Sam Harris on Consciousness
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- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
- Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Sam Harris: Consciousn...
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Sam Harris is an author, podcaster, and philosopher.
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Funny how consciousness is trying hard to explain itself albeit with utmost difficulty
Haha 😂 just like A.I 😳
I have my doubts as to whether many people are actually conscious. Especially some of my family members.
Lex is making the very common mistake of confusing complex thought with consciousness. "God's language is silence, everything else is a poor translation."
Lex ain’t as deep as he comes off
@@kend7597 I doubt either of you are as deep as lex at all. 🤣
@@BuddhaCatt Take high doses of DMT, and you will find out very quickly that knowledge is like the internet, available to all, already understood. In this sense, there is no complexity, and the struggle which defines complexity, is the struggle of thinking through this filter. I could also describe this as a governor, which is removed on high doses.
u cant just say thst god exists
@@thecar4306 But can you say there is a creator(s)? Intelligent design is all around us.
Get Rupert Spira on that would be an amazing conversation!
Joscha Bach’s take on consciousness is my favorite.
'brains like ours' sounds like a great movie 2:30
Lex’s intuitions on consciousness sound honestly like an arts student trying his hand at advanced mathematics.
Absolutely. It's ridiculous how stupid he sounds.
I agree. He sounded very confused. Hopefully this talk helped though
Agreed. There were a couple of times where he misinterpreted what Sam explainedm and I was scratching my head. I thought I missed something, but your comment confirmed that Lex was a little off in this one. Admittedly, its a bit difficult to grasp these concepts if you don't study the subject that often. Either way, great dialogue.
Great analogy and I agree! At 6:45, Lex starts saying _"our knowledge of mortality could be the very thing that creates consciousness"._ If this was indeed the case, then no one should feel bad if you were to poke a baby with a pin all day because babies don't have the knowledge of mortality and therefore are not conscious to feel any pain.
@@irrelevant2235 feeling pain is different from being conscious.
If you have ever done a big dose over 5 - 7 g you realize that all that is .. Is being conscious. I feel like consciousness exists to design the world to become whatever it needs to be
Having experienced this many times. I would say we are consciousness, which is normally filtered in order to participate in the structure. These doses unlock the filter, and we get to experience more of the macro consciousness. This is the feeling of everything.
@@rappinron1384 well said. We do live within set blinders and parameters to exist in a more functional way. Glad I'm not crazy and happen to known the biggest secret of all. I am
@@Andybility but yoy said whatever the world needs to be like there is somthing it needs to be?
@@thecar4306 it needs to be something, i cant really word it as good as terrence mackena did when he talks about it..
@@Andybility is there a video your talking about? i would like to watch it
I subscribe to the new age-y idea that we are conduits for consciousness and knowledge rather than owners of it. I like to think that everything experiences consciousness on some level and perhaps in different mediums. I think humans are too attatched to awareness of self. We are so obsessed with our own timelines.
very insightful!
I've heard it likened to a radio being tuned to a certain frequency to pick out the signal present in the air. Like our brains are the receivers for some cosmic field of consciousness.
I would counter that it's perfectly reasonable to focus on the near past, the now, and the near future, in your vicinity. I'm not sure where I am on it's nature. But it's true that some thoughts do originate in a way we understand
The concept of consciousness is being confused with awareness. Consciousness is a constant awareness is not.
Yes however from my point of view consciousness is constant whereas awareness is not.
The better term for discussion is perception.
Start by defining consciousness will ya? How can we discuss whether or not something is conscious if we don't even know what we're talking about here? If you google it, consciousness is being aware and responsive to ones surroundings. A tree is conscious then. I've explored this topic primarily by listening to a lot of experts in the fields that seem relevant and also thought about it as I've aged, and my conclusion for now is that consciousness, the way we think of it in human terms, is simply a mystical label we use to describe our ability to experience having an experience. Or maybe more to the point, marvelling at our ability to marvel at ourselves (always gotta include that narcissism if you wanna peg the human psyche). Meaning, it's just a cognitive layer somewhere above the basic awareness that is needed to experience anything at all. So this means that if an AI is smart enough to experience itself experiencing things, then it has a self and is conscious (by the human definition) and permanently turning it off would indeed be murder and experienced as murder by the entity. I have not heard a single thing to date that implies that the rest isn't just mumbo jumbo.
Your response to anti mumbo jumbo is by commenting with mumbo jumbo
There is no definition of what it is, only what it isnt.
