious mind are only reliving them as a memory, but it feels real time
yazzku 4y ago
They state that fairly explicitly: > Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we’re actually experiencing a memory of that perception. So yeah, the "perception" is a memory, and the processing happens in near real-time. This also seems to tie well with the research on visual perception that states that much of what we "see" is a projection of the brain based on things we have seen in the past (like how you see a face when you look at a power outlet.) I am not at all even a hobbyist on this topic though.
whatever1211 4y ago
> When I'm reading, my eyes movement scanning the page must be in sync with my perception and reading or the words. Consciousness is the experience of your eyes being in sync with the reading. > my hands movement are certainly in real-time sync with what is happening at that very moment in the real world, otherwise I'd have few remaining fingers after cutting a few vegetables. That is what happened. It just happened in the past relative to when you're experiencing it. How do you talk to people then? I think all those things happened when they did. But the thing inside your brain that plays back the sound and the sensations of making decisions, those emotional things, is delayed.

smitty1e 4y ago

> Yup, it’s a zoo of theories out there. For a quick skim, this looks like a rehash of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

sublinear 4y ago
You beat me to it
- smitty1e 4y ago
  As with the whole "simulation" shtick, it appears a device for rejecting any idea of an ultimate truth for which we might be held accountable.

md224 4y ago

Wouldn't this mean that the author of this article wrote it unconsciously?

nullc 4y ago

Imagine that you were given a strange job where you rode along with the sensory experiences of a mute person, writing their dialog for them. They can hear the dialog you give, including inaudible asides left only for them. You saw and felt all that they see and feel but you can't control their behavior. The job requires you to never admit the situation to anyone, you have to always pretend to be the person under penalty of death, even when talking to them. They're 20 years old now and you've been doing this job your entire life. How could someone distinguish this setup from how we normally perceive our minds as working?

derangedHorse 4y ago

The problem with thoughts like these are they aren’t practical as anything but a source of speculative entertainment. If this theory was factual then knowing that doesn’t change how I perceive the world. Knowing this theory also doesn’t bring me any new definite insights in the study of life that I could sue to launch off more research into. This is an interesting thing to think about but it’s not too useful

zozbot234 4y ago
There's definitely something to this POV, tbh. As the saying goes: Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
- klipt 4y ago
  Until we enlightened ourselves into electric heaters and running water. Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, turn on heater, turn on faucet, work in an office to pay for your water and electricity ;-)
bionhoward 4y ago
I’d push back on that, we could use this to invent a new cognitive architecture approach to AGI (route perception directly to memory state and use that as the world model) and see if it improves RL performance. In fact I think the world models paper did this. You could conceivably have a generative / predictive world model, instead of a perceptual / remembered one. I think Karl Friston is more in the former, predictive camp, which implies your consciousness isn’t a memory, but rather a prediction (Metaverse in your head, so to speak) so it’ll be interesting to see how AGI eventually pops up, will they consciously experience their perceptions, or their predictions? Perhaps perception and prediction are two sides of the same coin and we just need to figure out what material the coin is made of. Also for neuro, maybe it means Alzheimer’s would show up on perception tests before it shows up on memory tests, if memory is implemented by perception. And since we mostly look at “memory centers” of the brain in that disease, perhaps we could find issues in perceptual areas, too. Maybe we look at the hippocampus when we ought to look at V1, olfactory region, sensory gyrus, etc — if Alzheimer’s follows the clogged sink metaphor, then the clog could be in a different brain region entirely. Personally I don’t like to think about it that way because that implies consciousness has “lag!” However, we’d have to evolve perception before we could evolve to remember that which is perceived. One big problem with this article is the fact our vision etc has a lot of holes. If we consciously experience a mere memory, then there’s a whole lot of in-painting going on in the perceptual system to fill those holes, which makes it quasi-generative, and thus less of a memory and more of a prediction of stuff we didn’t actually see. Which means memory and prediction and perception are all the same. That’s a can of worms because it means when we experience a moment, we’re actually predicting the past…

raydiatian 4y ago

A (probably insane, ill-conceived) question I’ve been entertained by for as long as I can remember is whether or not “qualia”, which I understand to be “the experience itself of consciousness”, is a physical phenomenon that could ever be directly engaged with on physical terms. I suppose it’s basically a mix of relativity and Descartes. For instance, I can “feel myself here in my mental space”, however where is that mental space in relation to the physical world I’m using it to observe, what would be the SI units for such a measurement? If we assume consciousness itself is a physical phenomenon, wouldn’t the reality from the perspective of consciousness be equally as… how do I say this, “mechanically relevant”? I doubt an answer will come in my lifetime or my great grandchildren’s but it seems like a crowning achievement for mankind to understand in physical terms if possible from whence consciousness came, and to where it goes when the body dies. Like I said, insane.

