I think I figured out consciousness

...well, kinda.

1) Consciousness occurs only when there is a continual condensation of information - memory storing - which affects the future behavior in a feedback-loop-driven system (a human).

It is obvious enough, since if there wasn't any memory storage involved, there couldn't be thoughts nor consciousness. Consciousness could also be heavily tied to identity [citation needed].

2) Free will is either an illusion or extremely limited.

Since the brain can only process information it has already received, it can only function in the domain of input information. (le try to imagine a color that doesnt exist etc)

3) Consciousness is merely a symptom of sentience - not an active "decider" of action.

This one is more of a speculation as it is hard for me to think about it clearly.


So basically we don't exist. We are just a side effect. At least "we" in the sense as we know it.

Thoughts? Am I just falling for memes?

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There's a bunch of things that I noticed about your post, but here's one major thing that I think you need to answer:
>what is memory
You've used the concept of memory as a major component of your explanation of consciousness, but now you need to define "memory".
because just as people take for granted the nature of |consciousness" without really udnerstanding it, so too do we assume that "memory" is a self-evident thing, without actually getting into the nitty gritty of what it is.

As far as your ideas on free will and decision making go, I'd have to agree, perhaps for similar reasons as yourself. I think our commonsensical every day notions about identity and agency lose much of their meaning when you begin to question the unspoken assumptions that prop them up.
I'm actually really interested in talking about such things, but your post is very complicated and introduces a lot of different ideas, so this is all i have for now

>You've used the concept of memory as a major component of your explanation of consciousness, but now you need to define "memory".
You're right - ever since the computers started infilitrating our lives, the concept of "memory" got closer and closer to our intuition. However, that might help us deduce the precise definition of "memory" (heh heh, "memery").

Let's take a moment to go backwards from the wikipedian cyclic definitions of "memory" and "information" a little bit.
What is the simplest form of "memory" that can occur?
The most primitive form I can think of would be a state of the atom - I'm not educated in physics so I can't talk with confidence, but it seems to hold the basic properties we intuitively hold for "memory". However, an atom on its own can't have a 'state' - it only gains meaningful properties when interacting with the rest of the universe, so we have to take that into account. So one of the basic forms of memory is a state of the atom in relation to the rest of the universe. But this "state" of atom is not that meaningful for us. An atom's state is a simple mechanism with no (obvious) feedback loops, and doesn't really 'seem' like "memory" as we know it.

So when does a system stop being a "state" and start being "memory"?

Let's add a feedback loop. Let's say we have a more complex system that changes with the arriving input (it could be anything, from a simple digital computer to a plant) but has a feedback loop that makes new changes different, depending on what were the old changes. I believe such system could be said to have "memory". Some would argue that such "memory" would be meaningful to us only if we could access its information - but then again, brains fascinate us so much, yet there is still no way to access information directly from anyone else's brain except your own.
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Let's now suppose we have a system that includes "memory", but without a feedback loop. Since such a system's state depends only on the last input it has recieves, it has a "memory" but that memory is very short lasting so I believe it doesn't even deserve to be included in definition.

So we see, a system has a memory if its every state depends on previous states - which means it has a feedback loop of some sort (now we're taking the concept of time for granted, but shit, I'm not willing to go that far yet, chill out).

What is the fundamental property of such systems? What is the property that makes them "memory"?
It's the feedback loop and the number of states. Intuitively enough, a human memory is just a system with an enormous number of "states" and a complex network of feedback loops that feed it information all the time. Although, how it manages to sort all the information in a meaningful way is beyond me. But alas, I'm nothing but a humble state of a system.

So we have a definition:
- "Memory" is a property of a system to be in different states which depend on previous states and inputs.

Hope this wasn't just bullshit meme talk.