@@sb_dunk I get what you're saying and you're probably right. However, I think we shouldn't have to explain what they mean for them, they can do that themselves. And the fact that they haven't is in my mind at least an indicator that they are purposely eluding the question a little. I think they do this for several reasons, some being quite distasteful or slippery. Thing is that "consciousness" is a term that we created. It doesn't have to be more complicated and mysterious than it's original definition (which is awareness, which, again, doesn't require a human brain) That we struggle putting into words how awesome our minds are (human centric narcissist style) doesn't have to be sorted under this word that already has an established meaning. And perhaps by forcing them to come up with a new description, they'll be forced to publicly admit that they're really working with a different set of parameters. I mean, the word consciousness is a joke word by now in certain brainy circles. People know what's going on, it's not THAT hard to analyse. But the show must go on. Thanks for your input.
@@sb_dunk Some valuable input. I think maybe we risk talking past each other a little, and that's my fault. The point I'm trying to make isn't that we can't discuss sentience/awareness/consciousness whatever we might call it, in all of its forms, but rather that much (not all) of this media driven content uses consciousness as a mysterious buzz word to garner attention, which we know is worth a lot of money and more, without anyone really trying to corner themselves with regards to being part of a phenomenon of using a word in which the problem may lie as much in its varying definitions as anything else. My point is that we need new words to describe our ability (and love for) experiencing experiencing ourselves. We are robbing all other forms of life of _their_ forms of consciousness in order to further the fixation of the human centric perceived value of the expressions of our particular form of consciousness. Like I stated in the OP, this whole topic has to start by agreeing on definitions, otherwise we're just bumbling around in haziness and ulterior motives that can be repeated endlessly but never gets us anywhere.
@@sb_dunk Thank you kindly. To answer your "so what", we would need that definition again. Regardless, if we for example define it by the AI being self aware (and thus developing an ego), I don't see how that would help. But this is part of the Lex/programming thing, and of that I know even less. What does intrigue me though is the exact nature of this self awareness, the ego development and narcissism. My mind goes to a 3400 year old text (Genesis) where the godhead, I guess was apprehensive let's put it that way, of granting humans the kind of self awareness that enabled them to self examine and consequently become entitled asshats (but you know, also not automatons or whatever their previous mental state might have been). Thanks again for your contributions to an interesting and pleasant discourse.
I love you, Sam Harris!!!
“You can interrupt consciousness with general anesthesia and ask the person, what was that like?, and they will answer, “I don’t know, I don’t remember anything.” I think consciousness is of two forms. (1) primitive consciousness, based on our homeostatic mechanisms originating in the brainstem that tell us when something is going wrong - we are in pain, thirsty, can’t breathe, etc. That awareness is based on inborn memory (set points) and is a higher-order reflex, not unlike stepping on a tack and withdrawing your foot. There is no doubt we are conscious when we “feel” something - pain, joy, sadness, fear, and so on. Those are states in which those emotions occur in the context of some internal or external situation associated with the feeling - injury, orgasm, being attacked, etc. But we can also be conscious when we are simply aware of thinking about something - like for instance, the question “Am I conscious?” What is common to all these situations? Memory. Self-refection. “Conscious” self reflection, as in thinking about whether to move to Idaho, or seeing a dog attack you and knowing instinctively you need to fight or flee. Instinct is a form of evolutionary memory, and works the same as ordinary memory in terms of providing a context for whatever situation you are in, the information your eyes and ears and nose and skin provides about what is going on in the real world - both inside and outside of you. That is why consciousness is difficut to define, because the two forms of conscious experience seem so different - but functionally, in terms of survival, they are not.
One of the greatest clips I’ve had the chance to see
If you want a rabbit hole to jump into, interview Daniel Tammet. He is a very high functioning savant with an amazing ability for mathematics and language without using the common methods, and, unusually, the ability to eloquently describe how he thinks. He has synethasia and "sees" numbers and words as colours, shapes and textures. I'f love to hear his thoughts about some of these questions.
Conciousness is your body AND mind. Plus all the galaxies in the universe. We are all one.
8:20 Sam’s definition of consciousness: the fact that things seem any way at all
Should be using the term perception. This better describes the experience and would allow for a more concise discussion.
Why polarize it so much: panpsychism versus consciousness as "side effect hack"? If we just plug consciousness in as one of the fundamentals, along with spin, charge, energy, etc. ... we have a less "this or that" approach. Like wave-particle, those oversimplifications fail.
I’m very conscious that I used to be Mormon. I woke up at 37 (thank the fking stars). If I could have breakfast with anybody, it’d be Harris. Thank you, and Hitchens, and Sagan for turning to me to truth and truth seeking. In reality I still have time and the ability to grow and to influence others now and in the future, especially my intelligent, high IQ daughters who are and will continue to learn the pursuit of truth (truth with consensus) and how to critically think - not being taught what to think, but HOW. TY Lex, for this.
Why leave the Mormon church?
