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Comment by forgotmypw17 | Hacker News Reader

A good place to start, if you are a firm skeptic and not willing to even attempt faith or your own empirical experiences, is a book called Entangled Minds. There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it, iirc several hundred papers in all. It firmly supports consciousness being in at minimum earthworms, and probably even ,,lower,, creatures.

Once you actually open your mind to this idea, you will begin to see it everywhere, and with practice be able to connect, communicate, and derive mutual benefit. It,s up to you to take the first step, though.

Of course, you can also choose to remain in the safe comfort of materialism. I know from experience that it can be a very lonely place. I wish you a happy journey, wherever it may lead.

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I am a non-materialist and I think consciousness is not a thing. So there's that position too. What do humans, mammals and earthworms have in common that AI or robots do not (as yet?) I would not say it is consciousness (because my position is there is really no such thing) but rather they have in common the fact that they are alive and subject to the Darwinian replication program and guided by common mental processes like, thought, emotion, memory, proprioception, sensation.

By non-materialist I mean I do not see matter as distinct from information. I believe the only thing that exists is information. What is information? It is structure and meaning and pattern and potential. Information is entwined with entropy.

Can you expand on consciousness not being a thing? You mean it doesn't exist at all or it isn't a physical thing?

I don't believe consciousness exists in a meaningful way in the real world. It certainly exists as a word in a dictionary and as something for philosophical types to have woo debates over. I think the word is vague term that signifies different somewhat independent things that living organisms have to a greater or lesser extent (memory, emotion, thought, embodiment, etc). I believe attempting to have a scientific debate about consciousness is kind of like asking how many angels could dance on the head of pin.

Of course you're conscious. It's simply a label attached to the phenomena going on in your head. Denying you are conscious is about as substantive as people with certain psychiatric disorders saying they aren't real.

>If we can think of something that is not objectively measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as opposed to it being a subjective opinion?

That you prefer chocolate ice cream isn't objective. But that you have a preference for chocolate ice cream is objective. The content of the conscious percept isn't necessarily real, but the fact that you are having what we call a 'conscious percept' certainly is real. Just because it is happening in your head, why should it not be real?

I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make. Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me. That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that the philosophy of empiricism is not complete.

>I find that a very strange statement for a supposedly conscious being to make.

I don't claim to be conscious. I am alive and awake and thinking and sensing, etc.

>Consciousness does absolutely objectively exist, or at least I can say it does for me.

This sentence appears to confuse subjective experience with objective reality.

>That its existence is not objectively measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist

If we can think of something that is not objectively measurable what suggests that it exists objectively as opposed to it being a subjective opinion?

Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-contradictory?

OK, Consciousness is a subjective opinion.

Are you claiming that subjective opinions do not exist, despite your own observations of your own subjective opinons?

Also, imagine you live in a box with a yellow ball. And you can speak to other people outside your box. They tell you they also live in a box with a yellow ball. You will never have proof that they actually have yellow balls in their boxes. And they will never have proof that you actually have a yellow ball in your box.

Would you say that yellow balls are merely a subjective opinion, and don't exist?

First you have to define what you mean by "exist." Of course every idea that can be conceived exists in some sense.

That does not mean its existence is realised or useful. Is it useful (consequential) and consistent that yellow balls exist? If yes, then they do. If no, then they don't.

> Can you define consciousness without invoking subjective conscious experience? You agree there is not evidence of objective existence and yet you say it objectively exists because you subjectively feel it does. Is this not self-contradictory?

No, I'm saying it need not be objectively measurable to be real. This is what I mean by empiricism being an incomplete philosophy.

Is there any measurement or objective fact in the world that you can become aware of except by means of subjective experience?

Hold your hand to a flame and tell me there is no experience that goes beyond the material world. It feels like something to experience pain. Why? That is the question here. To deny that there is such an experience is self deceiving.

How does believing that all things are information differ from believing all things are matter? Those sound just like two sides of the same coin to me.

