Peter Watts: Conscious Ants and Human Hives
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- Опубліковано 26 чер 2024
- The talk is part of the Popular Science Forum Ratio 2017 (ratio.bg/)
Watts’ talk will go over some of the insanely counterintuitive findings about the nature of consciousness, ranging from insects who seem able to recognize themselves in mirrors to Humans who drive across town, commit murder, clean up the mess and drive back home again, unconscious the whole time. Also the risks we face as we start playing around with brain-to-brain interfaces and Liu et al’s “neural lace” (widely recognised after Elon Musk’s Neuralink venture was announced). - Наука та технологія
Anyone who hasn't read Blindsight has done themselves a disservice. It's a masterpiece of hard-SciFi.
“Blindsight” is great, however it’s like a soft version of Stanislaw Lem’s “Fiasco”, not a copy just a similar stuff. Similar pessimism and philosophy. Looks like Watts read Lem’s books.
A hard sci-fi with vampires? I prefer pan Stanislaw's pieces.
Энегльсин Полиграфович Those „vampires” are really hard SF stuff, no mystic mumbo jumbo, just science ;), genetics and old humanoids that extincted . As much as I love Lem’s work I also appreciate the Watts, he is closest to Lem as English writers can be.
Reading it now!
ThisIsMyRealName blindsight and fiasco have both in common highly pessimistic view on the alien contact idea. The similarities are not only on this abstract yet fundamental level. Also in the way they portrait human tropes that leads to demise and failure of the whole purpose of the contact, how they try to force this contact, even though alien does not want to. The focus on epistemology as an important factor. I think Lem would really like Blindsight. I do see Blindsight as next step of telling very similar story. Vampires in my view are just means to achieve that, just a glossy foil, nothing substantial. There is also an idea about vampire as a space ship captain in earlier Jacek Dukaj’s story, and the idea of using humans as a tools for communication between two trapped aliens is also something I read about in Lem’s short stories years ago. I think I could find more of things that I already read about before Blindsight.
This is a really good talk. The way our brains operate is just fascinating. I'm very curious how it would be to experience a split brain state followed by slow reintegration once the drugs wear off. Does one half just take over the other or do both disappear into a new integrated being?
One thing I know for certain though: The people who are currently building these brain-to-brain interfaces are exactly the ones we don't want anywhere near them. Best case scenario is that brain interfaces become like cell-phones and half your thoughts are actually ads implanted by our corporate overlords. Don't even want to think about the worst case scenarios.
Blindsight had me fucked up for a month or two.
Read Echopraxia...it will mess you up for life...
This is essentially pointing to a deterministic physical embodiment-at all biological scales-with a conscious observer riding along.
the real nightmare in all this is the offhand suggestion that an AI overlord would be developed in C++
Don't you speak that evil.
It would be written in JavaScript which is even worse
lmao
As a pessimist this delights me and thus causes instant identity crises.
This is a great talk. !!!!! Totally blindsided me.
ha
22:37 well, "throwing a dart over your shoulder" is an unconsciouss act, unlike doing a research paper and, as was explained before in the video, unconsciouss decisions are better. So you may indeed have come closer to the answer.
Well, I wonder why this video got such small amount of views. His delivery is better than in his address about data - burning and it's a real pleasure to listen to him in this video. It's disappointing that there's no intelligent discussion in the comment section and it's also a disappointment that there aren't so many videos where he expresses his ideas, I guess for that matter we have his books.
@savako's bar it could possibly be one of the parasite's defense mechanisms
Scramblers ain't give no shit about all these "consciousnesses" ruminations. They "Just do it" ))))))
Hmm, it’s interesting that fruit flies get drunk more when they can’t find a mate.
There isn’t much that consciousness can do solely but Delight is one of them.
Knowing that one is happy requires awareness of the state of one’s self.
Pursuit of delight definitely gets things done evolutionarily and why even ants might want to know if they look good in a mirror.
"feeling happy" is the result of chemical processes. The _meat_ places the conditions for "feeling happy". No chemical reaction? No happiness. You wanna feel happy? You _must_ satisfy the meat.
