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Comment by ktizo | Hacker News Reader

After hearing about those parasitic brain bugs that you can catch from cats I started to wonder if conscious awareness could be merely the collective experience of some kind of bug we caught that has just hitched along for the ride and that hasn't actually really got much of a control over anything really, but just believes that it is the creature it is inhabiting, because it is a bit stupid. Perhaps you could cure someone of it and not even be able to tell the difference. These are the kind of thoughts that keep me awake at night ;)

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That's funny, I had the almost same sci-fi scenario thoughts during one night. The thought of the nature of our minds being defined by a disease that we caught at some point in time and now completely identify with it, that that disease made us forget our true nature. It's pretty great as a sci-fi scenario, but I now believe it has a deep truth to it.

I later discovered the writings of Eckhart Tolle. According to him, we are diseased in the sense that we identify with our mind/ego, instead of realizing what it actually is: a tool. Part of the problem is we often don't know what exists underneath. We are 100% convinced we are our mind. But obviously we're not - if we were, we wouldn't be able to observe it. Once we realize we're not our mind, we're free of its control. Until we do, we're in a way, severely ill. We're actually not disfunctional in our true nature - but we're unenlightened.

At least that's what Eckhart Tolle says. I personally find it disarmingly logical - and reasonably easily provable within my perception, not to mention deeply liberating/changing. Finding out you can stop your thoughts and not only still be aware, but become the most aware you can be, that's quite a doozy of a realization.

> It's pretty great as a sci-fi scenario

I've actually read a short SciFi novel with that very premise, but I can't for the life of me remember the name of it. Something about the other sentient lifeforms in the galaxy not requiring sleep and being able to breathe cyanide, but humans were unique in that we needed to sleep, and that was because we were all infected by some sort of mind parasite that now saw its chance to expand to other lifeforms.

You're probably thinking of "Hostess", by Isaac Asimov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostess_%28short_story%29

Yes, that was it! Thanks!

>> we're not our mind

Okay, what does this mean?

"Mind" is a very poorly defined term, unfortunately.

To determine what you are or aren't, consider this for an exercise: You are a view point, yes? What you can observe is not part of your identity because you can observe it, and therefore it must be external to "you". This is obvious when it comes to things like your body parts; you could cut off your hand, but that wouldn't cut off a part of your "you-ness".

The interesting bit comes when you start to examine your mind itself. Normally, we think of our thoughts as part of our identity. But with a little practice, you can watch thoughts arise, at which point they seem more "separate" and less "you". I always liken them to those biplanes at the beach with a banner fluttering behind them.

So, if you can observe thoughts and not identify with them, then they're not "you". What makes up "you", then? The more you observe, the fewer candidates for "you" there are, no? ;)

Perhaps that is a definition of sentiency: being able to observe that which is "you."

Well, this would explain the internet's fondness for cat photos...

See, there's evidence and everything!

These are the kind of thoughts that keep me awake at night ;)

Then you probably don't want to read Thomas Ligotti's "The conspiracy against the human race". It's a philosophical and neuroscientific treatise on existentialism written by a lovecraftian horror writer...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Conspiracy-Against-Human-Race/dp/0...

That's a legitimate approach:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism

You may like the short science fiction story Learning To Be Me, by Greg Egan. The idea is that people put a microchip in their brain (the "jewel") that learns to mimic the brain's signals, so when the brain fails the microchip can take over.

The interesting question is: "am I the jewel?"

When I first read animorphs I thought the same thing. That maybe I was actually a yeerk controlling a human host and I didn't know it...

Isn't it kinda like .. in a way Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

He had this exo-body that he was able to hop in freely. The body was just a dumb machine that needed him to control. It was merely a tool, jet it had a head, harms, legs and can shoot missiles.

Well, we can't do that just yet. But in away, our bodies are just tools to that brain/consciousness uses to do things. If we loose a limb, we just build another one. Sure, we haven't mastered replaced limb awareness (touch, feel), but we're getting close. Like a machine, we need fuel (food), maintenance (doctors appointment, exercise), periods of rest and recovery (sleep).

I'm trying to figure out how sex, anger, and jealousy comes in, but we are essentially tools. And I guess the brain is really a complex OS that runs our bodies. Some brains/OS are, of course, have a better way of processing tasks/programming/apps than others.

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