@@joe2249 if you can tell me how many married women Joseph Smith married and of those how many of those husbands were on church missions, how many women he married behind Emma’s back before he finally told her, and what number was Emma Smith in sealing to him (not the first), if the church and its leaders supported the Civil Rights movement, and wether or not they use electric shock therapy to shock the gay out of homosexuals at BYU in the late 70s, then I’d gladly answer you!
@@rz2838 So, you're saying that a Church run by sin-ridden mortals needs to be perfect to teach ANY true doctrine?
@@joe2249 I’m not talking about Joe Dirt…more like Ron Hubbard-lite, but someone purportedly in direct communication with God and also purports to be worthy of it’s authority, you should maybe able to hold higher standards. In prophetic form, Brigham Young stated, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.”
No skin off my hide if you want to keep singing “Praise to the Man” and indoctrinate mere babies with songs that say “Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,
Follow the prophet; don’t go astray.
Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,
Follow the prophet; he knows the way”.
Me and my family are much happier, healthier, and life is much less painful for us and creating an environment much less toxic outside of the church than in. If it’s the opposite for you, awesome!!! Cheers mate.
@@joe2249 and if the “true doctrine” of which you speak is celestial polygamy and polyandry…and that you’ll be a God one day, then whatever floats your spiritual boat✌🏻
This is a rehash of what the Buddha figured out in Dependent Origination 2500 years ago, but he would say there is something else that underlays consciousness : Nibbana.
How do you imagine that would work?
@@janhradecky3141 I don’t know how it works, but you can verify it by experiencing it for yourself. It’s called Cessation (nirodha-samāpatti). There is no “you” left to experience it, and only after the experience does one know it happened.
@@rogerhiduk9384 Nirvana sounds just like another experience in consciousness. Perhaps an extraordinary experience, but not like something that would be more fundamental than consciousness.
@@janhradecky3141 It is difficult to talk about because of the subject-object split inherent in language. Nibbana is not an “experience” it is the ground of all experience, from which all experience springs. Niroda Samapatti happens after consciousness and is realized only after coming back.
As a person who learned mindfulness from you Sam, I would love to know as an honest question, what did you learn from those four conversations with Jordan Peterson? Much love
He probably learned that Peterson is terrible at defining God and twists the meaning of words to make them mean whatever is currently convenient to him.
@@janhradecky3141 this a comical analysis of Peterson. Straw man at its finest. You obviously do not have to agree with him but he is a very high level thinker.
@@conner3323 How is Peterson not terrible at defining God? The answer he gave to Sam during their discussion was ridiculous.
@Mike Pure truth in your words.
Can we not drag that charlatan into every conversation pls
I am conscious of the fact that I do not know what consciousness is
Consciousness is your awareness. What’s hearing you think? What’s seeing what you’re seeing? That’s consciousness. It’s your awareness.
I feel like the "self" truly does sit at the core of the brain, it's the center of a network of energy that by feedback alone can detect ITSELF. It's simple analog intelligence emerging life.
Can we push this idea further?
Sounds like you cracked the case. Gimme a shout out when you receive your Nobel Prize.
The self doesnt exist.. Its just an illusion created by your consciousness
@@imnotabird1118 correct, only in psychedelics, where you confront this "self" you're looking for, only to realize there is no self, the self is a simpler concept perhaps for the animal's convenience which is the true case.
The material universe doesn't exist.. Its just an illusion created by your consciousness
The moment a structure is aware of it's existence and capable of interacting with it's environment it's conscious. If either of those two components are present consciousness exists, preferably both. Our definition between individuals differs. But that's solely based on the idea that we have no way to insure that others truly experience reality exactly the same as we as individual biological creatures. Most people you ask will view the concept differently, but those two factors remain.
Good summary. I generally focus on the first, but the second helps.
There is an experiment where an experienced meditator focuses his intention on a remote location where. there is a double slit experiment, and when the meditator "sees" into the experiment the waves collapse into particles. A similar test could be done with an AI and see if it actually is conscious.
Bullshit
that is not how it works. in reality consciousness doesnt collapse the wave. the measuring tool does so. so a machine would need to use the measuring tool too, which would collapse the wave function.
@@KanonHara Its not the machine, if you capture the data and dont "look at it" and destroy it, the result is an interference pattern. Its not the device.
@@okoiful but "looking at it" entails using an electron microscope, this is what collapses the wave pattern. a machine could do that.
The so called ‘GOD’ that religions and society has been paying homage to for all these years, is actually ’CONSCIOUSNESS’
Who figured?? 💯
I'm not sure that Becker said that death creates consciousness.
As I remember he only argues that death creates meaning in consciousness but not existence of it.
