> playing recursively with our thinking
I think this is key. The idea that we can not only feel thirst, or think about thirst, but also think about thinking about thirst!
I think this is key. The idea that we can not only feel thirst, or think about thirst, but also think about thinking about thirst!
The scarier concern is that consciousness is a useful intelligent behavior bootstrapping tool, but once we encode everything it has helped generate into cultural DNA or literal DNA it becomes an evolutionary redundant appendix-like organ that will atrophy in the coming generations (See Blindsight by peter watts)
By contrast, you see people trying to "explain consciousness" by telling a story that assumes consciousness. When someone makes a statement like "Consciousness emerges from mechanism X in the brain.", every observation that lead to this statement originated in someone's consciousness.
It's less obvious than, but completely analogous to, how it's impossible to decide whether we live in a "base reality" or some sort of simulation - everything you could say about this reality that we perceive is contingent on that very reality.