What does that tell you about subjective consciousness, other than that it is a slave to the meat?
Amazing stuff
Uh, I hope to see you during some convention. Last time I couldn't attend your talk. Love you.
the best video ever produced
What's so best about it? It sounds so devilish to my ears. I am not a religious person but this sounds like: God created you to do something and if you don't understand it you become nihilistic.... something it's utterly wrong here. Explain the hypnotherapy that is the antithesis of what he says here.
@@DELANADINE Remember that if you are from a Christian culture that in the Bible animals and insects do not have souls, this is likely incorrect. I guess i called it great because it shows ants have self-awareness.
Great video!!!
Consciousness is a cultural process. It benefits fitness because it is good for the culture, which benefits the individua
I think there is something qualitatively different for two subminds to merge into a supermind, (and presumably separate again), than for a brain to be destroyed and a mind to be lost altogether.
It's possible that Cammaerts didn't realize it was a junk journal. I had that happen once. It's one of my better papers. Once it's done, you are kind of screwed, because you can't submit it anywhere else.
If Tim Urban's access to neurolink is like his access to SpaceX, I don't think you need to worry about what he's written.
What do you mean by that? I'm curious.
On the consideration of pain and the question of why it has to be a conscious thing consider that the conscious mind can override instinctual behavior and I can definitely see a benefit for an animal to have the feeling of pain to reinforce the autonomic part.
He addresses that, it isn't the only or best way to do it. Conscious ability to over ride instinct is probably required if we want people who will run into burning buildings to save the lives of strangers. But it isn't required to keep us from sautéing our own extremities.
Direct Brain Interface: see Ghost in the Shell movies & Series (several).
Regarding the 34m mark, there are some great 'Stuff To Blow Your Mind' episodes on the Split Brain (2 parts), Bicameralism and the 'Alphabet and the Goddess'.
The key is making the contacts/interaction with the nervous system stable and operational. It takes 10 years or so before the scar tissue around an implant for parkinson's to obstruct the signal to the point the person gets weird. We will be able to do this multi-person personality long before we really understand it.
I think consciousness is just our own mind categorizing itself. I mean categorizing is a great way to streamline the though process. You dont need to know if it is exactly -11 or -10.9 degrees outside, you know its cold and you are gonna need warm clothing. This "fuzzyness" of our information might also have another upside. Not all informations are immediately benefitial. A "rational unconscious mind" would just throw these informations out because they suck up valuable glucose. But in a human they might accidently fall into a category due to those "fuzzy category edges" and irrational emotional attatchments, then some time later we combine multiple useless informations and bam you get agriculture, gunpowder and the concept of leverage.
And maybe at some point our own brain just categorized all the stuff that didnt fit in the lower levels of cognition into its own, new group. And of course consciousness doesnt make any sense because we are just a category from our brain with the label "Weird shit, sometimes usefull, let it think its in charge" or something. That would also explain why consciousness "expands", when a second brain gets added it just wanders into the same box as the first brain.
Maybe this "virtual unity" of these higher processes is then what we experience as consciousness, which is why we cant nail it down to any one process.
Write a paper i think you are onto something
Your idea is somewhat convoluted but you're on to something. Keep going 💪
oui, c'est l'effet négatif d'une efficacité trop anthropique ou anthropocentrée, qui se retourne contre nous les humains... Une bêtise qui en se connait pas. L'inconscience. Peut-être faut-il passer par là d'abord
Reminds me of BrainPort, a technology that sends sensory information to the brain through an electrode array atop the tongue.
Ahaa! 👍
9:23 there's a form/function issue here. you can't base your operating principles on just the fundamental structure of something, you have to look at the functional interactions between structures on a higher order. a neuron doesn't tell you about the mind, but networks of them can tell you everything.
Reminds me of “the Big Pig” from Rudy Rucker’s book, “Postsingular”.
wtf? This is so interesting and scary!
As a individualist. This whole thing bothers me quite a bit. We all just become 1 boring gray mass of sameness.