empathy_m 4y ago

There's a rumored experiment called the "precognitive carousel", supposedly run by Grey Walter, where: (1) Subjects are told to push a button to advance a slide projector carousel, but not told that the button is inert (2) The carousel advances based on electrical signals measured by wires on the subjects' scalp. (3) Subjects supposedly report the uncanny feeling that the projector advances "just before" they were about to push the button -- 300-400 milliseconds before, a pretty long time. I read about this a long time ago in a since-deleted post on an old timey internet forum (everything2). The writer suggested this research supports the idea that your body chooses what to do, then informs your brain, and your consciousness convinces itself that has decided to do what the body is about to do on its own.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
I wonder if this is related to the idea of persistent non-symbolic experience[1]. Where the latter is the conscious perception of the "precognitive carousel" and its consequences. 1. https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol8/iss8/1/ https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol8/iss8/1/
csomar 4y ago
> that your body chooses what to do, then informs your brain, and your consciousness convinces itself that has decided to do what the body is about to do on its own. More like your subconscious is making decisions, talking with your mouth, moving your hands, etc... Then you have your consciousness (your "real" self). The subconscious makes him feel and think like he is in control so he (you, your "real" self) doesn't freak out. But he (the subconscious guy) has the real power and control.
- altcognito 4y ago
  Presuming that the subconscious isn’t all there is and the “conscious” mind isn’t just an illusion created by all the subconscious processes. It would be interesting to see experiments that try to pry back the lid a bit on the line between conscious and the subconscious and the communication therein. They must be out there.

nyc111 4y ago

> Rather than perceiving the world in real time, we’re actually experiencing a memory of that perception. I’ve had a similar theory. I say that we perceive the world (or time) as if looking behind through the rear window of a forward moving car. We can only see past events.

jgilias 4y ago
2pac, is that you man?

DavidSJ 4y ago

Sounds a lot like Gerald Edelman's The Remembered Present, published in 1989.

educaysean 4y ago

When I used play soccer regularly, I'd occasionally experience being "in the zone". It's a blissful experience where my body is able to execute incredibly complex set of moves in perfect coordination as my mind enters a state of zen-like calm. The sensation is almost like a being spectator in my own body. My brain feels like it's been relieved of the task of managing the moment-to-moment decision. Instead I start noticing moves 3, 4 steps ahead as time slows to a crawl around me. I don't know if this type of experience is related in any way to the theory of consciousness, but it feels like the unconscious mind holds a lot of secrets that I'd love to see unlocked in my lifetime.

jffhn 4y ago
Reminds me of the soccer player Platini. A journalist asked him how come he was so good while not being so strong physically, he replied that he saw what was going to happen a few seconds before others.
ryanar 4y ago
I had the same experience when I was competing in eSports. I played a very fast paced and unique first person shooter that required complex and perfectly timed button sequences to dodge and attack at the same time. The game sent packets p2p so you had to predict where your opponent was about to be based on your ping to them, the shot was a hit based on where the character was when the packet was received. I played at the highest level and while I was normally not as good as my opponents, I would go into a zen state like what you described where time seemed to slow, I could predict my opponents movement easily and land shot after shot. I would either be the mvp of my team if I could get into the zone or be a non factor if I couldn’t. I never could figure out how that worked but I do feel like “flow” when coding is similar.
- ricv 4y ago
  curious to which fps this is? painkiller? ut? quake? reflex? diabotical?
  - eru 4y ago

godelski 4y ago

I'm not a psych expert, but I thought this was long established. I mean we've known about the delays in processing for quite some time and thus the system can't be "real time". I mean everyone has experienced things where they are doing something, walk by, then turn around to check what they just saw because the process delay (not everything is put on the fast track). Or am I misunderstanding the novelty of the research here? Hoping someone can help me understand better.