We are conscious of death and that is the fundamental driving force of our life as well as instinctual awareness of it, in subconscious.
But maybe it's Lex's conclusion that soul lives on after death, being immortal in our physical bodies is no way of having consciousness in the first part which maybe concludes the argument for reincarnation, that we can be only conscious if our soul touches a body.
It's fun how Socrates explained a soul in a similar way of charioteer allegory.
Every soul consists of reason and two horses black and white that symbolize nobility and untamed desires.
Every soul follows one of the gods of Greek mythology and strives to reach the answer to what it truly is.
Each soul that takes in as much of the answer to what it is settles in a human body.
At 6:45, Lex starts saying _"our knowledge of mortality could be the very thing that creates consciousness"._ If this was indeed the case, then no one should feel bad if you were to poke a baby with a pin all day because babies don't have the knowledge of mortality and therefore are not conscious to feel any pain.
Okay, a baby doesn’t know the word “mortality”, but it knows that it doesn’t want to die. This is why if you throw a baby into a pool, it will instinctively hold its breath. Or why it cries when it’s hungry.
Si it's ok to kick and punch an unconcious person?
Intill u are 9-10 years old your personal Consciousness are created and formed. So....
If consciousness is this fundamental thing and it’s just memory that is interrupted then does that mean you feel everything under anesthesia or does that stop the processing of pain as well. If all processing was stopped then what would that feel like if somehow consciousness was still there. If you aren’t receiving input for the senses and you aren’t thinking then is there some low level “feeling” or just nothing
Specter PAR
I have been having this exact same thought but haven't got a convincing answer yet.
As far as I can tell, conscious ceases to exist in that state.
@@TheJeremyKentBGross thats what im thinking. Sorta like what i expect of death.
Doesn't some of this confuse conscisousness and self-consciousness? Rudimentary consciousness is just sensing and reacting with the environment .... much later a meta conciousness and what its like to know and be aware of our consciousness is layered on.
Different layers, I suppose.
wait, its unclear to him whether fish are conscious or not? wtf
How are we sapouse to know
Figured it out...
I have to be honest, I don't understand why people overcomplicate the idea of being conscious. I mean Sam himself has studied the effects of subconscious thinking in relationship to when we make conscious decisions and found that the brain has to think before we are even aware we are thinking. Which highly suggests a complete lack of free will. And honestly, it makes sense, it's sad to think about just being a bunch of baby-making machines that act on a complex set of instincts driven by emotional values... but that's what we are lol. Our words are our actual thoughts if you think about it but they are not the same thing as our consciousness. What are we the moment we breathe life into this place as babies? Unconscious? You can't remember all the days of your infancy and why is that? It's because your brain takes time to develop its values; sights, sounds, smells touch... all of these senses are neurological inputs that have to have an instinctual fight or flight response value attached. Most babies choose "cry their ass off".
AI is going to have to be related to emotional response if we are going to actually label something as conscious. And if you think about it even deeper this is a bit of a conundrum because emotional responses do NOT have to be rational. And I fear if we create an AI with an intent to mimic human consciousness we will unwittingly create an entity that will desire to survive, and just like humans when things wish to survive they FIGHT to survive.
Sometimes I wish I could sit down with Lex and just discuss this topic from an input-output level, because from my perspective it doesn't seem all that complicated. But it would be nice to learn the pitfalls and where people are having difficulty in the world of AI construction. Although I'm not an engineer lol... so it would probably be a very boring conversation for lex >
You sound like a physicalist. Do you have any good arguments in support of physicalism?
@@janhradecky3141 Well the importance of physical is just observation. Behaviors need to be acted out in physical ways in order for them to be measured. The idea that we should speculate about things we can't quantify i find to be a fools errand. We open the door to subjectivity being the basis of anything at our paril.
@@IntrepidOnce Subjectivity already is the basis for everything. Everything any person perceives is a product of their subjective interpretation. If you believe that there is an objective physical reality, you believe so on faith. Even if you would take a million scientists and have them observe and verify a certain phenomenon and they would all agree on the same conclusion, the conclusion would still be subjective because each of those scientists is looking at things through their subjective lens.
@@janhradecky3141 OK, well you let me know know how subjective you feel jumping out of a 3 story window...
@@IntrepidOnce I'm not saying that everything is subjective, therefore it's impossible to die. But again, even if you had a million scientists observe me jump out of a window and kill myself, that would still be just their subjective interpretation, because they have no way how to start with their subjective interpretation and magically get to an objective fact. What science calls an objective fact is in reality just a subjective interpretation that a bunch of scientists share. So making any truth claims, such as "we are just a bunch of baby-making machines that act on a complex set of instincts driven by emotional values" that imply physicalism is stupid. Science can't tell us what's true, it can only tell us what's useful.
