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> Consciousness is the only thing that can not possibly be an illusion. It can be. Suppose consciousness is a series of infinitesimal snapshots, where existenc
by scoofy 2y ago
> Consciousness is the only thing that can not possibly be an illusion.
It can be. Suppose consciousness is a series of infinitesimal snapshots, where existence flickers for a moment and then disappears, with a new existence birthed in the next moment. Like a motion picture, at each moment we do not have a sensible version of consciousness, merely a burst of sensation, but in aggregate, as a film, consciousness springs from nothing.
- wild_egg 2y agoVery similar to how LLMs work but at much higher frequency
- liamwire 2y agowe’re all just CI/CD pipelines
- Barrin92 2y ago> as a film, consciousness springs from nothing. But it doesn't. Because the film depends on the screen and the projector. This was one of Kant's central points, although he used the fancy term "transcendental unity of apperception". To even experience a set of images as disjointed, to see individual parts as relating to each other there has to be a unified experience judging them as disjointed against, the "thinking I". Without the observer already implicit in the thought experiment about images constituting a film, there is no "film" because nothing in it would have the ability to even conceive of itself as such. Hindus have a very elegant term for this "witness-consciousness" (Atman), importantly like in Kant distinct from ego and mind, not experience but a formal condition for experience. David Bentley Hart also has a great section about this in his recent book: "Every composite thing, he acknowledges, is an aggregate of several other things, and all its actions are aggregations of diverse actions and accident. [...] If it’s the composite thing that’s doing the thinking, then each part of the composite possesses only a part of the thought, and only in the aggregate is there a complete thought—but then who or what is having that thought? Where does that thought as a unity occur? Can it be just another part of the brain, with its own diverse parts and its own necessary inner coordinating facility? But then that too is made up of partially competent ..."
- Turskarama 2y agoThat's just an implementation detail, in aggregate the result is still consciousness. It's like saying animation isn't real because it's just a sequence of still images.
- scoofy 2y agoThe implementation matters.
- theendisney 2y agoThere could be something that [locally] rolls back time or creates brances to error correct conciousness.
- scoofy 2y agoI'm not arguing that consciousness is and illusion. I'm only arguing that it is possible that it could be an illusion. It's probably not, and if it were, it wouldn't matter. I'm just saying it's possible.
- theendisney 1y agoI doubt it makes a difference. If it exists it is real regardless of implementation. It can only be considered fake if it is a replication of something else and is inferior.