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I had anesthesia once. Subjectively it’s about as close to being dead (or simply “not existing”) as I can imagine. One moment I was perfectly awake, and the nex

I had anesthesia once. Subjectively it’s about as close to being dead (or simply “not existing”) as I can imagine. One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him. There is still the question though, was my subjective experience post-surgery accurate? It’s conceivable that consciousness is suppressed to varying degrees, while the creation of memories is more significantly impacted. I may have had some degree of consciousness but my subjective post-surgery experience has no knowledge of it. And putting aside anesthesia altogether you have the phenomena of people that get blackout drunk. For some period of time they were up, senses receiving input and processing it even if their actions were high impaired, yet afterwards there is no memory. (There are of course degrees to this too, sometimes a person remembers the tiniest pieces, as if from a dream, sometimes not at all) The entire topic invites the question: Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior? Unless you include consciousness as part of the definition of intelligent, it is not an easy question. Somewhat on that topic I’d highly recommend the book Being no One by Thomas Metzinger

ericmay 3y ago
(Queue bar talk) Begs the question, what is intelligent behavior? Most of the time I see pretty anthropocentric interpretations of this (which are often well-reasoned) but there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point. My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum, some animals/creatures/entities are "more aware"[1] than others but then you have to ask whether that just leads to consciousness being a useful phenomenon for interaction with other creatures or if it's something more meaningful. Were humans conscious before the invention of language? Another aspect of this is if "Chat-GPT" isn't conscious it kind of proves your dog is right? You're saying language/interaction isn't that big of a deal, and so it's based on biology. Not a lot different between a cat and a person if you really take a step back, let alone a chimpanzee and a person. Or maybe we're all not conscious at all in the sense that we mean it. I.e. it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior. Then we have to insert free will, determinism, etc. The whole thing is a mess. Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. But we're conscious in that we're perceiving and our body as a whole has some amount of degrees of freedom to operate, but we're not special. Maybe that's scary idk. [1] Whatever that means
- throwaway173738 3y ago
  I think part of what makes you conscious might be your relationship with the passage of time. If you experience it you’re probably conscious. If you can relate to things that have happened or to things that will happen then you’re more conscious. This definition requires you to be able to communicate somehow, which even animals are able to do in some limited way.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  You’re on the right track re: the book I recommended, it’s dense but you might enjoy. Heck the intro alone is interesting and you can probably get that through a Kindle “free preview”. As for my response to you, I think it’s simply “yes”. And also that we lack any sort of clear & universally greed upon definitions for many of the critical terms here. These were my areas of study, refining through ever more practical levels to cognitive science and then computational linguistics, so I know just enough to know I’m not an expert and true expertise doesn’t really exist yet for truly understanding any of this. (And my comp ling formal education has been made woefully obsolete since the time I began that path). For now, all we can do is chip away at the questions, as this linked article tries to do. Chip by chip.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  >Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    [dead]
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    > As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do And entire pillars of philosophy, having stood for millennia, crumbled under that one masterful crushing blow.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
You guys need to read more science fiction. Blindsight by Peter Watts comes to mind.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  That is one of my most favorite books of all time!
- kipchak 3y ago
  Was going to recommend the same, it's a fairly quick read also. Watts has a version hosted on his site as well in various formats. I enjoyed the Notes and References section a lot also. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Propofol is specifically used to suppress memory of lighter surgery and procedures. Patients are conscious enough to answer questions and respond to requests, but they won't remember any of what happened. I don't know enough about it to guess whether it actually eliminates psychological trauma or simply suppresses it so it's not conscious. Alzheimers had a similar effect. There's a shortening window of memory which starts off normal and then gradually contracts. In mid-stage victims can't remember the start of a sentence by the time you get to the end of it. Eventually all that's left are autonomic functions and perhaps a few very deeply engrained emotional memories.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  Do you mean people answer the questions under propofol but afterwards have no recollection of the experience? If so that's exactly the type of thing I was thinking of