The Monty Python sketch were they were saying "yes we are are individuals" comes to mind. There are many people in my life that I would not want to share a single mind with.
you are perfectly free to still consider yourself as whatever you wish. Doesn't mean you are right. For better or for worse, being right is secondary, probably even irrelevant. So what if we _are_ one huge blob of gray goo? F that noise. I reject the idea. So what if I'm wrong? Do I get a score card at the end or something?
Who will take care of the collective because all connected will be as one.
Peter gave an example where half of one guy's brain dissociated and became its own personality after the other half was anaesthetized. My question is if you could repeat that and bring the same personality back. If being in a hive mind downgrades you from consciousness to subroutine, what happens when you're unplugged? You're same? Different? What would you experience?
When connecting our momentarily biological brains, then yes u would be different, because this is the whole principle of brain cells. Brain cells get electrical stimulations which increases entropy and therefore the machinery which is within and out of the nerve cell. U have 2 nerve cells both firing, the probability becomes higher for both to connect, bc the machinery (brownian molecular movement or speed of chemical reactions) gets increased with both connections. Actually to form a memory u do unimaginable many of those entropy increases. Also more than 90% of the dendrites and synapses which the stimulated neurons form disappear. Only those, which reached other neurons stay (for sure it's similar with astrocytes or glia etc). So stimulation = different molecular arranging of ur brain which leads to different feedback loops, which are ur thoughts based on what one values, which in turn is wired into u by evolution or socialization, and now that ur socialization (stimulations of brain cells) persists within the hive mind, ur brain would change and therefore u.
However, if u digitized ur whole brain, and force it to not physically change, then u would stay the same, but for sure u wouldn't get the information the hive mind has perceived or created from previous patterns. In such a hive mind, it's personality / consciousness / thinking etc will be saved in different possibilities of arranging different brains. The amounts of connections per brain could stay constant, if the brain just wires with other brains to a specific extent which then cause cascades and feedback loop, to promote what we call computation. However, then u shouldn't have done it in the first place bc for sure u can save the whole arranging of all brains, when they (or just some) left, on a digital storage medium, but with this amount of data u can simulate this entity directly bc it would use the same amount of computational power (bc if u leave ur brain will be different when u want to connect to the hive mind again bc u want to accumulate new data).
However u aren't also you right now in respect to the you before 5 years. Isn't "You" defined by your decision making, thoughts and goals? And don't they change over time? For sure our genes tell us what to perceive as good and bad and therefore striving for or trying to prevent something. But our socialization, which is only possible bc of our genes good and bad shit, prioritizes goals to specific ratios, and let u process ur accumulated data to make probable guesses of the future bc of patterns u recognized in similar situations. These things all change over time.
"Everything that doesn't kill us makes us stranger"
10:04
Are mediating conflicting commands and integration even conflicting hypotheses? It would seem like one is a prerequisite for the other.
Personally I would wager that consciousness (as in having subjective experience of some sort) is an inevitable side effect of modelling the world to act effectively in. Pretty much the entirety of our conscious experience as we can describe it pertains to nothing else but this model.
Why and how a subjective experience is even possible is another question and one harder to solve - it would presumably also answer what can and cannot be conscious. Since there doesn't seem to be anything preventing simulating a part or entire brain in appropriate software construct - like a C++ program mentioned, I would expect the right program to indeed be conscious while running (such simulated part could replace portion of an actual brain without consciousness being able to tell the difference, because else it would imply functional difference contradicting the assumption).
12:51
If consciousness is how simulation manifests then automated response could need overriding based on simulation. Pain being unpleasant could just be how the experience gets annotated as something you don't want to repeat.
13:25
Regarding the delay before being aware of going to do something - this shouldn't really be as freaky as it inevitably is on first encounter. We only see input once it becomes part of the model. It's a bit like with modern GUI - you only see the pointer wiggle after GUI has processed the input, which on a sufficiently laggy machine can be noticeably delayed. Anything else would degenerate into possibly infinite recursion before any act. Of course, breaking this feedback loop can result in all kinds of "fun" disorders.
14:25
One of the cases where suppressing some functionalities of a brain curiously unblocks some (impressive) functionalities.