whakim 4y ago
I think the key area of novelty here is the relationship to consciousness and thus the great unsolved questions over what precisely consciousness is and what purpose it serves.
- GaryPalmer 4y ago
  I am not impressed with this. This merely answers what practical use consciousness would have under the (unrpoven) assumption that it evolved as a survival mechanism. It does not explain what qualia is or how it comes about (hard problem). Therefore it is a bit far-fetched to say this answers what consciousness is at its core.
  - n4r9 4y ago
    I'm interested to know what a satisfying explanation of qualia would look like to someone who believes it's a real, well-defined phenomenon? I get a strong impression that anything mechanistic will not do, and a slightly cynical feeling that anything that can be put in precise terms will not do. Is there any explanation that gets some of the way there?
    - GaryPalmer 4y ago
      I suspect no such explanation can exist and therefore the hard problem does not exist in the sense of a solvable problem in pyhsics. It's really a question of metaphysics.
    - 4y ago

leobg 4y ago

My guess would be that this is highly dependent on personality type. It is certainly true for types, such as the INTJ, who holds sensory information at a distance, and instead orients himself using a constantly updated inner map of the world. but that doesn’t mean that they are not people out there for whom “being in the here and now“ isn’t their baseline experience.

fedeb95 4y ago

Interesting, those looking for similar ideas may look into memetic theory. "The meme machine" by Blackmore and not exactly related but a great book that invented the word meme is "The selfish gene" by Dawkins

perryizgr8 4y ago

It feels like this is just a play on words. Consider a camera connected to a monitor. The camera captures 24 frames a second and sends the images to the monitor via a cable. The monitor displays this "live" feed. Is it really live though? There are multiple buffers and busses that the images have traveled through, sometimes even staying in one place for many milliseconds, as some resource lock is being acquired. Despite all this, would you say that the monitor is displaying stored data? Technically yes, but for all practical purposes no.

dusted 4y ago

This seems intuitively true to me. Most of our conscious cognition works on and with memories, it's like a snapshot of what we think happened at any moment. It's that feeling when you "discover" your reaction to something after the fact.. Like, someone says something unexpected and you've already answered before you become aware of what was said.. It also happens often whenever you're in the zone of doing something, you really get to take the backseat and watch the trip.. Like playing very fast paced videogames like devil daggers, you're observing yourself from a distance, as the stimuli is processed, and you make judgements on your reactions, notes for next time and so on.. Which demonstrates this temporal disconnect between your actions and your experience of them clearly.

beebeepka 4y ago
I spent years trying my best at first person shooters. Been in the zone many times, and yet I've never observed myself from a distance. Is it a genre thing? Maybe FPS people stay in first person no matter what

mercacona 4y ago

New theory? You can find this claim at the Encyclopedia, in Condillac, in La Mettrie, in last Descartes’ works, etc. Imagination and Memory has been pivotal to explain consciousness for a long time…

rajman187 4y ago

For all its use of the term time, for example “backward in time” or “does consciousness flow linearly with time,” there is no definition of time itself provided in the article. I had hoped the Definitions section would at least acknowledge some concept of time. I suppose we all collectively agree on some generic concept of a fourth dimension with a strictly forward movement of instances, a progression toward entropy, but if the theory is going to argue temporal transcendance I’d expect a more formal thesis around what time itself is. I’ve picked up this book but yet to read it. It’s on my list when I get the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_Time_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_Time_(book)

beardedman 4y ago

Not the worst theory I've come across. However, it sounds a bit metaphysical.

caust1c 4y ago
All cognitive science is by-definition metaphysical. Matter thinking about itself.
- beardedman 4y ago
  > Matter thinking about itself. But this is my point. In regards to conscienceness; we have no "matter" to point to - unlike something like memory, sensory input, etc. EDIT: I guess the entire organ you could point to in this case. :)
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Asking why there is anything is also metaphysical. Metaphysics is where the interesting unanswerable questions are :)

kbrkbr 4y ago

I fail to see the helpfulness of describing or defining something we do not understand in terms of something related we equally do not understand, „understand“ here in the sense of „have a clear theory that gives meaning to the words we use“. In relation to the problem of how qualitative self-aware experiences can arise in a biological information system this article does not seem to help at all. Is the statement really „consciousness“ in the sense just vaguely described is just „memories“? Then what are memories? How can they have qualities and where does the self awareness come from? How to model it mathematically? I feel we’re still in the age of the humoral theory of consciousness.