elwell 3y ago
Anesthesia, black out drunk, and what about: before birth (and I mean eternally before, not just 9 months)? Perhaps our consciousness existed in some spiritual way, but no memories got translated to our biology.
- tigerlily 3y ago
  FWIW I do feel like I waited a long time to be born.
  - elwell 3y ago
    --Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”--
    - plewd 3y ago
      Could you explain what this means and its relevance? Not really sure what this is supposed to mean.
      - elwell 3y ago
        It was kind of cryptic; I suppose I copied it there just to mean whatever the reader thinks it means. But, something along the lines of: much more important than physical birth is spiritual birth.
oilchange 3y ago
> One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him. Yep. I remember the nurse telling me to count backwards from 10 and I remember being a bit annoyed by it but still doing it. I don't know what number I got knocked out on. I don't even remember getting knocked out. The only thing I remember is hearing voices as I slowly woke up. No memory of anything in between. > Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior? No. Computers, machinese, animals, plants can display "intelligent" behavior. They have no consciousness.
- confidantlake 3y ago
  I agree with most of what you said, but most animals absolutely have consciousness.
- Quinzel 3y ago
  > Computers, Machinese, Animals, plants can display “intelligent” behaviour. This comment made me think of this article https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9
brap 3y ago
There have been people claiming that they were fully conscious while under anesthesia and felt everything, but were unable to do anything about it. I never really believed this. One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard (from a final year med student, who was present in many surgeries) is that many patients under anesthesia react to pain. They move away from the knife, sometimes they make sounds as they’re being cut, etc. They just don’t remembers any of it afterwards. I’ve had a few surgeries in the past and didn’t think anything of it, but now I kinda dread surgeries.
- chasd00 3y ago
  from what I understand some forms of anesthesia just make you forget it ever happened. There are some procedures, colonoscopy is one i think, where the doctor needs you awake and able to follow commands or give feedback. The anesthesia just makes you forget it ever happened. It's really strange and kind of scary if true.
- wbl 3y ago
  It can happen as some surgeries require a muscle relaxant and subjective experience is hard to monitor. Ever see awake brain surgery videos?
- wl 3y ago
  The problem is that people think of anesthesia as a single thing when it really has many different components that are managed separately. Unconsciousness is part of it, but so are analgesia (pain relief), paralysis (inability to move), immobility (loss of reflexes), and to a lesser extent, amnesia. Anesthesia routinely involves the use of paralytics, which are separate from drugs used for analgesia (opioids or local/regional blocks) and inducing unconsciousness (propofol, anesthetic gasses). This can lead to situations where someone is paralyzed, their pain is under control (as observed by blood pressure), but the gas or propofol is insufficient to actually induce unconsciousness. Some of this comes down to individual physiology. Some of it is probably mistakes in anesthesia management. Amnesia comes into this with the use of benzodiazepines. They can reduce anxiety before surgery. Or even during surgery if the patient needs to be awake. As a bonus, they can prevent memories from forming. Propofol can also cause amnesia, but it is primarily used to suppress consciousness.
DesiLurker 3y ago
I also had anesthesia exactly once so far & my experiences are similar. basically remember going under and then groggily becoming aware of the doctor & being informed that operation is done. I do recall my surprise at that statement as there was no experience of passing time. I feel this was fundamentally different from sleep in quality (or even deep meditation). I to have pondered the consciousness vs intelligence question and tentatively concluded that consciousness is useful in developing of intelligence so as to provide factors to optimize for like energy, attention, physical goals etc but beyond that its not necessary. Intelligence is basically subdividing a signal into realistic subcomponent and then putting it all somewhat coherently to come up with a bigger picture as I see it. I feel the set of tools available to current crop of AI/ML architectures are sufficient to produce a human like intelligence if we/it figures out how to assemble it the 'right' way. consciousness OTOH, I am not sure. that (human consciousness) may be very specific to makeup of human brain and some non-modeled things in individual neurons. this does not means AGI cannot be conscious but its consciousness would be really different from human one. For humans I do lean towards Penrose's Orch-OR thesis that consciousness maybe innately quantum in nature. not sure how much evidence exists for or against it.
stouset 3y ago
Being put under anaesthesia—along with some related phenomena around sleep—has led me to the personal conclusion that consciousness is memory. Or at least, memory is a fundamental requirement for what I consider consciousness. If I am awake and interacting but forming no memories, my subjective experience is that I have not been conscious.