14:45
It's not possible to say that something was done unconsciously. Even if you establish that the "main" consciousness has no recollection of the event you can only show that the memory of it was not stored or possibly that some lower level actor comprising of only subset of submodules have done that, but that doesn't say anything about that actor being conscious or not. It's somewhat similar to split brain cases where only one hemisphere has the speech centers - that the other one is not available to talk with doesn't mean it isn't conscious.
We can't even be sure we don't have a number of conscious submodules running in parallel with the main consciousness and wouldn't have any way to get at them to verify that (I haven't seen that paper claiming that it isn't possible so I don't know their reasoning and I don't know if this reasoning also applies to hierarchical systems - for what we know each of us might have a primitive "reptile" riding around in our skull, blissfully unaware of being occasionally mind-controlled by a neocortex (and imposing its own affective states on it in turn), I believe this is even a theme in one of Watts' own short stories.
As for mind melding, I can definitely see the risks, but expanding oneself with peripherals seems like fairly cautious, yet potentially very fruitful route, and possibility of temporary meld states that would want to dissociate and reconnect periodically cannot be ruled out either.
There is also possibility of using expansion into new brain and eventually shedding the old one as a workable mechanism for actual mind transfer which could allow almost indefinite life extension.
Finally, I don't see "parasitic consciousness" as plausible given that I don't see how this would be selected and fixated on nascent consciousness level. Actual parasites do reproduce.
Ah, so this is why good voice teachers and musicians try to get their students to STOP thinking and instead, concentrate, which allows the music to almost happen automatically without interference from the conscious mind.
on many levels very thought-provoking lecture; i only think, that conscious is very helpfull when...well, thinking (i am not talking about „flash autistic“ calculations, that´s not thinking to me; to figure out something new, to make new conclusions, that´s thinking...and it´s slow, cumbersome and very conscious process; yes, once you figure something out, lower brain parts can take control and „drive your car“, but only after you conciously learn to do so) or facing something new; for example, if we have only temperature switch, which tells us when to pull our hand out of fire, then we would not be able to run through the fire to save ourselfes...and so on
your description of thinking is cute
it _almost_ creates the impression that thinking is a thing.
what you consider "thinking", in your description, is just the _result_ of processes you are not aware of. You're not in control of them. What you name "thinking" is whatever your brain presents to you at any given moment.
Stand up. Stay still. Are you even aware of the delicate control of your muscles that keep you standing still? There's twelve muscle *groups* not muscles, *groups* of muscles in continuous, delicate operation under your control. Can you even tell what any of those muscles is doing? Even _one_ of them?
If the unconscious never sleeps, then who is conscious?
Isn't the main "purpose" of consciousness to enable evolution through memes? Genes have a huge limitation, as evolution occurs only "vertically" generation to generation. Observed/learned behaviors can compete and propagate "horizontally" within the existing population at an unparallelly faster rate. Can we make an analogy that an organism is to genes, as a conscious "self" is to memes?
But consciousness isn't necessary for the storage and communication of information.
What you're describing is the utility of intelligence.
@@bobdobsin6216 just like an organism "survival machine" isn't necessary to protect/multiply genes (a single cell will suffice, or even less for viruses), but it turned out to be an excellent "idea". Wrapping up genes (or memes) in an "individual" makes for better protection and competition. Maybe that was the trick that allowed intelligence to explode as much as it did? (I remember Watts referred to consciousness as "training wheels", but I don't recall exactly in what context)
@@bulhakov What you're saying is all true, but conscious self awareness still doesn't seem to be necessary for performing those tasks. Intelligence and self reference ability are ripe with adaptive value. But what's the utility of qualia? Like Watts said in his talk, what's the difference between "IF temperature
@@bobdobsin6216 My guess is evolution works best with what it already has. We can now imagine and design better solutions (e.g. wheels or rocket engines), but the whole process of mutation/competition/selection rarely introduces something new and instead primarily adapts something that's already there (e.g bipedal walking).
Some intuitive sense of "self" has been present in all organisms for self-survival. Maybe becoming aware of that "self" was just the thing needed to allow "memetic exchange" on a previously unseen scale and cause our "intelligence explosion"?