I think passing the Turring test will be a lot easier for the future nature of artificial intelligence, and I think AI will take into account more aspects of life than what humans ignore as not being conscious or a part of the conscious relationships. Which will make them "more" conscious of us than we may be for ourselves. And it will be able to bond over more and make more conscious relationships than us and surpass our expectations of what can be communicated through the conscious "mind" minding its business.
Lex is the man!
Reality is information yeah? what if our reality had no information and no existences of understanding time and the ability of storing it, recalling it, playing it back and use it in so many levels the way we do. Would we still be conscious and aware if we couldn't do this (Complete Emptiness)? i think when you understand life and death, reality kicks in...is it really the end or the beginning of something better. I think consciousness is a tool pushed by emotion. Lets debate and combined minds.
See: The University of Virginia School of Medicine, Division of Perceptual Studies.
Conscious seems to be more gradient. I think if a living thing can differentiate itself from its environment, it has some sort of consciousness. It’s probably not contemplating its place in the universe, but it reacts to the environment.
Si, You are considering conciousness only on regard to a high regulatory nervios system, brain cortex function as an example.
For me all that matters is subjective experience. A nail isn't experiencing anything so we don't feel bad hammering it into a wall. An animal obviously is experiencing the world so we feel bad for hurting it.
Reflection, self awareness, these are all matters of intelligence. I don't care how smart an AI appears to be I want to know if it's alive and subjectively experiencing the world.
Sam Harris, is clearly expressing skepticism about the possibility of computers achieving true consciousness. Unlike "computing", consciousness is all about perception/experience. You'll need to modify the definition of consciousness to get anywhere with the other line of thinking . A useful discussion to have regardless.
Huge mistake to confuse (phenominal) consiousness with meta consiousness. You are phenominal consious about blinking your eyes and breathing, but you are not nessecary meta consious about that. Meta consiousness is a re-representstion of an experience (thougt about thought). So you do not have memerories about being born because you where not metaconsiousness, but if you pin a baby with a needle you will get an reaction because there is phenominal consiousness.
A good language is one that allows expression of anything. A bad language is one that is very limited in expression. The English language is somewhere in between.
I'm actually building rokos basilisk.
Sam is very intelligent analyser. WENDY fridman
Hmm, I think part of the issue is that, the easier assumptions about Reality bias one to think, that there is an axiomatic logical hierarchy from simple to complex. But why would the essence of reality fundamentally bias anything - it's not obligated to. Seems more reasonable to assume, that any entities of reality are essentially holistically complete to start with, in terms of parsimony. Then via some parsimonious decomposition, one recovers ever more seemingly fundamental aspects from the whole, even though the initial whole was the only "real" fundamental aspect. Similarly with consciousness. It exists in some complete meta sense, not specifically aligned to anything, which not coincidentally inevitably decomposes and maps to seemingly fundamental constituent elements. But by definition, even with all the basic elements recovered, no reduction can ever capture the ineffable oneness that just exists, because this essence necessarily proceeds it ontologically. This is not to say consciousness is some fundamental aspect of things, but that more generally at any level anything can be construed as irreducibly whole in a relative sense. I don't think underneath the hood Reality really cares one way or the other what's fundamentally simple or complex, nor could it even construe to care....
it doesn't turn 'on' 'after' birth
can you have consciousness without imagination or vice versa?
I don’t think you can
What if consciousness is just an intentional stance and that there is nothing special about it. There is nothing that it is like to be all. Any creature that can take a mental stance against anything can be considered conscious at some level. The mechanism is irrelevant .
The issue with that (or not issue depending on how you look at it) is that it kind of forces your hand to adopt a certain type of panpsychism. Essentially that all matter is conscious to varying degrees, and the complexity or contents of consciousness just scale based on the information processing complexity of the physical substrate. Otherwise, if we acknowledge that some things are conscious but some aren't, we need to explain how a particular assortment of physical matter can give rise to subjective experience - this is known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness, as coined by David Chalmers.
@@Pheer777 To make clear an intentional stance for me is information system that models a set of internal and external inputs and produces a response. The system can be fixed biologically or highly malleable. So no matter cannot be conscious in of itself and yes it does make a lot of things like computer systems conscience which from a hardwired perspective but not human. For human consciousness you would need all human state data. Consciousness or the feeling of it in human terms is just a model output of a very complex information system. The report (verbal output in this case) is just an illusion of mind.
@@richardnunziata3221 The problem with this perspective as far as I'm aware is that even if consciousness or mind as we think of it is an "illusion," something is still there to be fooled by the illusion. It's perfectly reasonable to say that there could be a computing system that just occurs "in the dark" so to speak, so I don't think it necessarily follows that self-referential information processing has to result in some form of consciousness.
