Consciousness

My own definition of consciousness is that it's distinct from emotions (and emotions are just labels for self-preservation instincts). Emotions (or their underlying instincts) are seen to varying extents in pretty much any life form. Consciousness (to me) seems to be the ability to intentionally override those emotions with behaviour that's not exactly (or maybe directly, in the short term cause-effect sense) self-preserving.

I would say consciousness is a social construct as opposed to a biological construct.

Has anyone else stated this? What are the flaws of this definition?

I am not a fan of human exceptionalism, but I feel consciousness is so loosely defined that we seem to be shifting the goalposts as our understanding of "intelligence" (specifically artificial intelligence) improves and we try to shy away from labeling artificial intelligence as conscious.

Right now, no (as far as I'm aware) artificial intelligence is in any way charged with its own self-preservation. They exist in a vacuum. Artificially intelligent constructs cannot observe each other and make decisions based on the existence or flourishing of each other. Without the risk of non-existence or diminished existence, they remain mere algorithms producing a quasi-deterministic output for a given input. They might be more complex to understand (and opaque) than the algorithms of the past but they are still nowhere near the level of existence of even the most primitive life-forms for this reason.

ps: inspired by Neil & Anil Seth Discuss Consciousness in the Universe

RTFM

Last night, I tossed away the box a heated blanket came in, as the 3 year warranty (boldly marked on the box) had ended. Before I tossed the box away, I found a crumpled manual at the bottom. Turns out I've been using the blanket the wrong way up for all of 3 years, presumably heating the mattress instead of heating myself!

nothing's working

I'm no stranger to encountering broken things - in fact I might go so far to say I occasionally seek them out! Fixing stuff (and enjoying fixing stuff) is an innate part of who I am and what I do. There are some things that I don't enjoy fixing though. Things that are supposed to just work.

Number one on that list is myself. My own body and mind.

It's not like I don't enjoy fixing myself (although I must say that as the years go by, I have come to terms with accepting that I do need increasing levels of assistance and professional opinions when it comes to fixing myself), but that when the list of things (subsystems?) that are not functioning to expectation become overwhelming, life just feels like one series of setbacks.

I look around me and I see things that I am struggling to take care of because I cannot take care of myself. I know what is supposed to fix me (theoretically, of course - nothing to do with human beings can be guaranteed!) but it's not just a matter of knowing, or even doing, but doing in a way that makes sense.

Case in point: sleep. My sleep troubles (and, case in point, I didn't regard them as troubles until quite recently) were from as long ago as my late teens, and it was only 2 weeks ago that I was able to experimentally prove that they were the cause of a host of other problems!

And yet, here I am, blogging at 1:59 am when I definitely am supposed to be asleep.

Was it because I woke up too late? Was it because of my cup of tea at 10pm? Was it because of my late dinner at 11pm? Was it a combination of all of these + my overall predilection for staying up late and doing increasingly unproductive things, at the cost of productive things that could be better done in the day, because I have less autonomy over what I can and cannot do during the day? It's hard to say. But here I am.

the death dream

I had gone on a short drive, alone. It was to a spot I'd been to previously - the start of a hiking trail. The road to it was steeply uphill and more dirt track than road, but my car could handle it fine. The trail started on private property, and there was room for one car to park next to the gate. The parking spot and gate were at a sharp right hand bend to the trail heading up to that point. There was no other car parked - I was alone. I parked, but instead of getting through the gate and on to the hiking trail, I stood on a rocky outcrop on the other side of the path. I looked at the sky. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue. I closed my eyes, face to the sun, feeling it warm me.

I opened my eyes. The sky was still blue and cloudless. I looked down for the first time, and was surprised to see it was not a hillside, but a straight drop to the ocean!

The ocean was a deep blue, almost black, despite the bright sunlight, suggesting it was very deep. The cliff I was standing on the precipice of was pretty steep - I'm not sure how I ended up in such a precarious spot. I tried taking a step backward towards safety, but I was not on level ground - the rock was at a steep incline behind me and I was unable to step backward. My attempt to step backward caused me to lose my footing and actually take a small (but quite steep) step forward and downward.

I was scared.