(2/2)

I think you're making the mistake again of using concepts without really investigating what they mean
>most privimitive form of memory is state of the atom
Does the concept of "memory" add anything to our understanding of the concept of "atom"? as far as i know, the deepest most sophisticated understanding of an atom involves a lot of physical theories and ultimately high level mathematics. none of these theories use the concept of memory. so in a very real sense, the idea of "memory" is entirely unnecessary to explain how physical processes at the level of atoms and molecules work.
I think that you might be using the idea of memory as a metaphor to understand physical processes, but in order for a metaphor to be useful, it has to be well defined to begin with. and we haven't even defined what memory is!

you don't need the concept of "Memory" to explain computers. it is true that we can talk about RAM and SSD being a form of memory, but that is simply because it's easier for most people to think of a computer as something that "remembers" info when they need it. but the actual operation of RAM and SSD is completely dependent on principles of electrical engineering and physics, which (again) do not need to invoke memory!
>feedback loop
now, i can't be sure if this is what you mean by "feedfback loop", but basically every dynamic system is a feedback loop
>what is the property that makes them memory
why do they have to be "memory"?
>"Memory" is a property of a system to be in different states which depend on previous states and inputs.
how does this definition add anything to our understanding of the universe? i understand what you're saying (i think), but on this basis everything is a memory (i think)

>bullshit meme talk
I admit that i'm confused about some of your ideas, but I'm super happy to talk to someone about such things, so i don't think it's bullshit :) you have to start from somewhere dood. we are all ignorant about certain things, and without talking about them we will never know how ignorant we are.

>I think you're making the mistake again of using concepts without really investigating what they mean
If you're willing to go down that rabbit hole, I am as well. As long as we're both putting effort into this. It's kinda hard to properly define things, especially when you can't be sure that even the concepts available for construction of definitions are well defined themselves!

>you don't need the concept of "Memory" to explain computers. it is true that we can talk about RAM and SSD being a form of memory, but that is simply because it's easier for most people to think of a computer as something that "remembers" info when they need it. but the actual operation of RAM and SSD is completely dependent on principles of electrical engineering and physics, which (again) do not need to invoke memory!
I believe we're walking the opposite paths - you're coming trying to simplify what we call "memory" to something technically describable, like a physical process. I believe such thing is impossible since memory is not a technical concept, it is too human, as you've said it as well. So I'm trying to construct a minimal model of "memory" to get to the core of what has, and doesn't have, a memory - hopefully to get a better understanding of the very concept.

>now, i can't be sure if this is what you mean by "feedfback loop", but basically every dynamic system is a feedback loop
So every dynamic system has a "memory". It's just that some of them are more accessible to humans than others.

>how does this definition add anything to our understanding of the universe? i understand what you're saying (i think), but on this basis everything is a memory (i think)
I kinda got to the same conclusion. But it is true, if we look at the concept of "memory" technically. What exactly is the difference between a sandstorm and a RAM, except that one of those is more accessible by us than the other?

>I admit that i'm confused about some of your ideas, but I'm super happy to talk to someone about such things, so i don't think it's bullshit :) you have to start from somewhere dood. we are all ignorant about certain things, and without talking about them we will never know how ignorant we are.
Thanks. I feel really stupid thinking about these things, without actually having some background in philosophy or something like that. I feel like my every thought is just reinventing the wheel for the hundredth time.

Your entire theory portrays human consciousness as a recording device only capable of referencing past experiences to weigh future outcomes. While this may be true for simpletons like yourself, please refrain from projecting your nihilistic worldviews on the rest of us.

>Your entire theory portrays human consciousness as a recording device only capable of referencing past experiences to weigh future outcomes.
I don't see the problem. Isn't that exactly what a human being is?

Unless you're baiting, then fuck off

>can't be sure that even the concepts available for construction of definitions are well defined themselves!
I feel that way too. But fuck it - down the rabbit hole we go.

>I'm trying to construct a minimal model of "memory" to get to the core of what has, and doesn't have, a memory - hopefully to get a better understanding of the very concept.
This sentence tells me that you have already assumed the existence of something called memory. For the record, I don't think that the statement "humans have memory" is a meaningful one. I think what we intuitively think of as "human memory" is simply an illusion that stems from the way we talk about things.

Maybe another example of something like this is what happens when you close your eyes and think of a dog. Someone might say "your brain stores pictures of dogs, and when you remember a dog, you're retrieving a picture of that dog". This statement might make sense to most people. But is it actually saying anything? Not really - "picture" is being used as a metaphor to describe the brain's way of representing information, and "retrieve" is a metaphor that suggest that this information is stored somewhere like a box, and the brain "opens the box" and presents it to your mind's eye. But this metaphor doesn't actually tell us anything about how the brain works! So the intuitive idea that the brain stores and retrieves pictures is entirely useless for understanding what is actually happening when you successfully imagine a dog with your eyes closed.