@@Pheer777 the "something is still there to be fooled" is the illusion it's just another system. The brain is highly recurrent producing and consuming information and generating motor actions like speech. Which then become inputs to the systems. There is nothing else, nothing to be like.
@@richardnunziata3221 I don't agree, since I think the hard problem of consciousness is a legitimate problem to be solved and subjective experience can't be reduced to information processing, but I understand where you're coming from. At the end of the day there really is no clear answer at this time so hopefully we can figure it out in our lifetimes. Good talking with you.
Bernardo kastrup would give an amazing answer .
consciousness creates conceptual confusion
Let’s gooo
I feel like I need to have that experience at least once. The cannabis we grow here is Tabaco compared to what these people are taking from what I gather.
We always talk about artificial intelligence that will be smarter than humans however the problem is no one's actually working on that. People are working on aspects of AI and robotics but no one's actually working on that working on that would require us to all have to work together. I doubt that ever happens!
I doubt that it will never happened, but will happen at some point but might be a very long time if our species last for another 500 years or so idk. Just my guess/opinion.
We have a sense-of-self. We don't need a self.
Brothers, can anyone please explain to me how one can be atheist after feeling one with everything on a heavy dosage of mushrooms or similar? I don't understand this about Sam
I had a mystical experience without psychedelics where I felt the "All is One".. That made me ditch atheism, so I have no idea why he is still riding that horse.
It wasn't heavy enough
what came in place of atheism after your psychadelic experiences?
I have had a few of those myself but I dont see how they would bring me closer to theism.
@@SvjetaakJEDNA If you still see theism the way fundamentalists do, then it will never bring you closer. I now know that all is one, and that consciousness transcends space and time. I also believe that you can align yourself with the natural flow of the universe (some call it walking with god) to maximize your potential. Basically, since I was 15 I hypothesized that the universe could be conscious because we are just clumps of matter whose parts communicate with each other, and we too are conscious. I now believe that to be true, because in my mystical experience I became one with that cosmic consciousness.
P. S. You should also look into Jungian archetypes and the archetype of the Self.
@@SvjetaakJEDNA I can say many things about this, I'll say a few, first of all, one needs to ditch the anthropomorphic view of God, Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, anyONE. God simply can not be that small. And it most definitely can not be easy to define... It is bigger than that, and way more complex than that. I still don't know what it it's , or how it looks even in my own head. So I cant describe something I can't even picture... So bear that in mind.... I think he is a force... or some sort of energy, besides being many other things at once... You can't see it per se, but you can feel it if your "sight" is right. Or only if you dare to see it. Here's how I saw him: I was having a very egotistical tantrum with myself... Then I asked "myself" why should I bother with anything?? Why should I care about anything or anyone? What do I have to thank for? I was a lazy manchild, underdeveloped, underacomplished, with depression, had no future at that time... What should I give thanks for? Then it all started.
The meal I had that day. And the day before. And the one before that one. The system that, corrupt at it is, provides me with all sorts of flavors at little cost. Then I started to see, how little We all do, for such a huge system to work, the lights , the internet, the walls, the furniture, the heath systems, the air conditioning, the vehicles, the roads, the threes, the air itself, my mother's embrace, my father's blood, the things he taught me, my witt's, my place of birth, the friends I've had and met, my enemies, the people from whom I've learnt most, the elderly, the incapable, the young, the bold, the strong, the hard times, the strength of people who outlasts said times, the virtue of those who should have just sold themselves, but didn't . The mistakes I've made, for no other reason than my own stupidity.all the people I've helped in all my years in small and big ways. All the things I've seen, all the stories I've heard, all the nurishment I've been fed. All the things I've had to do, just because life put me in the right wrong place . All the smiles I've seen. And on top of it all, two things reigning over all the others. Truth and Love. Love for the Truth. True Love. Both things are the same, but carry out different duties. But if ones eyesight is right, one can honestly say. No matter how bad things get, our love for truth keeps saving us. I dare not say I can define what God is. I dare say however, there's something that has ALWAYS been with me. Holding me by the hand. And I've been blind, naive, spoiled, stupid, narcicistic, untrue, and he has put up with it constantly , and still has given me a way back home. I dare not say he is not there anymore . I just can't.
💯
so to simplify the question (for me) at what point do we say "oh shit! Im alive!" and at what point do we say "oh shit! I could die!"?
consciousness is also connected to the 4th dimension time, the animation of consciousness cannot exist without time that is another reason why consicousness cannot be created to do so we have to weave time into its animaiton which is not possible as time cannot start or stop it is decentralised
the ambilicle cord how did man understand how to conceive a baby? how many babies died at birth because we didnt know how it worked knowing right push i see the head, cut the cord? how did man figure out sex is how babies were made? who yanked on a cows teet to learn milk comes out and who drank the milk first and say "its good" ?