Materialists see information as deriving (resulting) from a spatial - temporal - state distribution of matter or energy. Informational people see information as giving rise (causing) to matter and energy. I subscribe to the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis more or less and am sympathetic to Cyclic Conformal Cosmology. Thus cause and effect are reversed.

I always was more impressed on why information on the atoms (how interact between themselves) is not as researched as the matter itself, is truly fascinating.

We think we have it so hard with our 9-5 jobs and 2 weeks vacation.

Meanwhile, atoms have been working without as much as a fucking smoke break for literally billions of years! >_<

I have no doubt that lots of organisms are conscious, maybe even earthworms. And I certainly believe that I am!

My only point is that in the popular articles I've seen on consciousness, that discuss IIT, I have not, over many years, seen any description of a test of the theory, or even a statement of how it could be tested.

There's probably a hard limit to how much you can know about consciousness in general.

Say, for instance, that what IIT measures isn't consciousness but memory. It tells you that when you take general anesthetic, the IIT measure in the brain decreases. But it's hypothetically speaking possible that when you get anesthesized, you're still aware and feel everything that's happening to you (in the sense of having qualia), only that it never gets recorded to memory.

The result is the same: it appears, in retrospect, that you lost consciousness. But you can't prove that you actually did, only that your memory of the past behaves as if you did.

This seems fundamental, unless we through some future discovery can nail down what consciousness is. The consciousness-status of past me is just as opaque as that of other people.

I would be curious to see how the author would respond to this fairly detailed criticism of his book: [1] One excerpt from this amazon review goes "If you are impressed by statistics, blips on fMRI screens, taking correlations as proof of causality and meta-analysis as equal to replication, then you might like this book. If you are interested in what wild speculations parapsychologists are coming up with these days, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for evidence that psi is explained by quantum physics, you'll be disappointed."

[1] https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VIDRICPX3ROL/ref=cm_cr_srp_d...

The other day I was riding the train and a guy called me an idiot. Are you also interested in knowing how I responded to his claim?

why did you choose to post that particular review out of all the others? why not, for example, this one?

"Consider the possibly that classical physics is not only wrong but way wrong." "A wild ride through the data supporting psi. I was for many years a reductionist like Michael Shermer. However, after reading more and books like this, my mind has accepted the reality that we know very little about where we came from and what really drives our human..."

> Of course, you can also choose to remain in the safe comfort of materialism.

To me it seems that materialism (or physicalism or any monism) inevitably leads to panpsychism. If there's only one kind of substance, it's either conscious or it's not, so everything has consciousness or nothing does. Panpsychists go with the former, probably because they think they are conscious, material beings.

I don't follow... where does this argument fail when you replace "conscious" with "blue"?

The former is universal while the latter is limitation of perception.

There's probably an argument that can be made along those lines, but it's not self-evident.

> There is not a single claim made in this book which does not have a reference to a proper peer-reviewed paper attached to it,

I'm skeptical of this claim in general, there's a lot of research that either isn't reliable, biased or gets twisted to support a claim. Then this i think becomes pop science, low quality sounds realistic to me kind of things. When you have to emphasize "based on science" my bs sensor goes off.

Idk if anyone else feels that way, I feel like have to approach a lot claims skeptically in fields I don't know enough about.

well, from past experience, if i don,t address the ,,hard science,, aspect of it, i just get laughed at, especially at a place like here, where scientific beliefs reign supreme. that,s why i stress that fact.

i found it not only convincing, but also to have practical applications which are not difficult to arrive at with a little thinking.

if you are a well-intentioned tinkerer and hacker not limiting yourself to digital devices with a manual, you may find it intriguing.

How about a single neuron? After all, a single neuron is far more complex than a worm—just like a company is far less complex than the people who compose it.

Excellent point, and one that many fail to grasp.

Indeed, I’ve always suspected your observation may be the best definition of ‘life’ we currently have; namely, living systems are composed of parts that are more complex than the whole.

It’s a hard concept to articulate.

But, as you obviously know, the principle is obvious.. it doesn’t stop with the neuron; I would suspect the neurons membrane or its organelles are more ‘complex’ than the neuron itself.

Earthworms actually have a well developed nervous system, containing many neurons.