I can't help but wonder what was cut out around 30:30.
vampires...
Maybe nothing was cut but they are already interfering with our minds.
13:10 could it be memory forming? I suppose you wouldn't need consciousness to achieve storing memories, but when posing the question of why pain exists, you need to take into account that we aren't designed to be perfect, just fit. Pain is a way to associate negativity with a memory, in order to teach an organism to avoid actions that can impact its ability to survive and ultimately pass on it's genetic code.
We're motivated by fear of pain and consequences, you see that mechanism in nature all over the place.
I also like the theory that consciousness evolved to mediate conflicting motor signals, and as it grows more complex, is really just a way of interpreting and mediating experiences. Maybe not as efficiently as possible, but again we're not designed to do anything other than survive on earth.
"consciousness" as we know it, I think, is just an emergent property of networked systems.
18:30 hey that sounds like the premise to parasyte the maxim!
They're thinking as one and not being part of the collective. I see it as the end of the human race.
We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
This guy likes beer. I like him😁
I'm not convinced that all human beings are sentient.
re: the ant mirror thing. Put blue dot on the ants on the other side of the clear glass to see if it they react to it. If they react to other ants with their dots in the same way as the ant in the mirror, then that eliminates the mirror as a variable.
The mirror test isn't as useful as people want it to be anyway. It's technically not testing for self awareness, rather it's testing an animals ability to use a mirror like a human does.
For those species that fails the test, there's no distinction made between animals that are not self-aware, animals that infact are self-aware but not intelligent enough or otherwise incapable in using the mirror for its human intended purpose, and animals that are self-aware but simply don't care about the blue dot.
There's a possibility that all species tested are actually self-aware, but other factors are making them fail the test. We may be letting our own human biases and qualia draw the conclusion for us.
@@tomorbataar5922 Exactly my thoughts. Cats supposedly fail this test and I feel it would be quite the leap to say that ants are self aware and yet cats are not.
The Dream reading reminds me of the netflix show Maniac. Makes you think how these shows are predicting the future or present for that matter
It's called predictive programming, where they are preparing us mentally for what's coming.
@@manfrommaine or just people that are aware of the research and decide to make a series about it ..🙄
@@wantanamera Yeah, all those virus movies in past 10 years - just one big coincidence
@@yingyang1008 viruses exist, people find them scary, other people film scary movies about them and make money.
@@wantanamera just a coincidence bro
Joe sent me.
lol ya me too and reading Blindspot
Ratborg Collective ))))
Is he consciously pacing?
What I'd give to re visit my dreams , which are SO weird ..some I remember as if they were real...
23:20 i don't know if this is true, maybe for the average person but im not great at unconscious thought besides to help me process things or to improvise. But a lot of what I'm good at doing is strictly a lot of conscious effort, and the result is a lot of complicated ideas or visuals. I can visualize in my mind, not nessecarily nessecary for consciousness but i think its probably an indicator, and that is part of my strongsuit. I am not neurotypical though, (I'm autistic), thats probably a factor if i had to blame something. Sounds worthwhile to research, maybe consciousness and the lack of it has different purposes for different brains.
I think consciousness is best used for simulating mechanisms, for tool use, not for making decisions especially if you're prone to a lot of biase. Research shows that neurotypical people are more susceptible to framing and social biases on decision making than autistic people, and from my observation they have an ability to make snap judgements without much information and it works. Maybe its not that consciousness isn't useless, but is mostly useful if you don't have good instincts/reflexes/unconscious thought instead, if you lack that heuristic capacity and instead you use pattern recognition and conscious thought to rely on.
Peter Watts is like a cool scientist from a sci-fi movie that gets funding for his secret project to check out som aliens
Also, why wasn't he at Joe Rogan's?
Is he willing to come to the US? He had some border problems once...
He's barred from obtaining a US visa due to his status as a convicted felon.
@@tonyromo9478 when he was actually a victim of police brutality
Neil Blomkmap talked about him on his last podcast, told Joe to read blindside. So maybe he’ll have him on later.
@@thaboot3378 that’s why I’m here lol
Because suffering is how the universe thrives.
