Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/18/where-does-consciousness-come.html
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This whole channel is amazing, and the creators take great pains to be responsible, ethical reporters of fact.
If you have any YouTube subscriptions at all, this should be one of them.
For the record, I am not affiliated with the channel in any way, just a big fan.
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It is “Kurzgesagt”, not “Kruzgesagt” (typo).
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Stay tuned for theories of consciousness that of course may be as much about philosophy as they are neuroscience.
Ah, the lesser known, STEM/Liberal-arts version of horseshoe theory 
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For those of you who find this topic interesting, and might like to know more, this covers the evolutionary “why” and, toward the end of the video, the philosophical “what” of consciousness as reflected in the work of Daniel Dennett (with a tip of the hat to Stephen Jay Gould), rather than the biological “how” covered by the neurological theories proposed by Giulio Tononi (“integrated information theory”) or Bernard Baars (“global workspace theory.”)
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Water… And it’s really only a tiny imprint that is clinging to a balance spin around in a circle for a minute… That dizziness is all you really are… maybe…
This is a good intro especieally for people who don’t normally think about consciousness as an evolved trait. But I found it pretty frustrating.
Firstly, the presumption that we all inherently “know what consciousness is” is bs. We all experience it, but I for one certainly don’t understand it.
The whole idea of a linear, hierarchical “ladder of consciousness” is completely biologcally untenable. Their description really just boils down to that humans are the ideal, and whatever makes something more human, makes it more conscious. Thats a very unsatisfying “understanding” of consciousness
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I am typing these letters one after the other. I am thinking that I am typing these letters one after the other. Where did I get these letters that I am putting in this order for the first time? This is like a river I can’t stop I can’t stop.
Whew I stopped for a second but it looks like they keep coming, and they are all there every time I put my fingers on this keyboard. Wait, I know what letter I’m going to put even before my fingers start moving! Let me know when they figure out how I did that.
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From rocks, apparently.
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Where does consciousness come from?
Man. . . I don’t even wanna think about that one!
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Having consciousness is a huge advantage. So, it seems like something that would naturally evolve. First, an organisms evolves the ability to know where it’s limbs are and that eventually escalates to organisms knowing about its whole self and then to societal consciousness where certain people are concerned about ourselves as a group.
Consciousness as a tool seems simpler than something like sight because it has less physical mechanics.
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I am of the “consciousness as an emergent phenomenon” school of thought. Essentially, once you reach a certain level of neurological complexity, it arises more or less de novo. The analogy is to schooling activity in fish. Studying scales and fins, or even whole organisms would never suggest the complex behavior that a school is capable of. No clue what the level of complexity necessary is, nor if it is a scalable phenomenon. This would suggest that true AI is almost inevitable as we link more and more nodes together. Thought experiments galore!
ETA:
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I also found this frustrating, in pretty much the way I guessed I would. Nearly all pop discussions of consciousness (and a good chunk of unpop discussions) approach it in bad faith, because if you come at it rationally, you run up against conclusions that most people have no intention of accepting.
For instance, the video opens with “no one has come close to explaining it”. Well, Daniel Dennett, for one, offers a perfectly good and well-known explanation of consciousness; it’s just that what people actually want is an explanation of why consciousness is an unknowable mystery. That question has the built-in safety feature that, because it’s not a valid question, there’s no danger of it leading to an answer, which might result in unacceptable conclusions like “sentient AI is possible” and “humans aren’t fundamentally different to the animals we kill and eat”.
If you take that approach, you can detour into all sorts of irrelevant fun facts about animal behavior (or pretty much anything else, if you’re Roger Penrose and worried about the car payments) but you won’t learn anything useful about consciousness because the whole exercise is set up to avoid that.
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If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It’s just a show,
I should really just relax"
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Another read is Julian Jaynes’ “The Origin of Consciousness In the Break-down of the Bicameral Mind”. Very, very interesting, and just as (understandably) controversial. I suspect I’m not the only person who’s ever read it with one eyebrow cocked during the entire read, but it is thought-provoking.
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Read that a long time ago, did not find it very convincing.
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Read that a long time ago, ruined my life.
Pro-Tip: Nobody gives a shit.
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I didn’t either, yet I found it to be a fun read. Unfortunately, Jaynes passed away before he could complete his’ follow-up book (in response to critics’ questions). My father’s a bibliophile, and whenever I visit back east we visit the nearby book store. One time I pointed out Jaynes’ book to him while there… and he just gave me a sour look and said nothing else. I held my tongue.
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Exactly! No other book I have ever come across has left me with no idea if I believe any of it, or all of it. Even if it is pseudoscience, you can’t say it was not a fun read. Kind of like reading conspiracy theories, even though you don’t believe them.
That god in my head said I have to get back to work now.
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I think that’s the normal reaction – it’s interesting but silly. It’s also the basis for the McGuffin in Snow Crash, and has some resonances (though probably not a shared lineage) with Marvin Minsky’s ideas about the mind.
IMO Dennett’s Consciousness Explained should be seen as the seminal book on this subject (see above for why I believe it is disingenuously painted as somehow controversial or incomplete). But it’s quite a leap from the way we commonly think about our own minds, and there’s a lot of sci-fi that can serve as a good warmup. PKD, for instance – just thinking about the premise of We Can Remember it For You Wholesale / Total Recall takes you pretty close to Dennett’s picture.
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