Ever wonder where do our thoughts come from?
Like there’s always a common system out of everything. An input, process, output kind of thing. How every wire in our brain connects and or is connected to decode what IS. Just like how Letters that didn’t have value or meaning alone created words when connected with other letters. And words, sentences. Sentences, paragraphs, etc.
You get my point? Its kinda amazing. The process. How everything works the way it does. And of course the output. But i really don’t get where the every bit of input comes from before it gets processed by our brain.
Well anyway, it’s 5am here so goodnight everyone.
9 comments
Very nice and this is deep. You’re on to something
I don’t like computer metaphors for brains. They just don’t jive properly. Brains are more like a very compressed redwood forest. A redwood forest can be a single tree, all interconnected, with fungal systems acting as messenger agents, sharing nutrients with the tree’s root system. It grows and moves (very slowly) and interacts with its surrounding medium, spawns new trees that are really just different parts of the same individual, and sometimes it produces albino offspring that are vampiric and suck the life out of the rest of the forest.
This leads us to ask what is consciousness? It’s not just brains, nerves sending chemical messages, etc. If that were the case then we’d be able to synthesize consciousness by zapping a braindead person with neurotransmitters. Science has never been able to quantify consciousness. But if someone could figure out, and prove, where thoughts and consciousness come from, mayber we’d have a much better grasp on life, death and what happens before/after.
How do you know we can’t synthesize consciousness? It’s not something easy to pin down.
Actually this is one of those areas where proof would be easy. EEGs show activity when the subject is having “thoughts” (ie communication between brain cells). So take a braindead person, work your magic, and if any signs of brain activity show up on the EEG, there’s your proof that the brain is conscious. But no one has ever been able to work that magic. Otherwise we’d still have Tom Petty today.
I don’t mean limited only to within a braindead person. A braindead person is of course braindead for a reason – damage to the neural network, the physical parts that comprise a brain. It can no longer function even if the body is kept alive, so pumping neurotransmitters into the brain matter would not do much. The problem is, we don’t really know what consciousness even is, so we have no measure of what would be necessary to synthesize it, or whether it’s within the means available to us right now. For all we know, it just takes a bit of dopamine, a battery and some starter cables.
I’m not sure what your argument is. If you say humans can synthesize consciousness, show me evidence of a synthetically conscious being.
We agree that nobody knows what consciousness is, so how can you say scientists are able to synthesize what nobody knows? That’s like saying nobody knows what god is, but I think he’s hiding in my basement.
I’m not saying they can. I’m saying if we aren’t sure what it is, we can’t say we don’t have the capacity to do it. We spent a hundred thousand years not knowing what electricity is, while the means to both generate it and use it were right there, waiting for us to understand it.
Oh, I see what you’re saying now. We’re each talking in different tenses, using the same verb “can”. I meant: we can’t (present tense) synthesize consciousness. But you’re right: it’s possible that we can (subjunctive/future tense) synthesize consciousness.
Johnny can’t ride a bike [because he hasn’t learned yet].
Johnny can ride a bike [if he learns how].
Both true statements using opposite forms of the verb can. Don’t you just love the English language?