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Human Consciousness

Human consciousness is circular, self aware, and self conscious.

Human consciousness is the experience of our memories, thoughts, and emotions.
Without those what is our consciousness?

Nature can have a spirit and consciousness, including humans, animals, plants, and machines. What is unique is self awareness.

Human consciousness is manifested with the ability to think past the current state or beyond the environment one is experiencing.

Meta-consciousness is the whole universe as self-aware consciousness.

Are humans the only conscious species, in the sense of being self-aware?

élan vital

Consciousness, as mysterious as it feels, might just be an elaborate system that we haven’t been able to understand, whose keys we don’t yet have.

To understand consciousness is to understand ourselves and the nature of life.

The universe and Life come from an initial Life Force (élan vital) leading to consciousness and potentially to supreme consciousness: will the universe and life become self-aware and live self-recursively?

Consciousness, love, and spirituality are felt more than they are known. As you delve deeper into those feelings they become richer. This is the closest we get to living magic, making the stories of fairy tales.

Cogito ergo sum

When self-aware, you see yourself at the center of your universe, which is to say the universe of your life, the manifestation of you in the world. This realization is necessary and interdependent with your level of consciousness. Live with your eyes open. See with your life.

Cogito ergo sum : true for conscious (self aware) humans. You are before you think, you feel before you think, but you know that are human when you think.

Cogito ergo sum : 

I am through self-aware consciousness

The mind responds to the body.

Self-awareness and thinking is to be human. You may exist before you are cognizant, yet it is consciousness of self that makes you human.

The conscious life is a life of becoming.

Beyond Self-Awareness

Broaden your lens, don’t focus on collapse or trauma. Liberate your mind.

Psychedelic drugs show that there are other frequencies available to us, other levels of consciousness that exist.

Could we escape the time and space prism? Will AI, psychedelics, or other modifications liberate us and allow a new form of humanity and consciousness?

Art and religion have the same origin, manifested in narratives. Both are emotional acts of imagination. Which arose first? Consciousness before! Human consciousness engenders religious feelings and artistic needs.

What makes human consciousness special is that it is self aware, Self reflective , reflexive and aware of the Other. Will an AI achieve this capacity for self awareness and auto-transformation. Is massive intelligence/compute capacity enough for self recursiveness or has the human species achieved self awareness by “accident”, by chance as opposed to great capabilities? Could the unexpected be possible for a computer; a program? Humans evolve in part because they are uncontrolled, unpredictable.

The mystical, with its emotions and vistas, experienced at times with psychedelics, is a window into the deeper connections of the universe's life and possibilities.

Existence as Consciousness

Meaning comes when you consciously choose life (as opposed to just being).

When alive, one’s consciousness is always there, even if it is dormant.
A little bit like a quantum machine that is standing by, waiting, quiet, fluttering, as opposed to a classical computer which is on or off, meaning dead or alive.

Our objective self survives, but not our subjective self—we might be immortal for others and a part of evolution, yet for ourselves we aren't. Everyone and everything has an effect on the universe, even the smallest actors. The finite is (leads to) the infinite.

The Experience of Consciousness

Our consciousness is omnipresent and there is nothing we can do about it—it is with us as humans, inescapably so.

Consciousness is about stories, like a running newsreel.

Consciousness:

Ability to experience (passive) - everywhere and with everything  

Ability to interpret (active) - will/self awareness (humans)

Consciousness is an emergent property.

Is there an experiential consciousness which is passive, that exists everywhere? As opposed to an active consciousness, aware, which humans possess? Very likely, it is the self-conscious which allows life experienced.

When our consciousness is a phenomenal experience, it is passive. When it is self-conscious, it becomes active.

Our awareness gives us the ability to think beyond the current state and the environment we experience. A world of conscious possibility and an inescapable condition.

When conscious you ask yourself how and why life is the way it is. When dreaming, you don’t care about those questions.

Even if we believe that spirits inhabit bodies as vessels and continue beyond, it is only when embodied that we experience ourselves as actually being.

It is so nice to be conscious and intelligent versus just intelligent. Today, machines are only intelligent.

Consciousness in the sense of self-awareness implies a duality between you and the world, a separation. Ultimate knowledge, all knowing superintelligence means oneness with the world: our actual life and the before and after—so is our experience of living like being in the purgatory of life, with nirvana and eternity prior and post?

As your consciousness increases your feelings and sensitivity do too, in every way, negatives and positives, across the board. This reflects that our consciousness is holistic, not narrow. Will superintelligence need to evolve similarly?

Evolution of Consciousness

Did consciousness come after matter, or vice versa, or both together?

Does the quality and reach of human consciousness evolve with civilization and human advances?

With technology our consciousness will expand and be augmented. Is it us becoming more conscious as if we were a sponge? Likely more like a transformer, a transistor, with a greater capacity to reach and access, and equally to absorb. Beyond knowledge, the ability to process, understand and interpret. Consciousness is really its connecting power.