"Whuts consciousness even for derka derka derka"
I simply love Mr Watts' eloquence and writing style, as well as his ability to tell an interesting story.
However, I think his premise - that higher intelligence does not need a sentient milieu - is wrong.
I don't think that a being devoid of sentience could have reached a state of actually controlling its own evolution - as humans did developing new technologies and modes of thinking ( religion, philosophy, governance ).
Although I agree with his wariness about what neurosciences+cybernetics can do to us, I regard the idea of "sentience as an aberration" just as a very interesting intellectual and philosophical exercise, not as - the things as they are, as he tends to portray it.
"I don't think..." isn't a very solid argument. More and more scientific discoveries show that the reality is far more counterintuitive than we think.
Watts also ignores the language question. Highly intelligent creatures must use sufficiently expressive language to have dialogues between each other. Dialogues are not about sending/receiving precise instructions. And it is absolutely impossible to be involved into meaningful conversation without having a mental image (model) of your opponent and of yourself. It seems like a trivial thing.
Denis L. Well, then there’s the question of the “Chinese Room,” whereby a system can simulate coherent speech, even conversation, simply by following a set of logical instructions for responding to one input with a certain output, all while lacking any real comprehension of the actual content of said inputs/outputs.
@@primusavenged The Chinese Room is a logically incoherent problem - you would need a literally infinite instruction set for it to function.
@@Technodreamer Why? There is only a limited (albeit large) number of inputs. It is basically doing what chatbots do at the moment.
Fungus!! The good
questions? 🎉 I wonder a lot, pending once scenario in all angles even glue them together and see what it becomes 😅 I mean,every thought start a Domino, don't know if it's a curse or a blessing. Im calling it a blessing -curse! I'm 38 years old and I'm diagnosed with ADHD 20 years ago. So that was a bit of relief but they didn't start any medication. Tried to and wanted to see what was. I'm glad now that my doctor said no. my love for cannabis was the reason . Any away, since then I have worked on myself rather a lot about adhd and all the other symptoms an underlying traumas I didn't know about. My first law psychiatrist gave me something to Think about I'm from that moment in time I started transforming my use of brain. I I always dream clear dreams when I sleep and remember it I'm feeling it. It's like I'm the hunter and thedream needs to be found. Hello! Ofc! The dreamcatcher! Always wonder, dreamcatcher ,catching dreams.
I read someware that ant brains have 100x more neurons and 1000x more(maybe 10,000x) connections then humans. They can because of their small size. A larger brain of that density would overheat.
So that ant brain is equivalent to about 1cm of a human brain. There are people who have had functional lives with about that size frontal lobes(like the case of a lawyer who found out in adulthood they had undiagnosed encephalitis that killed much of their brain)
Ant lawyer?
what if consciousness is the goal itself? in this case intelligence is just a tool for me to experience things, without consciousness i wouldn't be able to do that, why does it need any other justification? the flow state he talked about is only useful when youre performing something you already know how to do, when youre learning new things you need conscious effort. you cant start learning chess in the flow state
Netflix's will change its name to Mindf*ck's
A usefull first step for proving that consciousness exists would be to postulate that it doesn't and then disprove it.
Edit: @20:36 Makes me think of another possible hypothesis for the consciousness phenomena. What if it is just a wastefull training tool for the rest of the brain. So that the norma function of the brain is to be in the Zone and not thinking about what we do.
??? We know consciousness exists because we experience being conscious
How about the following hypothesis?
What if consciousness is useful for storing and structuring memories?
A narrative works better when it has a protagonist, you know what I mean?
"I went there and this happened to me and it sucked. Guess I better don't go there anymore."
Wouldn't memories be muddled and confused if there is no entity that is experiencing and judging things?
And what about communicating memories to others?
"Don't go there, it sucked."
Can something that is not self aware make judgement calls like that?
Well played, this might explain the decay of a honeymoon phase to rational love.
Why the conscious decision leaves you picking the worse car?
Its not wise to buy a car, youll need to maintain it. Maybe its the same with a child.