amatic 4y ago
> I fail to see the helpfulness of describing or defining something we do not understand in terms of something related we equally do not understand, That is a great way of putting it. I feel like most if not all the consciousness research is in that category.
oldstrangers 4y ago
We have a lot better understanding of memories than we do consciousness though. We can visualize and quantify the memory making process. New neurons, new connections, the chemicals involved, etc. Memories are a pretty well understood and tangible part of neuroscience at this point.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

This reminded me of the Bicameral Mind - where (in humans pre-conscious state) memories in half the brain got triggered by experiences and were presented to the other half as commands/words of god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality

simiones 4y ago
Note that the Bicameral Mind is essentially just a story - no one is really taking it seriously as a possibility in the evolution of the human mind, even though it is a fascinating idea.

jakey_bakey 4y ago

My favourite consciousness theory is panpsychism, where consciousness is a property of the universe which all things have - given that a personal experience is by definition not measurable, there's no reason it's not as valid as others.

CapitalTntcls 4y ago

Unfortunately, It's not so precisely written. For example, she uses theory when she should be using hypothesis.

jakey_bakey 4y ago

This 'memories' theory is a well-established model of how our senses work anyway - your brain synthesises inputs from multiple sources into what feels like a single experience of your surroundings. This is vital from a survival standpoint because 0.2 seconds of ping between seeing and hearing without your brain telling you they happened simultaneously would be debilitating. The same thing happens with the sensation of "flavour" (smell + taste).

kazinator 4y ago

This looks an awful like an embarrassing claim to the discovery of Libet's Delay, which the researchers should have learned about as undergrads.

heresie-dabord 4y ago
Your comment merits a reference, which I provide upon conscious reflection of the memory of your comment's incompleteness. ^_^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet's_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of...
mensetmanusman 4y ago
In case anyone wasn’t aware. Libet’s delay has been found to be quite flawed, and the ‘not reproducible’ idea entered popular consciousness: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flaw... The replication crisis, etc.

LatteLazy 4y ago

My thoughts, from internal monolog to biases and other content make a lot more sense when I view them as my subconscious explaining action it has already taken or decided upon than as actual fresh thoughts. Similarly, there have been times (fist fights, emergencies etc) where some deep level of my brain has acted with no conscience thought at all. However these actions were still 100% aligned with the conscience me, the same motivations etc. I have always wondered whether what we call consciousness is not just empathy directed inwards: Empathy is when I look at someone else and work out what they are feeling and what they will do, using the same process to explain my own feelings and behaviour to myself is just called consciousness instead...

dantondwa 4y ago

This reminds me of Bergson's theory of memory and present consciousness. In his essay "Memory of the Present and False Recognition", he argued that memory and present consciousness are the same, and what changes is a sort of "past tag" that is associated with the memory flow. He saw déjà vu as a mistaken tagging of the present flow, which we then perceive as past

epgui 4y ago

I have not read the paper, but what is explained in the article is old news.

simonh 4y ago

The bottom line I think is that the brain is a complex assembly of parts responsible for a huge variety of cognitive processes, and only some of those are directly involved in conscious thought. Biological systems are often crazily interconnected with each other, with feedback loops on top of feedback loops, and the brain is no exception. Sometimes we consciously think through what we are doing and make reasoned decisions, especially when learning to perform a new task. As we repeat the task and it’s variations we can learn to do it more automatically, less consciously. This could be a physical task like playing table tennis, but it can also be something like giving a public speech off the cuff. When you’re having a conversation you often aren’t thinking it through word by word, you’re thinking at a high level consciously, but the stream of words just emerges far too fast for each phrase to be consciously selected and considered. So even speech, something we think of as most closely associated with consciousness, is in many cases an automatic activity. This is how we sometimes come to Mis-speak and say things we didn’t mean.

xcambar 4y ago

> In other words, it’s mainly the unconscious mind at the wheel. I'm always surprised this is introduced as news. It seems to me that since the first half of the 20th century, there has been a continuous stream of evidence that the consciousness is, at best, a first class citizen but certainly not the main driver anymore.