I tried to sit against the rock face I was on, in the hope that it would give me more grip and a chance at dragging myself back up to safety - however, I was unable to sit. I had a heavy backpack that got in the way when I leaned backward, and leaning backward caused me to slide forward and down even more.

I was beginning to panic.

I tried to guage the height of the cliff and the steepness of the descent. I considered sliding down instead of trying to get up - what if it was safer to get to the ocean and somehow try to swim ot safety, maybe lose the backpack once I hit the water?

The struggle of trying to stay in one place and not slide down any further was beginning to exhaust me. I was ready to give up. It felt like there was no hope of getting out of that spot, and anything I did would simply prolong my struggle.

I felt like the best course of action was to take a clean leap forward so that I could plunge straight off the cliff and hit the water feet first.

I was conscious of my inability to swim, and worse, the incredible weight of my backpack which seemed very firmly secured to me and was surely going to drag me down with it.

I looked up again, then closed my eyes, felt the warmth of the sun for what might be the last time ever,. I savoured that feeling for as long as I felt I could, and then opened my eyes.

I was in bed, and my morning alarm was about to ring - it literally rang seconds later.

I woke up, glad to be alive.

ps: this is the spot, based on the route I drove in the dream: Robin's Well

Video killed the bookworm

I love to read. I used to read a lot. In fact, I was never even a fan of podcasts, let alone videocasts. However, I realize now that I've been consuming most of my information through videos. I do occasionally take the time to read, although it's mostly email - specifically, there is one mailing list of sorts I'm subscribed to. Actually, make that two, but the second one has lost my interest, so while I'm still subscribed it just fills my inbox while I muster the courage to select-all and delete.

Anyway, back to the first one. An article caught my attention today, and I clicked on it and started reading it.

My attention was drawn by the headline, of course, which set this article apart from others in the newsletter like bonobos' use of combining sounds to produce more nuanced and complex expressions, and something about dinosaurs drinking water beside their prey at ancient water bodies(!)

I digress though. The article read like any other, until I happened to notice the name of the author. Sabine! She was the person who introduced me to nautilus, probably from a sponsorship embedded in one of her videos. And yes, I subscribe to her science news videocast. My mind instantly switched from "reading" to a simulated narration of the article in her voice, complete with her German intonation and characteristic facial expressions (she is a pretty good science videocaster, I'd say!)

The change in my reading experience stunned me. 

Reading may be efficient, but listening and watching people speak taps into our humanity... even if it's something as dry as competing theories for cosmic inflation, and the listening and watching is run by a wildly imperfect simulation in my head. 

It's no wonder video killed my inner bookworm. 

algorithmic complacency!

Ever since I posted my last blog post about the need and desire to create a new social network, I've been more conscious of discussing it with people who might be interested. Those conscious discussions seem to provide me with a bit of mental momentum towards my goal (or rather, the direction of my goal - I haven't really thought about it enough to actually define my goal in that regard). Imagine my surprise though, when "the algorithm" popped this video up on my youtube!

As the video wound on (and I dug into my dinner), I realized that I used to resist algorithmic complacency, until at some point, a switch flipped, and I stopped: I stopped reading every tweet, every email, every WhatsApp message. I think that switch flipped when the mental effort of curating every feed of information felt like a battle against that platform's intention to force feed me things of its (as opposed to my) choosing.

The problem I'm trying to solve suddenly both seems a lot clearer and a lot more daunting. It's almost like a junkie trying to get other junkies to collectively quit.

Time to close youtube and immerse myself into something non-algorithmic, for tonight.

social (and not commercial) media

It's been over 10 years in the making, but I have gone from guessing to being absolutely sure that the time has come for a new social media that is truly social and not commercial. It's an idea that's been brewing in my mind for a while. It needs to mimic human relationships: humans only speak one-one or in small groups, and sharing something involves repeating it, typically not verbatim. Human communication is typically verbal, and pictorial sharing is pretty limited.  Our time and social batery is not allocated by "engagement" or other clickbaity metrics, but by the meaning we derive out of the interaction.

It should be easier to create and maintain than the vast behemoths that pretend to be social media these days. I will get around to creating it soon.