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Comment by egocodedinsol | Hacker News Reader

I remember thinking about this after reading Godel esher bach. The reason I don't believe it's clearly probable is that it's hard to imagine that a system that hasn't been forged under as much natural selection to have much intentionality. And it's hard to imagine consciousness without that.

It's also with considering that the US could be sliced along arbitrary boundaries and it probably wouldn't change too much. That alone seems like such a structural/functional difference that arguing for the consciousness of a system like the US on simialriry-to-brains grounds seems difficult.

Still, the strangest thing I've considered is: suppose that the US, or some other group we are a part of, like the galaxy, is conscious.and we get good evidence that it's true. Then disturbing it's function, or destroying it could kill that consciousness. It would be like killing God.

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Oh yes, with the ant colony called Aunt Hillary :) That and The Mind's I (an anthology edited by Hofstadter with Dan Dennett) were both a big influence on my thinking about this. I absolutely agreewith thepremise of this article and I've wondered for years why people like Roger Penrose insist on consciousness being the result of some hidden process at the quantum level rather than accept the possibility that consciousness is an emergent property of networks. I would need to go back and reread his Mind books now to re-familiarize myself with his arguments, though, I've forgotten the details by now.

I absolutely believe in universal conscioussness (as instances of networks across many different substrates running at different speeds and with varying topologies and so on). But whatever you do will disturb its function, and it will be relatively trivial in the overall scheme of things - to quote Peter Greenaway 'A great many things are dying and being born all the time.' If you can conceive of an entity like 'the United States' or 'humanity in general' being conscious on a different scale than oneself, then one can consider oneself as the superposition of a variety of different ideas of varying intensity, as a multiplexed signal whose sample rate is a function of the underlying cellular processes. 'You' may not be the sum of your networked parts, but rather the algorithm that defines the travesal of said network.

>Still, the strangest thing I've considered is: suppose that the US, or some other group we are a part of, like the galaxy, is conscious.and we get good evidence that it's true. Then disturbing it's function, or destroying it could kill that consciousness. It would be like killing God.

Obviously the most fun thing to think about. It's worth noting that "consciousness" is on a sliding scale from dim awareness to focused lucidity. Is my dog conscious? Probably not, but there's something there. How about a gorilla? The lines start to blur. Is it outlandish to ascribe to a large, distributed group, a fish-level of awareness?

"Is my dog conscious?"

I would say absolutely. But maybe we have a different definition of consciousness.

"Clearly not, he's asleep right now."

Consciousness in the metaphysical sense isn't really turned off when you sleep; otherwise you couldn't have dreams.

Sure, above was not serious commentary, but a joke interpreting consciousness in the other sense.

Assuming you're really awake and having dreams as opposed to your thoughts being reorganized in a way that you simply remember as vivid, real experiences. Even if you're conscious, that's only a tiny part of sleep (often REM). Being awakened otherwise is like just having missing time where there's a gap in conscious experience. As if it was off.

> "consciousness" is on a sliding scale from dim awareness to focused lucidity

assuming that all consciousness resembles that of humans. I'm guessing our tiny brains are capable of only a thin sliver of what is possible when it comes to apprehending and interacting with reality.

>> I remember thinking about this after reading Godel esher bach. The reason I don't believe it's clearly probable is that it's hard to imagine that a system that hasn't been forged under as much natural selection to have much intentionality. And it's hard to imagine consciousness without that.

I too thought of G.E.B. wasn't there a story in there where someone was talking to an ant colony? Not the ants, but the colony as a whole. I've long considered the similarity between cells:people and people:society. A society can have behaviors and a sort of personality. Consciousness seems a stretch, but not impossible. The thing I tend to think more about is cancer, or the fact that a person can pick a scab or that people with various psychological issues can harm themselves or parts of themselves (see cutting, eating disorders, etc).

Interesting that you brought up natural selection, since arguably countries do have some sort of natural selection, but it's fairly limited since they are restricted to some geographic area limiting the competition to neighbouring countries (at least until recently).

However the same restriction don't apply to corporations, and indeed those are heavily competing over their means of existence (money). Which gives an interesting perspective to the current tendency of large corporations to improve their own chances of survival by dodging taxes, influencing politics etc. In some sense it does seem like corporations have become 'intelligent' and are attempting to change their environment to suit them. I'm not too sure what the end result will be, but I fear it's unlikely to be beneficial to humans.

To stop this we may have to, as you say, kill "God".

I like the idea, though with corporations it's clear where the intentionality comes from: the CEO, the board, etc. It doesn't seem to "emerge" as much from lower level entities à la neurons. Not that that invalidates a group-level consciousness of course...

I would actually be fairly surprised if there weren't some neuronal mechanic that regulates and reinforces group thinking. I have my doubts that it is entirely the individual consciously observed and consciously declared will that constructs collective direction. Even little tweaks ... 'is this idea going to go over tomorrow in meeting, nah, better do this instead'. There is so much thought that goes on that is regulated partially by how happy one feels, how validated and accepted one feels. It doesn't necessarily mean it is in the best interests for the company, the country, or the individual. It just what they choose to accept as most likely true at the time of having to make an assumption about the way things are, and what that means for how one can direct oneself.

The claims about the U.S. should be able to apply to a corporation even better given the tighter organization, more clear intent, and how they collectively more in same direction more. Maybe he should write a paper on them. They're even legally classified as persons. ;)

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