Hacker News Reader

That's the question I was trying to answer. I don't think we can quantify or qualify what higher consciousness actually is, but my hypothesis is the perception of time as non-linear is what leads to it, similar how the perception of communication gave rise to Keller's self awareness.

View on HN

You can “perceive” time as non-linear all you want, but at the end of the day every effect we’ve found has a temporally-preceding cause.

The “higher consciousness” that we experience thanks to language is probably similar to how—for example—autistic savants can perform astonishing feats of mental math. You’re probably better off trying to understand their thought process and replicate it in a more neurotypical brain than you are trying to figure out how to think in terms of non-linear time in a linear-time reality.

Linear can mean two things though: cause-and-effect reality, which, sure seems to be the case. But also - uniform dilation of the experience of time. Which, arguably, we already play with day to day in many subtle ways, and in every conversation/writing/movie/fiction as we distill the thoughts and experiences of others from vastly larger times to our own understanding in the present. We even experience this ebb and flow dilation of the meaningful experience of time as we daydream, work, rest, and sleep - time is rarely experienced with equal attention to every second. It's a dance through the day. And there certainly seem to be (chemical, or meditative) ways to consciously tinker with that effect, or to be more or less skilled with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com