otikik 4y ago

The thing that we must remember is that evolution is not conscious. It’s such a complex system that the functions of each part don’t fit the way we humans to talk about things. We say “those are memories” but in the brain very few things are “one thing”. Almost always they work similarly to several things, interlinked in often seemingly random ways. The way definitions work in the brain is similar to political parties; you might find one that you agree with in 70% of the time, but the other 30% is nonsense. It could be that they are using the same circuit as memories except for a series of very subtle change in one specific part of the brain that makes them feel totally different from regular memories, similarly to how a little bit of salt can elevate one dish from regular to excellent.

temptemptemp111 4y ago

netfortius 4y ago

I recommend the book "The Idea of the World - A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality", by Bernardo Kastrup

pieter_mj 4y ago

Consciousness is a time machine, otherwise free will would not be possible.

ozy 4y ago
It is a virtual time machine. You can run time forwards, explore various possible futures, then pick the future aligned most with your preferences, capabilities, and taste for risk.

bigbluedots 4y ago

Nice theory, prove it!

withinboredom 4y ago

I've always lived by 3 rules: - This moment is only a memory, for me and others, try to make it one worth remembering. - No one can change me except for myself. - Do whatever you want, as long as you're willing to pay the price and accept the consequences. It's funny to see the first rule is quite literal.

ozy 4y ago

Analogizing with software engineering, this stuff becomes funny: - software is all about adding numbers, new study finds - software is all about calling functions, says new theory - software is all about objects, say scientists - software is all about virtual machines, according to new discovery

TeMPOraL 4y ago
A recently released pair of studies claims software is all about cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors, respectively.

cammil 4y ago

Time doesn't exist though right?

standardUser 4y ago

I was thinking recently about how we seem to have an uncanny ability to remember shared information that is important to us. It's so easy to forget the myriad details of our lives and everyday interactions, but we always seem to be keenly aware of who we told what, and who knows what - at least about things we personally have an emotional investment in. I'll easily forget serious, significant information that a person has told me that has no specific bearing on me. For example, a loved one dying. Yet, I would never forget that I told that same person a comparatively trivial detail that happens to be important to me, like a potential damaging secret I've told them but few other people (such as cheating on a partner). Our brains seem quit intent on remembering things that can result in an acute emotional response. And our brains seem incredibly unreliable on almost everything else! To the point that we have to develop tricks an strategies to get our brains to remember things that are emotionally arbitrary. Like math. Also... "In other words, it’s mainly the unconscious mind at the wheel." But we all already know that, right?

quickthrower2 4y ago
Math is memorable but not because it is emotional but because you do it. You don’t remember what + is from a fleeting glance at a textbook. You add thousands of numbers! Like riding a bike or frying an egg. I guess you are talking about the intersection of realtime and memorable, as opposed to memorable through practice.

Archelaos 4y ago

> “We don’t perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them.” > For now, the theory is just that—a theory. But viewing consciousness through the lens of a memory system ... For me it is absolutely not surprising that consciousness follows an action, because it appears to be some sort of self observation, which is what philosophers at least since the enlightment period (the German idealists for exmaple) were speculating about. To proceed an action would be magic, because how could you experience something before the fact. And to happen at the same time would also be magic, because our brains are spacial systems were signals need time to travel through a (real) neural network. So the only interesting question here is whether consciousness is based upon the same brain structures as "ordinary" memory, or on a distinct one, or a combination of both.

watashiato 4y ago

I'm probably not the first to point this out, but isn't this crossing the spam line pretty hard? https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=singularityhub.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=singularityhub.com

hownottowrite 4y ago

These people need to get out more often.

hamilyon2 4y ago

People in comments mention that this is old news. But doesn't these findings reframe conversation about self-control and addiction, for example? Or about other , less harming personally traits? What are consequences of this new knowledge?