So now I have a question.
>I'm trying to construct a minimal model of "memory"
Can you describe, without using the terms "memory", "remember", etc. (I.E. without comitting the logical fallacy of begging the question) what you're trying to construct a model of?

>feedback-loop-driven system
everything else in your post is wrong.

when you sense yourself sensing yourself, or sense memories of your past self sensing itself, you are in a conscious state.

recursive processes like these are literally magic, a type of infinity which is as incomprehensible as infinite time and space yet many pay it no mind. In order for recursion to have any meaning there must be a base case or base layer (interpretter) which breaks the recursion. This is what is called the divine spark, shared among all conscious entities in the cosmos.

>Can you describe, without using the terms "memory", "remember", etc. (I.E. without comitting the logical fallacy of begging the question) what you're trying to construct a model of?
I'm trying to construct a model of a phenomena where certain events from the past can effect the events in the future.

I think I see what you're trying to say. I just described everything. What we call "memory" is only a special case of reality minding its own business, then? If that is so, where do we draw the line between memory and non-memory?

Or to change the side, how would YOU define "memory", anyway? Or the process of "remembering"?

Gee, move aside people, first year CS student coming through

Let me tell you what Consciousness is ... Bla bla bla Quantum Mechanics. Bla bla bla Information. Bla bla bla Anthropic Principle. Bla bla bla something about God. Bla bla bla existentialism. Bla bla bla metaphysical woo and other hippie shit. Bla bla bla Tree Kangaroos. Bla bla bla wishful thinking bla bla bla [DATA EXPUNGED] and bla bla bla something optimistic to make you forget that you will inevitably die.

And that's what Consciousness is... NO FUCK OFF!

My explanation of consciousness touches only elementary topics.

Believing in free will is for brainlets. Either all our actions are randomly determined or everything has been written in the books from the beginning.
And it doesn't really matter if we exist or not, we experience existence, and that's all existence has ever been defined to be. Being a side effect or illusion doesn't make existence any less real, because existence is precisely the illusion, and we are the process that produces it.

I'm glad the first place you chose to share your findings is on an anime image board. Quite prestigious indeed.

>In order for recursion to have any meaning there must be a base case or base layer
you're a fucking cs babby

>without actually having some background in philosophy or something like that
The flip side, I think, is that some people who DO have a "good background" often lack the ability to question the ideas they take for granted, precisely because all their ideas are backed up by respectable authorities! So being outside the system can be a blessing in disguise.
>feeling like you're reinventing the wheel
I think I know what you mean. For me, I usually get that feeling when I realize that the words I'm using to explain something to myself, are themselves poorly understood. The feeling that we "understand" something can be very illusory! I feel great about finally realizing something, only to notice that under closer inspection it's not as cut and dried as it appeared in my mind at the time.

>where do we draw the line between memory and non-memory?
let me ask another question: where do we draw the line between "right" and "wrong"?
I think there is no objective way to define morality, or justice, or right and wrong. they are concepts that derive ALL their validity from the unexamined feeling that something is right, or something is wrong. As far as I'm concerned, "right" and "wrong" (in terms of morality) are deeply rooted concepts that derive their meaning from a lifetime of being told to fear things which can cause us physical harm, and to value things which promote our survival. This is an absurdly simple way to put it, of course, but that's the gist of it.
The moment you stop valueing your survival, or fearing death, you may find you have no more use for "Right" and "wrong" as you used to.
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(2/3) (oops)
To go further with the example, if I hit you, you might call me a "bad man". but if you suppose that there is a particular reason I hit you (e.g.I thought you were trying to steal from me), then you have added another layer of complexity to your understanding, and now you can't just say that I'm "bad". Maybe now you think I'm just an asshole who's so paranoid about people stealing from him that he acts before determining the facts. But that begs the question, why am I paranoid about people stealing from me? Maybe it's because my drug addict parents would steal my piggy bank when I was a kid, and it set me up for a life time of fucked up responses. So now your idea of what I am has gone from "bad person" to "person with a particular kind of childhood that can reasonably be expected to result in social adjustment difficulties later in life". And so on, ad infinitum.

So maybe there is no reason to draw a line between right and wrong, because when you put them under the microscope, right and wrong might not even really mean what we think they do!