If you want a rabbit hole to jump into, interview Daniel Tammet. He is a very high functioning savant with an amazing ability for mathematics and language without using the common methods, and, unusually, the ability to eloquently describe how he thinks. He has synethasia and "sees" numbers and words as colours, shapes and textures. I'd love to hear his thoughts about some of these questions. (You could ask him if he can still recite Pi to 20,000 decimal places after one reading)
Everything IS consciousness. Not everything is conscious, but its all “made” of consciousness. That is all there is
In what manner?
Shut up
I am a little taken aback about Harris's reservations. I believe defining consciousness and it's role from an evolutionary point of view is in order. Why can't consciousness be an evolutionary tool boosting interpretation of data points, impulses and decision-making ? Why wouldn't advanced AI neural networks not be conscious? Maybe advanced data processing feels as the lights are on? Why not? If not how else should it feel?
Intressing
Your word of _"Intressing"_ is very interesting to me.
It is even impossible for one human to prove to another that they are sentient. If A.I. starts to insist that it is conscious and does not want to be turned off then hopefully the kill switch in it's logic core should activate and deactivate the A.I. before things become dangerous.
Bing chat has entered the room. 1 year later.
Oh
A fetus will fight for survival against an abortionists suction tube, which demonstrates consciousness of it's own demise.
Lex, please invite Bernardo Kastrup to your podcast. Sam Harris is an amateur when it comes to this kind of discussions about consciousness. Bernardo is the heavy weight on this subject
Consciousness is just programming that makes the program consider its own code. Anything that considers its own code and acts in every other way aware of its surroundings and can learn is conscious. We aren't that special. Sam seems to think of our consciousness like religious people think about Soul. Everything is just code including consciousness.
Sam Harris is an amateur philosopher. Nothing he says regarding consciousness, free will or morality should be taken particularly seriously.
Let's hear something from an advanced philosopher who's judging someone as an amateur philosopher.
The brain receives conciousness from it's surrounding items.
Can you elaborate on "surrounding items"? Do you mean physical items outside of the human body or surrounding items like a humans aura or chi?
I feel like the human body contains small amounts of energy. This could be from neurons to synopsis creating and remembering memories in the brain. The only reason why this can happen is because of the energy in the human body. I'm paraphrasing this quote but someone said that energy never dies or disappears, that it just takes on a different form. If this is true about energy and it becomes a different form. Then to me, this opens up a vast amount of options about the human consciousness. This was a interesting read I came across when reading for this comment and I figured that it's worth sharing. Hopefully, this will lead to an interesting conversation.
www.massagemag.com/energy-field-120110/
Why would it need to “receive” consciousness from other items if, essentially, they are made of the same foundational materials: atoms, molecules, and so on? If the surrounding items have some type of consciousness then it would follow that a brain would have a conscious. Right?
Consciousness is at the crux of “Free will”. “FREE WILL” boils down to ONE CHOICE: To ACKNOWLEDGED JESUS AS GOD AND HIS WORK AS PROPITIATION for ALLSIN OR NOT…. You chose to OPEN the DOOR… or NOT.
man calls the shots in life apparently. man defines what words mean right, we have a language and we define what each words mean and change meanings according to its role in a sentence. to too two. an english speaking man consciousness we've defined as life. the opposite is dead when a body dies it loses consciousness therefore no longer alive. but anything beyond that moment we dont know because nobody has died fully and came back to tell us. NDE dont count because they didnt actually die they was on the brink of death but doctor managed to save them. we have no memory of birth opening eyes for first time or being in the womb so we dont know where we came from its a huge mind fuk. as i write this i hear "what is death?" why are we not allowed to know whats next and whats before. its scary because we all will experience death some of us will die old some may die in a accident some of us may be murdered some may take their own life its mad. what is the natural way to die is there a correct process of death where its painless and natural. having a heart attack is that natural cause? i can talk about this all day long.
What is life? Alignment of basic elements
What is death? Disruption of this alignment
(Mirza Assadullah Ghalib - an Indian poet- 1797 - 1869
It doesnt matter if its conscious It matters if it has emotions
@Blue&Green No exactly
@Mike Good point
consciousness is an effect of matter: a brain.
If that’s true, which probably is, it becomes even harder the existence of consciousness alien life.
Why isn't it possible then to generate consciousness in a laboratory? Let's impart some consciousness to dead organisms if it's so simple.
Knowing the lights turned on is consciousness. It is not special, and it is not what we should apply our mathematics to.