fluxinflex 4y ago

I have an analogy that for me defines the difference between conscious and unconscious. I imagine myself sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee in front of me. I wonder how that cup makes it to my mouth and eventually the contents to my stomach? What part of me does the work of picking up the cup, guiding it to my mouth, swallowing and ensuring it does not end up in my lungs and finally ensuring that the cup returns to the table. All I do in that instance is consciously think to myself: "I want a drink of coffee" (not even politely). The rest is done by the unconscious. The next morning I attempt to get out of bed conscisously, trying to remember in which order, which muscles need to be triggered to move my legs. Eventually I just give the command "I want to get out of bed" and in an instant I'm out of bed. Riding a bike: how times to I conscisously think to push down my right leg while pulling up my left and reversing that order for the next stroke? I find it fascinating what the unconscious does: muscle memory, instinct, reflex, feelings etc are all things that are controlled by the unconscious. I try to do meditate as a way to connect to that unconscious, to obtain some of its advice - since I believe that the unconscious is not just the muscle-driver, there is a lot more intellectually that my unconscious does.

wseqyrku 4y ago

Had the same thought when I was obliterated. All this happened before only if you remember it.

mads 4y ago

I have often thought that conscience must somehow be an artifact of the way our memory works without being able to describe it further.

m3kw9 4y ago

Anyone have a theory of how I’m me consciously but I could be any other person or being?

qwerty456127 4y ago

Obviously you can only be conscious of what you have already experienced.

MattPalmer1086 4y ago
Right! We obviously cannot perceive things in "real time" as they have to be processed, which introduces latency. I'm not really sure from the article what they mean by memory. To take a computer analogy, I doubt all my experience is being constantly written to the hard drive, but it will be in RAM. So to the extent that my experience temporarily exists and persists in working "memory", then sure... But how could it be otherwise?
andsoitis 4y ago
> Obviously you can only be conscious of what you have already experienced. Can't one also be conscious of things that have not happened or that may happen in the future, i.e. things that you have not already experienced?
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  That would be a sort or another of an illusion, as long as we stay within the realm of we can reason about (and don't consider the possibility of you actually being a psychic). You can have made a forecast based on an experience you already have and have developed a belief you are conscious of something future. You can fall a victim of perceptual illusion - perceived time delay between 2 events can easily be influenced, even made negative.

mekkkkkk 4y ago

I might be missing something, but this feels like a nothingburger to me. Obviously our understanding, reasoning and perception of reality is a kaleidoscope of memories and previous perceptions. We couldn't ever "manually" or "consciously" parse raw sensory input and craft the proper neural responses to everything. It has all been pre-processed to hell way before it reaches our conscious little guy in the high tower. Same thing the other way, the decisions of our mind are mere nudges to more autonomous systems. Even now, you aren't consciously and methodically scanning these words. You decided to read it, and the actual physical and mental operation of reading takes care of itself more or less. It has been delegated. Likewise, it seems logical that these autonomous systems could act on their own if the input is too dank or if you are trained enough. I'm thinking of panic responses, reflexive behavior, flow states, etc. Sometimes it's not optimal to wait for the little guy to make a decision. Isn't it obvious that our consciousness sits on top of a layer cake of abstractions? You could call it an "inner simulation" or a "hall of memories" if you want, it's all the same.

brooklyndude 4y ago

Ibogaine. A movie screen opens in your mind and every memory since birth is re/played. So they say. Authors may want to look into that one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine

Grustaf 4y ago

Isn't this just trivially true? Obviously remembering past events is very similar to experiencing the present? We didn't even think we were clever when we stated this as teenage existentialists, how could it really be otherwise? In a way it seems to be mostly a semantic question. The interesting bit is to what extent it leads to the conclusion that our conscious mind is not in charge. In some sense that's again trivially true, we only consciously process a tiny fraction of the information we receive, yet we act on a lot more of it, for example when running on a stony trail. But we can also obviously consciously control our actions on the multi-second timeframe, like "I should have a glass of water, let's go to the tap".

beowulfey 4y ago

What a great theory, I really like this. It makes sense in the context of a lot of things, but one that stands out to me is blacking out while drinking. Drinking too much essentially causes you to enter a walking zombie state where you are behaving and acting essentially normally, but you don’t remember a bit of it later. I always figured that was a result of memory not forming… so we just forgot all that stuff. But the idea that we are actually ‘unconcious’ during that time is an interesting alternative hypothesis.

swader999 4y ago

This theory should be easy enough to prove with experimentation. Anyone see any work on that front?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ibejoeb 4y ago