ericmay 3y ago

(Queue bar talk) Begs the question, what is intelligent behavior? Most of the time I see pretty anthropocentric interpretations of this (which are often well-reasoned) but there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point. My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum, some animals/creatures/entities are "more aware"[1] than others but then you have to ask whether that just leads to consciousness being a useful phenomenon for interaction with other creatures or if it's something more meaningful. Were humans conscious before the invention of language? Another aspect of this is if "Chat-GPT" isn't conscious it kind of proves your dog is right? You're saying language/interaction isn't that big of a deal, and so it's based on biology. Not a lot different between a cat and a person if you really take a step back, let alone a chimpanzee and a person. Or maybe we're all not conscious at all in the sense that we mean it. I.e. it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior. Then we have to insert free will, determinism, etc. The whole thing is a mess. Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. But we're conscious in that we're perceiving and our body as a whole has some amount of degrees of freedom to operate, but we're not special. Maybe that's scary idk. [1] Whatever that means

throwaway173738 3y ago
I think part of what makes you conscious might be your relationship with the passage of time. If you experience it you’re probably conscious. If you can relate to things that have happened or to things that will happen then you’re more conscious. This definition requires you to be able to communicate somehow, which even animals are able to do in some limited way.
ineedasername 3y ago
You’re on the right track re: the book I recommended, it’s dense but you might enjoy. Heck the intro alone is interesting and you can probably get that through a Kindle “free preview”. As for my response to you, I think it’s simply “yes”. And also that we lack any sort of clear & universally greed upon definitions for many of the critical terms here. These were my areas of study, refining through ever more practical levels to cognitive science and then computational linguistics, so I know just enough to know I’m not an expert and true expertise doesn’t really exist yet for truly understanding any of this. (And my comp ling formal education has been made woefully obsolete since the time I began that path). For now, all we can do is chip away at the questions, as this linked article tries to do. Chip by chip.
edgyquant 3y ago
>Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.
- ericmay 3y ago
  [dead]
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  > As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do And entire pillars of philosophy, having stood for millennia, crumbled under that one masterful crushing blow.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

You guys need to read more science fiction. Blindsight by Peter Watts comes to mind.

ineedasername 3y ago
That is one of my most favorite books of all time!
kipchak 3y ago
Was going to recommend the same, it's a fairly quick read also. Watts has a version hosted on his site as well in various formats. I enjoyed the Notes and References section a lot also. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

Propofol is specifically used to suppress memory of lighter surgery and procedures. Patients are conscious enough to answer questions and respond to requests, but they won't remember any of what happened. I don't know enough about it to guess whether it actually eliminates psychological trauma or simply suppresses it so it's not conscious. Alzheimers had a similar effect. There's a shortening window of memory which starts off normal and then gradually contracts. In mid-stage victims can't remember the start of a sentence by the time you get to the end of it. Eventually all that's left are autonomic functions and perhaps a few very deeply engrained emotional memories.

ineedasername 3y ago
Do you mean people answer the questions under propofol but afterwards have no recollection of the experience? If so that's exactly the type of thing I was thinking of

elwell 3y ago

Anesthesia, black out drunk, and what about: before birth (and I mean eternally before, not just 9 months)? Perhaps our consciousness existed in some spiritual way, but no memories got translated to our biology.

tigerlily 3y ago
FWIW I do feel like I waited a long time to be born.
- elwell 3y ago
  --Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”--
  - plewd 3y ago
    Could you explain what this means and its relevance? Not really sure what this is supposed to mean.
    - elwell 3y ago
      It was kind of cryptic; I suppose I copied it there just to mean whatever the reader thinks it means. But, something along the lines of: much more important than physical birth is spiritual birth.