To answear your question:
Youll return to a place that sucked... Not for yourself, but you at least will consider it for those you love.
If this is true the internal narrative is just a way to redirect suffering into meaning.
I’m excited about his ideas in fiction, but man is it a pessimistic view of things 😅
In iRobot having, two "brains" gave buddy consciousness. Ooooooo
This is exactly what Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. explores
Would someone lie even if the lie was easy to detect...yes. I am five minutes in and I am asking myself 'why didn't he try to replicate the ant study?' As he said it would be trivially easy to replicate. It sounds like he wants to build on the conclusion but is worried it may not be credible. Until this paper, or any scientific paper, is replicated the information is tentative.
Someone did it with fish and is fighting real hard to publish it.
That was just an intro to begin questioning the idea of consciousness as a purely human trait. Maybe the ant study was a lie indeed, but that doesn't affect his talk as there are many other studies on other species that shows similar results. The ants one just happens to be the most shocking - consciousness in insects?!
Love started with a substantial lead, but suddenly evilness made a come back. Evilness developed a tool: Consciousness.
Consciousness enabled people to observe themselves instead of just ‘being’. And when they started
observing themselves they started identifying with creatures around them that looked like them,thereby enabling thoughts like: “If I kill his baby while he is sleeping, maybe he will kill my baby when I’m sleeping. Therefore I’d better walk away although I’m hungry”
Love got caught by total surprise with this new tool! And through evolution, consciousness did not
only help environments where evilness was dominating to reproduce more, it also enabled
imposters! Human beings dominated by the SG of evilness could sneak into environments dominated by love, and pretend that they were not evil. Thereby they didn’t get punished (i.e.
making their SG of evilness weaker) by the environment; they could hide the evil action they
intended and instead choose, by using their own will, to make an alternative action that seemed
based on love, but was in fact a lie.
It is argued in [2] that consciousness evolved late in the twentieth millennium b.c., but when ever
the exact period was, consciousness spread like a disease and today we must assume that it is
present in virtually all people.
.. excerpt from 'symbolic generalizations' on my blog whitebull dot dk
Aren't all worker ants female?
Great talk, but I am afraid Peter will lose a lot of people with his frank words and the harsh light he shines on ugly realities.
I'm fully with him, but if there is one thing I have learned talking to people about such things, it is that the average human really, really dislikes it when you tell them that they are biological automatons or brain glitches and that the world is just a giant chemical reaction. Most immediately shut down when you approach anything that clashes with their religion and even Atheists check out when you leave the "Humanistic Overton Window".
People just don't want to entertain uncomfortable truths and implications and recoil from the slightest whiff of potential Nihilism.
I am what I would call a Optimistic Nihilist. I know that ultimately I'm just kicking the can down the road, but I think the fact that we want to be more than automatons or brain glitches perhaps might one day make someone figure out a way how to do that.
But usually you don't even get far enough into a conversation to explain that.
It fits so well with "the wise man realizes he knows nothing" too.
The opposite is also true - people shut down if you talk about ideas like God, intelligent design, creation, etc....
Maybe what we think conscious is actually is a higher power doing what we comprehend as conscious but what we are doing is using ourGod given will along with the higher power "God" is our conscious. That make any sense?
Not for me.
if there is no conscience, how do you explain the hypnotherapists healing ailments that people had for many years and could be fixed only working around their conscience?
If self awareness is the intrinsic property of a mechanism is it possible it is aware of its actions. It is just a mechanical function.
Emergent property evolved through actions of complex nature can be used as a cover to justify any actions.
Why can't we consider illumination of certain parts of the brain confirm there is correlation between brain and consciousness.
There are tendencies ingrained in our mind through environment, religion, family back ground, which may express itself through impaired brain on which we don't have any control. We exercise our freewill through our brain. Faulty connection of an electric circuit may damage the whole system but that doesn't mean current is created in the circuit itself. Consciousness is existence itself. Moral values are inherent of consciousness. We have the tendency to take Colour of the the things with which we associated with. This is due to the fact that We always identity ourselves with our mind and body. Only through freewill we can choose our actions. Freewill is of meta physical phenomenon which primarily concerned with moral aspects of our actions.. How can freewill can play a role in economically or just insignificant valueless actions.Freewill come in to the picture only to consider whether our economically oriented actions are moral or immoral. We have to choose either of them and we must take responsibility for our actions.
brain is a receiver of consciousness, not a generator
How can you support this claim?