It's sort of obvious that these concepts of consciousness and memory are related. To be conscious (aware) of something, there must be a memory of it, right? Otherwise, does it really matter. It makes me think about the drugs that disrupt memory, like midazolam. If you're undergoing a procedure with "conscious sedation," you may be, for fleeting periods, aware of certain things, but these drugs effectively reduce that memory duration to near-zero. And in that case, there's hardly a different between not feeling pain because you're unconscious and feeling pain for an infinitesimal period because you're unable to remember the prior period's experience.

adamgordonbell 4y ago

I heard before that consciousness thinks it's the president, but is actually the press secretary. When I think about why I did something, I always have an answer. But, like the press secretary asked about the president, maybe its just a confabulation based on the evidence at hand? Is consciousness just retroactively rationalizing the things that take place and thinking it did them? I'm not even sure how to process that. Stranger To Ourselves is a fascinating book about the ways experiments have shown that many things happen outside conscious control.

theknocker 4y ago
SuoDuanDao 4y ago
My theory is that we have much more control over how we go after what we want than over what we want. 'Consciousness' as we think of it is a sufficiently abstract layer that it can (slowly, and with effort) nudge what future us is going to want, but it's not efficient enough to get into the weeds of how things are done most of the time. That's not to say it can't get into the weeds - from experience it seems it can, but it's better for everyone if it lets autonomous systems handle things like lane changes or conversations.

jcq3 4y ago

Not so new, this theory is already explained by philosopher Bergson in his book "Durée et Simultanéité".

guerrilla 4y ago

Well, I'm not sure I can agree completely because the way I think of consciousness is that it's the body's UI to the world, but it's obvious that memory plays a central role there. Pretty much everything the article proposes has analogies in computer UIs.

gavinray 4y ago

What is the premise of this first paragraph, why do people feel like they need to introduce this fluff: > "Sitting on the Marine Atlantic ferry, I’m watching the Newfoundland skyline disappear on the horizon as I type away. I see the rocking of the ocean waves, inhale its salty breeze, feel and hear the buzz of the ship’s rumbling engine. I try to focus on writing this sentence, but my eyes hopefully scan the ocean for a rogue, splashing whale." Nice, you took a boat once and you wanted to see some whales, not what I came here for.

TomBombadildoze 4y ago

Interesting concept, and plenty of good discussion and criticism in other comments. One thing in particular from the article that I found especially objectionable: > For now, the theory is just that—a theory. This is a conjecture. I expect better from science journalism.

ChrisClark 4y ago

The only thing I can add to this discussion is I know my consciousness exists and has causal powers. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you about it. If it didn't have causal powers, the consciousness would have no way of making ourselves talk about it. The body would have no idea it's there.

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

I choose to believe in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tVzx_PIH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_tVzx_PIH8

yogrish 4y ago

Recent article on this topic. Off late am curious to know more on consciousness. https://aeon.co/essays/how-blindsight-answers-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness https://aeon.co/essays/how-blindsight-answers-the-hard-probl...

greenhearth 4y ago

This is kind of obvious. All experience is tied to memory; this is nothing new. As far as immediate agency, there is most definitely a latency between a willful act, whether conscious or unconscious, and the perception of that act's accomplishment, and this latency is perceived by the memory of it being done. It is an illusionary mechanism and the brain has plenty of those.

codevark 4y ago

adnmcq999 4y ago

Splitting hairs

fuzzzerd 4y ago
Thank you for saying that. I was looking for something profound after reading this, and either the article doesn't explain this new theory well, or it is as you say splitting hairs.
- SubiculumCode 4y ago
  everything is a memory aka a representation. light hit eyeball, causes a neuron to fire...and already its just the memory of light, not light itself. that neuron passes along the info, which just re-encodes the event with other information. So just more memory. It is both profound and obvious.
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    Not really what the article is saying though. The big implication that I got from it is that none of our actions is actually conscious. We are literally made up of atoms, which react automatically to the world in very complex ways, then a memory of these actions is seen by the conscious mind, and fools it into thinking they were conscious actions
    - LastTrain 4y ago
      That simply means, by their definition, the subconscious is playing the role of what we think of as the conscious. As someone said earlier - splitting hairs.
      - sixQuarks 4y ago
        Again, not really. Unless you fully accept that consciously or subconsciously, we have absolutely zero free will.
  - 4y ago