(3/3)
>explain the process of "remembering"
i think that, if I could explain what is happening when I'm having the conscious experience of feeling something I felt in the past (fuck - what do i even mean by "the past"? I assume that "time passes" but now I'm not even sure I have any rational basis for that assumption), then I could explain consciousness itself. but I can't explain how consciousness arises, so....

this isn't the best example, but think about what happens when you clink on a link on a webpage. when you click on a link, is the internet "remembering" what that link contains? or is your browser sending instructions via fiber optic cable to a server somewhere that tells the server to retrieve a certain file and send it back to your computer to be displayed in the browser? of course, I'm using metaphors like "sending" and "retrieving", but what is really going on are purely physical processes based on the flow of electrons and the modulation of electromagnetic waves.
now imagine your browser displayed the message "remembering...please stand by" whenever you clicked on a link. people might think "whoa, that's like what i do", not realizing that it's just a linguistic expression that helps you think you "understand" what's going on. but the feeling of understanding is something to always be skeptical of, I think...

Consciousness comes from the part of the brain that makes predictions. Having a greater understanding of yourself and your surroundings allows you to make better decisions for survival. Humans are the most intelligent partly because we are the most self aware. We can see ourselves in any situation the mind can imagine and we predict what might happen in each scenario, helping us make better decisions in the future.

tl;dr we are advanced prediction machines
youtube.com/watch?v=0GS2rxROcPo

He just has vague ideas
It will not be remotely considered research until it has been mathematized

I've been obsessing over sensation since I was 15 years old. My thought process can be somewhat similar to yours, but I've made some really profound realizations along the way.
Maybe we can bounce ideas off each other.

My ultimate belief is that sensation is an inevitability of interaction and arises in all things resembling a sort of computation.
This makes a lot of sense, but it's hardly close to the final answer.

I have notebooks and notebooks filled up with thought experiments on the matter over the years. The biggest problem is that I can't figure out how to mathematize it. I can't find anything concrete.

One question you might try to answer is this: what is the brain doing when it verifies its own existence though the observation of sensation? The fact that molecules can bump together and come to the conclusion, "I must exist" and produce that sensation. It is baffling.

Stay far away from philosophers
They are all quacks and utterly useless. If they wanted to be useful they'd philosophize about how to live our lives. But nowadays a modern day philosopher goes by the title of scientist.

>Consciousness is merely a symptom of sentience - not an active "decider" of action.
Yes we've got even evidence of that look up blindsight.
>Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind due to lesions in their striate cortex, also known as primary visual cortex or V1, to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see.
Watch this test they conducted on this blindsight subject. He's consciously blind yet he can wade through a corridor full of obstacles
youtube.com/watch?v=GwGmWqX0MnM
When asked about it after the experiment he said that he was just walking the way he wanted to, not because he knew anything was there, ie his consciousness tricked itself into believing that it was in control and it decided to walk down the hall in such a bizarre manner by squeezing close to the wall even, rather than the reality, which is the machine was running itself on autopilot even without conscious sight

This now raise an interesting question, namely why did we develop consciousness and what purpose does it serve? Why does our brain tricks us into believing our consciousness is the decider and the mover when it seems to be just an observer?

>

agreed. we have to first understand that consciousness is truly fundamentally an 'anomaly' in the classical physical sense, no known laws of physics either imply or require such a phenomenon.

you will only understand it once you can stop your thought process. which begs the question: if we are so smart, why cant we stop thinking? This has been a topic of fruitful contemplative research for at least 2561 years.

"Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being."

Yes, OP, matter and consciousness are inseparable. The only things that really exists is Ethernity. And since we're trapped in a box called our brain and live within categories of beginning and end we're not real.

You should research Anthropic principle, Open Individualism, Determinism and its derivatives, Unconscious mind(as to understand the illusion of "I' on the lower levels) and Ethernal Return by Nietzsche, the concept of Infinity and Eleatics.

thing*

quickfix

Eternity, Eternal*

jesus, my english limps

Whoaw, you figured it out user! Here you go!

>Why does our brain tricks us into believing our consciousness is the decider and the mover when it seems to be just an observer?
Yeah what a fucking tragedy

>Consciousness is merely a symptom of sentience - not an active "decider" of action.
It's both. It's job is to rationalize choice. People with mental illness that perceive reality different from normal people make different choices based on input that isn't purely mechanical i.e you need consciousness to interpret it.