Yeah, but if this (below) is happening inside a single cell, doesn't it seem much easier to model a single worm than to model a single cell?

Inner life of a cell: https://youtu.be/wJyUtbn0O5Y

Great animation, thanks for sharing.

How? A worm is a whole multicellular organism. A neuron's just a cell, one that's specialized into a single function.

All a single neuron does is pass a signal to the synaptic cleft in response to a chemical or electrical signal at the other end. It's a simple subunit of a larger system.

Saying a single neuron is more complex than a worm is like saying a cat6 ethernet cable is more complex than a blast furnace.

I agree with the sentiment, but I think your selling neurons short. They do grow, develop and change over time as a response to their inputs.

Just because a structure is larger and contains complex structures does not mean the larger system is more complex. For instance, I can create a logic gate with some friends. The logic gate is way simpler than the people composing it.

Neurons can have millions of mitochondria [1], which they dynamically move about the cell. Neurons are like amoeba with dozens of pseudopods when young. Amoeba are more complicated than worms, in terms of degrees of freedom, no?

Check this video of fetal neurons movin' about. So cute! https://youtu.be/hb7tjqhfDus

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2016.0002...

A single neuron is not an independent self replicating organism so I would not say a single neuron is alive (on its own) per my definition, although it is part of a larger living creature.

Are people actually independent self-replicating organisms. We are all parts of a superorganism, no?

Each of our experiences are composed of the experiences of (billions?) of other people. We aren't islands.

Do you suppose neurons consider the super organism they are part of? No. So why should humans. Yes "we" are all fragments of the unified human experience, but our role, as individuals is to live as individuals.

Hmm, not sure I agree. I think our role is to create a harmonious global society. But to do that, we need to take care of yourself, our friends and family, etc.

And do neurons know about us? Well, they only know what they know. I think what they know could potentially be an empirical question. Some neurons are far more complex and connected than others.

The Amazon description says: "Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab test".

Actually as far as I understand we know that telepathy does not work, and even more so with psychokinesis. Did you read the book, can you point me to the scientific evidence of psychokinesis?

I can point you to probably the last time Radin's work was ripped apart on HN, at least.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233

fair enough, i,m not here to promote or defend his work, you,re free to think what you want. i shared what,s been helpful and enlightening for me personally, and it,s up to you to perceive it in your own way.

yes, i have read the book, and it is full of detailed descriptions of experiments with references.

as a hacker, you should have little difficulty finding these and reviewing them.

unfortunately, i have not the time or motivation to be your personal research assistant.

Well, then, it's a real shame that he never tried to claim the Randi Prize.

Why would he give a rat's ass about someone's hostile contest?

Because he might like $1M

I am familiar with the contest, and I think it is about as winnable as getting a claim paid on the cheapest insurance policy. It's designed to promote an agenda the contest designer is strongly attached to, not as a truth-seeking device.

Is there a good podcast or Youtube video for starters? Highly sceptic of the idea and therefore intrigued.

As mentioned, I've not found a good accessible podcast or YouTube video on the matter, so maybe that means it's up to me to make one. It's not my forte, so I don't know when that will happen.

However, here's an experimental method you may find helpful in your quest for knowledge: Find a creature, any creature, who appears in your life somehow... a cat, a dog, a worm, a rat, an insect, anyone you notice.

Rack your brain as hard as you can until you begin to see some semblance of feelings and desires in them, as well as a way in which you can help them achieve it. Now, go ahead and do that thing, and do your best to ensure that it works out.

When you're done, start paying attention to what happens to you in your daily course of existence. If you're into mindfulness meditation, here is where you apply that.

If you like, please return here and report your results, I'd love to hear from you! If the thread is already closed, you can find a way to contact me via my profile.

You can start with the last time Radin's work was savaged in the comments of an HN article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26066233

first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win :)

not everyone who gets ignored, laughed at, or attacked ends up winning

sometimes they just end up ignored and/or laughed at

FWIW, I try not to argue anything I have not personally experienced with my own senses... Thank you for interacting with me.

not that i am aware of, sorry.

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