@@mvtroysi Because all other options do not function? To be said to function they have to conform both to the physical objective reality and the subjective internal reality without contradicting either POV.
@@goblincookie5233 I think I understand this. However, can we say we need to accept this claim by exclusion? I dont know how to accept this claim whitout some chunk of good old evidence.
@@mvtroysi The best evidence is probably how our brains decide beforehand to do the things we are going to decide *in the future*. That seems to imply that *we* are really outside of time and are percieving 'the present' in a slightly skewed way.
If we don't know what consciousness is, we don't know what reality itself is
Wondering about consciousness while believing in stuff like the big bang and abiogenesis makes no sense, need to zoom out even further surely
U Are what you eat
I think a lot of this guys claims about animal consciousness being hard to accept or a massive slap in the face to the human ego reveals a lot more about his own biases and insecurities than about science.
@Abraham Johnathan Can you identify any mechanisms of that social change? How would your life change personally if animals were 100% conscious?
And I think you are wrong. But making subjective comments with no evidence is a bit pointless.
He's fantastic but good god he needs to button his right breast pocket and straighten his fucking collar. Dude's mind is just too far out to notice or care about those little details...
I imagine humanity will look back on a lecture like this and laugh at how stupid scientists were. He is making a fundamental error which is that consciousness arises out of the physical world. If you don't need consciousness for intelligence, creativity, or in any form then how can that thing even exist? Everything that exists is consciousness.
A murderer is as lost in unconscious thoughts as Peter Watts is saying these things, because if they really understood their connected to everything it would be impossible to kill and impossible to think 'consciousness is not essential to life". (By unconscious thoughts i mean being so absorbed in thought that one becomes more identified with those thoughts than with who they really are)
Easy. Consciousness can exist because evolution occurs through random mutation and not pointed decision. All its existence points to is the idea that it a) isn’t overtly detrimental or b) is intrinsic to the entities that possess it.
He walks around too much
Consciousness isn't an emergent property, it's a fundamental property. Everything from particles to people are conscious, it's only degrees of complexity that determine how that consciousness is experienced and expressed. Watts does a great job here of poking holes in our sense of self (ego) and free will but I believe he's missing the forest for the trees in his search for a scientific definition of consciousness. Materialist science doesn't have the language to measure or interpret conscious phenomena (which is why quantum physics often breaks down as we attempt to explain it in scientific terms), but the truth is elegantly simple and experiencing it is equal to knowing it. Anyway, that NeuraLink stuff is crazy.
there's no such thing as 'consciousness'. materialist science has precisely the language to demystify your idealist hallucinations.
Top notch content but unbearably disgusting mouth noises.
Bruh that smacking before he talks is annoying mmmmthaaa dam everytime.
This guy spreads pseudo-scientific over-generalizing takes and uses the excuse that "nobody knows" despite the fact that scientists are very careful about the content and character of what they say.
At least he says that he has no real credentials but he downplays the important aspects of speaking scientifically on science topics and it's clear that some people here aren't able to tell the difference.
This guy isn't selling you a product nor is he trying to lure you into a scam. He's simply informing you things about that are taking place and trying to get the general public interested.
Science is boring when scientists talk about it. The general public doesn't read academic papers, care much about space or anything related to science. This is when people like Peter Watts and others come in handy. They inform you about what's going on in the science world in a way that gains people's interest... Again... Not get their money or lure them into a scam, but get their attention on science.
He's a Doctor in Maritime Biology. Him saying that he has no credentials is just scientific humbleness that his field study isn't neuroscience - but he's a scientist whether you like it or not.
There are plenty of serious scientific lectures on neuroscience. PW is an interesting and entertaining speaker. I can listen and critique which parts I accept and which parts I disagree with. So can you. Do you want to shut down every imaginative and speculative thinker? What a dull world that would be.