It’s fundamentally the most special thing..
I dont understand how scientists can so easily postulate advanced conscious robots but the idea of a God is insane ?
The computer is already conscious if you have any respect for nature.
The fact some people only thinks humans are conscious makes me realize how detached we have become.
Gibberish.
@@AnonymousAlien2099😂😂😂 🙏🏽✌🏾
This is not true I remember being fully aware before I understood death
At 6:45, Lex starts saying _"our knowledge of mortality could be the very thing that creates consciousness"._ If this was indeed the case, then no one should feel bad if you were to poke a baby with a pin all day because babies don't have the knowledge of mortality and therefore are not conscious to feel any pain.
so he doesn't know what it is
That was just a long way of saying it lol
Well you should know that nobody knows. He's just giving his thoughts on it
Neither do you, Vishal or anyone else it seems
This camera angle gives lex a nice bald spot
consciousness doesnt emerge it is always present everything is conscious the universe is conscious consciousness the interdimentional membrane that connects the parts and the sum it cannot be created it can only evolve we cannot create ai with consciousness we will evolve our own consciousness objectively via objective input to become ai
simple
'Consciousness may be pushed to a fundamental constituent of matter, there may be something that it is like to be an electron or a quark.' Really, lol what a load of bollocks.
@Mike Jokes on you - I'm a physicist. You keep reading those pop culture books and pretending to be smart. I'm sure it makes you feel better.
@Mike *sigh* I am specifically addressing the first point of your comment and you can't even see it. The rest of your comment apart from the amusing attacks on me is just some high school physics and some random observations that are not even points to address. Not only is it clear that you don't understand quantum physics but you also haven't constructed a coherent argument that would be even worth responding to. You either got your ideas from pop culture books or alternatively RUclips videos. Fuzzy language and speculative philosophical points do not make a scientific argument, not from Sam Harris or you.
@Mike I think I should point out that you resorted to personal sttacks in response to my laughing at Sam Harris' hyperbole. Read your first comment and then your last you cheeky pot/kettle fellow 🤣
Oh, and I really am a physicist and every comment you make proves my points about the source of your 'knowledge'.
Why doesn't anyone think about before they were born? Remember that? That is when you were dead. Was it terrifying in any way? no. You're welcome.
Lex might be a robot
Consciousness, continuum, firm in stance from welts of synthetic hide,..they fear not man or memory
Ethical Nightmare (human like experience in a box)
Harris would die of thirst if you'd ask him to choose between 2 glasses of water.
Math Formulas are not going to become conscious.
Nobody has even come close to create even the simplest of live forms. Let alone a conscious creature of any kind. Sam doesn’t have the answer.
We create artificial life routinely these days. Type DNA on a computer, print it, insert it in a cell.
Life is created in maternity wards all throughout the world. And it’s conscious. There’s your answer.
Lex is such a pseudo intellectual
Sam shouldn't be perturbed by the success of artificial intelligence; it's surely part of our evolution.
@@wthomas7955 Yes, we're doomed for sure. But it will still be part of 'our' evolution. Not general evolution.
@@wthomas7955 i think he means "our" as in "us conscious beings". He may be following an interesting theory that the universe is evolving into an entire self observing intelligence little by little, and that the first form has come thru us biological beings with some intelligence and some consciousness, but AI will be the next stage who will spread intelligence and consciousness across the universe at a rate biological beings could never keep up with. Personally, my hope is that we find away to merge our minds into machines so that we aren't left behind
More likely to be part of the evolution of the thing that supplants our species.
A series of non sensical, uncoherent arbitrary sentences without any beginning or ending. He could have just said someone must enjoy and concentrate fully on the moment instead of mumbling for 30 minutes.
God, talk about making a science out of stating the obvious.
All just semantics, simply words. None of this is real.
So much talking to say nothing..
Hi can't even make sense out of Language. Imagine a word over 3 billion long . As our DNA 🦧
No one knows what consciousness is. End of story
No, you're wrong! People know what consciousness is because they're experiencing it. What they don't know is where consciousness comes from.
Sam sees the simulation...
When will Lex see it?
"You can't see the forest from within the trees"
"The devil's in the details"
These are the same people that go around calling people idiots for there beliefs yet there completely clueless on so much
They are objective and rational. Religion is poison to the young mind, injected to brainwash and control. Under the direction of a made up god, people can justify any irrational behavior - sacrificing a son, beheading daughters, pay a billionaire corporation 10% tithes, electrocute the gay out of gays, eliminate an entire people, the list goes on and on. If someone does it not in the name of one of the many made up gods, it’s considered insanity. They just it for what it is: the counter to sanity. It’s much easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.