oilchange 3y ago

> One moment I was perfectly awake, and the next moment I was hearing the sounds of people talking around me and I groggily became aware of my doctor getting me to acknowledge him. Yep. I remember the nurse telling me to count backwards from 10 and I remember being a bit annoyed by it but still doing it. I don't know what number I got knocked out on. I don't even remember getting knocked out. The only thing I remember is hearing voices as I slowly woke up. No memory of anything in between. > Is consciousness required for intelligent behavior? No. Computers, machinese, animals, plants can display "intelligent" behavior. They have no consciousness.

confidantlake 3y ago
I agree with most of what you said, but most animals absolutely have consciousness.
Quinzel 3y ago
> Computers, Machinese, Animals, plants can display “intelligent” behaviour. This comment made me think of this article https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00709-020-01550-9

brap 3y ago

There have been people claiming that they were fully conscious while under anesthesia and felt everything, but were unable to do anything about it. I never really believed this. One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard (from a final year med student, who was present in many surgeries) is that many patients under anesthesia react to pain. They move away from the knife, sometimes they make sounds as they’re being cut, etc. They just don’t remembers any of it afterwards. I’ve had a few surgeries in the past and didn’t think anything of it, but now I kinda dread surgeries.

chasd00 3y ago
from what I understand some forms of anesthesia just make you forget it ever happened. There are some procedures, colonoscopy is one i think, where the doctor needs you awake and able to follow commands or give feedback. The anesthesia just makes you forget it ever happened. It's really strange and kind of scary if true.
wbl 3y ago
It can happen as some surgeries require a muscle relaxant and subjective experience is hard to monitor. Ever see awake brain surgery videos?
wl 3y ago
The problem is that people think of anesthesia as a single thing when it really has many different components that are managed separately. Unconsciousness is part of it, but so are analgesia (pain relief), paralysis (inability to move), immobility (loss of reflexes), and to a lesser extent, amnesia. Anesthesia routinely involves the use of paralytics, which are separate from drugs used for analgesia (opioids or local/regional blocks) and inducing unconsciousness (propofol, anesthetic gasses). This can lead to situations where someone is paralyzed, their pain is under control (as observed by blood pressure), but the gas or propofol is insufficient to actually induce unconsciousness. Some of this comes down to individual physiology. Some of it is probably mistakes in anesthesia management. Amnesia comes into this with the use of benzodiazepines. They can reduce anxiety before surgery. Or even during surgery if the patient needs to be awake. As a bonus, they can prevent memories from forming. Propofol can also cause amnesia, but it is primarily used to suppress consciousness.

DesiLurker 3y ago

I also had anesthesia exactly once so far & my experiences are similar. basically remember going under and then groggily becoming aware of the doctor & being informed that operation is done. I do recall my surprise at that statement as there was no experience of passing time. I feel this was fundamentally different from sleep in quality (or even deep meditation). I to have pondered the consciousness vs intelligence question and tentatively concluded that consciousness is useful in developing of intelligence so as to provide factors to optimize for like energy, attention, physical goals etc but beyond that its not necessary. Intelligence is basically subdividing a signal into realistic subcomponent and then putting it all somewhat coherently to come up with a bigger picture as I see it. I feel the set of tools available to current crop of AI/ML architectures are sufficient to produce a human like intelligence if we/it figures out how to assemble it the 'right' way. consciousness OTOH, I am not sure. that (human consciousness) may be very specific to makeup of human brain and some non-modeled things in individual neurons. this does not means AGI cannot be conscious but its consciousness would be really different from human one. For humans I do lean towards Penrose's Orch-OR thesis that consciousness maybe innately quantum in nature. not sure how much evidence exists for or against it.

stouset 3y ago

Being put under anaesthesia—along with some related phenomena around sleep—has led me to the personal conclusion that consciousness is memory. Or at least, memory is a fundamental requirement for what I consider consciousness. If I am awake and interacting but forming no memories, my subjective experience is that I have not been conscious.