TED Community » Susan Sayler

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Resource based economy, post scarcity, neuroscience, metaphysics, future

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collaboration vs greed culture. privacy vs transparency, human law vs natural law, Singularity vs Tech-utopia, privacy vs transparency

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  A comment on Conversation: Where do you think consciousness comes from?

  Aug 4 2011: Hi Christopher Cop
  
  I understand that science has not really defined these words so we may very well be talking right past one another.
  
  As far as quantum-quakery is concerned, I refuse to be bulled by Richard Dawkins or anyone into rejecting a very fruitful field of exploration. http://tiny.cc/tizwv Your comment sounded to me like a typical left brain biased "believer" in scientism. Do you like that label? If not then you should consider not labeling others.
  
  The fact is we have searched the brain for the source of consciousness and come up with nothing. We have looked all over the body too. (using Newtonian mechanical cause-effect model physics is something we are very good at by now)
  
  Those physicists with the courage to endure the bitching-out of anal left-brain peers now look to the source of consciousness in those quantum fields. Consciousness has to be a property of matter itself at a very subtle level of "reality."

• A reply on Conversation: Where do you think consciousness comes from?

  Aug 4 2011: 1. If consciousness is a property of matter then it has to be at the subatomic level. Therefore, rocks have potential consciousness because they are made out of atoms. However, the rock does not have a complex nervous system. It has no sensory systems at all that. So the potential for consciousness cannot be "activated." A rock is not alive, it cannot perceive, sense, think, experience or know. Therefore, it has no form of intelligence.
  
  2. Every cell of a foetus is made out of living cells that are making constant choices "yes to this, no to that". Therefore, consciousness is always within the foetus, and as the foetus develops the capacity to use its brain, its senses, its nervous system and body, the consciousness expands into the full potential available at any given moment. That full potential is defined by physics.
  
  3. When we go to sleep, we gradually shut down different parts of the brain like turning off groups of light switches in a large office building. But even when we are wide awake, we shut down parts of the brain. For example, when you are driving and suddenly realize you are almost home because you have been lost in thought while some other part of you drove the car (or washed the dishes etc).
  
  Parts of a person's brain have shut down in an unconscious person -- no two cases are identical. Our autonomic nervous system that keeps the heart and the respiration etc. is about as conscious as a fish or a plant. It can respond at a basic level (to light, for example) but it cannot perform an complex cognitive processes.

• A reply on Conversation: Where do you think consciousness comes from?

  Aug 4 2011: HI Thomas,
  I agree, semantics is an issue. The word comes from the Greek: con=with scious=knowledge; and its earliest use was to imply self-referential consciousness: "to know that you know".
  From metaphysics, consciousness is the animating principle of life and this is the way I use the word (separate from perception, awareness, mind, attention, thinking) so "life" and "consciousness" are interchangeable. The reason I believe this is so is because in order for life to remain alive, every part of that life form has to be making conscious decisions. By conscious decisions it is choosing in the moment "this and not that". Furthermore, I believe this is the definition of evolution; the choosing of this and not that.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Where do you think consciousness comes from?

  Aug 3 2011: Re: Christopher Cop's three points --
  1) Consciousness is not external to our brain (no living brain, no consciousness measurable)
  2) Consciousness did not arise sudden (it evolved)
  3) Consciousness is not either/or (there are multiple levels, gradations of consciousness)
  I strongly disagree with all 3. Re point #1: Plants have no brain and yet they are clearly conscious: http://tiny.cc/vuw02 Likewise, cells in the body make choices and know an enemy from a friend, so to speak.
  Re point #2: The interesting thing about consciousness is that it does NOT evolve. It does not change at all. What changes is the sophistication of the nervous system housing the consciousness. Consciousness works in a nervous system like electricity works on appliances, depending how they are built you get its distinct flavor. Electricity in the refrigerator makes things cold, electricity in a toaster makes things hot. But it is the SAME electricity doing it. Likewise with consciousness, the consciousness of a frog can only work from the degree of sophistication of a frog's nervous system. A human nervous system is far more refined. Re #3: It is due to the nervous system and not the consciousness that we see gradations and differences. The consciousness itself never changes. Consciousness permeates all living things, probably at the quantum level.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Where do you think consciousness comes from?

  Aug 3 2011: My suspicion is that consciousness is a "universal" thing that all conscious things partake of. A metaphor might be electricity. A brain does not make consciousness anymore than a toaster or refrigerator makes electricity. It is not consciousness that determines the nature and quality of one's perception or intelligence, but rather the refinement of one's nervous system. Consciousness of always the same no matter what conscious thing is being considered (including plants and cells within the body). In this way, if you could somehow take my consciousness and insert it into a frog, I would no longer be able to think or feel like a human, I would only have the capacity that the frog's nervous system allowed. This is a Buddhist way of looking at it, but when you considered how devoted they have been to studying consciousnesses I think it is worthwhile to consider their conclusions.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Transhumanism

  Apr 28 2011: When it comes to transhumanism, there are two ways of looking at the Artificial Intelligence that fuels it. The left brain dominant notion of transhumanism is sort of a continuation of scarcity-thinking of today with a lot more technology. AI will be used to control the masses and subject them to the whims of an existing ruling elite. In the left brain scenario, humanity is not part of the AI but simply subject to it. We become the robots and serve the AI, not the other way around. It is pessimistic and depends on total stagnation of human potential for its carry-through.
  
  The right brain view is that we are all a dynamic and integral part of the AI. We are hooked up to this dynamic artificial intelligence which reads our intentions before we have conscious awareness of the intention. Because every human is hooked into it, the ability to connect people places things and the "know-how" is incredible and immediate. This scenario makes the Dynamic universal AI a dream come true machine.
  
  First we had to type on a keyboard, then we could do voice to text, now we can do thought to text. Soon, the AI will be able to know what part of the brain the thoughts originate from. This will reveal whether they are seriously a danger or threat.
  
  The Right brain view of Artifical Intelligence requires everyone's full participation in it. There are no secrets, there are no leaders. Goverment is an immensely beneficial Artificial Intelligence Master-mind made up of the sum total and constantly growing body of human thought, synthesized and refined. Our individual desires are immediately fulfilled, either by matching us with the object of our desire, or making us feel like we have it whether we do or not.
  
  There is no shallow way to sum it up. You can see the erosion of privacy in our Facebook worlds, we are cyborgs already with cell phones attached to us, we won't stop ourselves so we better design the future to our highest possible.
  
  www.empressoftheglobaluniverse.wordpress.com