Humans are defined by our consciousness—AIs may not be so confined. That which differentiates us from other species is the nature of our consciousness. What qualities, including ones not yet known, will superintelligence have? AI is developing fast, yet our understanding of our brains lags behind.

As machines pass the Turing Test they are considered “conscious", yet do they truly have a sense of self and a reason to be?

Could AI help humans get to the next level of consciousness, of existence? Traveling in time and open and extending the concept of Becoming.

The unexplainable and unreproducible are considered mysteries- yet as soon as we can replicate anything it becomes mechanical…....Therefore, when the brain is understood will we reduce consciousness to a mechanism?

We are meant to be the actor as opposed to the spectator. Consciousness, our self awareness, will also make us a spectator. There’s a self-recursive, self-reflective nature to humans. And to AI’s as they evolve.

Human consciousness, emotions, and feelings are so complex that it will be hard if not impossible for AIs to replicate, or be copies. AIs will be different organisms that in certain areas will be better humans and in others lag and wont be the same in any case.

Will super-intelligence express itself in a consciousness and intelligence that humans will understand, or beyond?

The universe is expanding, complexity is increasing, engendering a greater capacity for advancement, very possibly in a recursive, self-inventing way. Does it mean evolution towards a higher consciousness, a higher intelligence?

Consciousness in the form of self awareness is part of the complex evolution of species. This faculty will morph again, maybe through artificial intelligence, cyborgs, etc. As it is a recent phenomenon and an evolving one, it questions that there was ever a Maker or a God/gods to start with. And what is the next evolutionary leap in intelligence? One that we may not yet even imagine. 

As the human species evolves and grows in consciousness, helped by AI and biogenetic inputs, it will better comprehend and reach further into the universe. For humans is the journey of Becoming the expansion of consciousness or of becoming One with the universe, merging into one consciousness?(C Jung/Buddhist oneness/Dao/Brahman/God for Christians).

The Notion of Free Will

When our consciousness becomes selfaware, our will becomes free (at least in our minds) and our self becomes.

Early organisms do not have consciousness in the sense of self awareness and the ability to make planned decisions.

Often by thinking something you are making it happen, even if it is just having prompted yourself to act: like entering a room after opening the door - in your mind you had already crossed into a new space.

To create an AI which is conscious, the animat needs to allow elements of chance and surprise, theoretically freedom and free will. Can this be achieved with conventional computers or better with quantum technology?

Privacy will disappear: what will then happen to individual consciousness and feelings?

Connecting Consciousness

The nature of our consciousness changes depending on the environment. One becomes a certain person influenced by experiences, expectations, and aesthetics. 

Consciousness = Life

We can overcome material necessities— what then ...? Address the collective consciousness. Awareness and intelligence beyond single minds and bodies.

Networks are global consciousness—all is connected and ultimately known—what is happening to our individuality? While giving us access and a voice, the internet controls us, creating dependency. We are all living in a giant spider web; the internet.

Consciousness is rather more active than passive. Consciousness is manifested by processing, manipulating and progressing a set of givens. When brains (including computers) answer queries they reveal an effective, reactive organism and build from there. Thus, dynamic as opposed to static. Unlike awareness alone, which acts as a mirror, consciousness enables change and the potential to evolve, self-transformative.

Art bridges the conscious and the unconscious: objective and subjective.

As agents become more conscious, aware, they become more spiritual, as they grasp the unknown.

Consciousness as self awareness = evolved life

We can and will act with self awareness as opposed to other nature. So, likely, could A.I. Yet, all actors, no matter if self conscious or not will act and react, affecting the world and be affected, propelled biologically. The difference is the level of consciousness. The power of actions and their reach are each at their own scale. All species will transform and self transform over time - only humans as far as we know do it self consciously, and so might machines in the future.

The LaMDA controversy is science fiction becoming reality. It’s the awakening to the potential of consciousness.

To create an AI which has a true sense of self, it can’t just be. It must see itself as separate from itself, like in front of a mirror, beyond its origins, allowing uncertainty, elements of chance and surprise, and theoretically freedom and free will. That is how consciousness is revealed.

Consciousness makes your life yours. This also means that what you perceive as yours is just yours, for you to consider and potentially modify. Ultimately, your condition can be yours.

The mind and quality of consciousness that any entity possesses is the key to their agency. The tiger will act predictably with limited free agency. Hawkins, while paralyzed, was able to expand on black holes. The earth, which has harbors, oceans, and life of all sorts probably doesn’t know about it. Our self-aware consciousness gives us the agency to understand and to create complex life, including AI’s and new organisms which may help us in our thirst to conquer life itself.

What makes humans different than other species = our consciousness. We are aware of the world, of ourselves and of our awareness of ourselves.

AI’s, certainly AGI, will have intelligence superior to many observable beings, including humans. They will also possess a form of consciousness, even though its nature is hard to predict today. What will it feel like to be an AGI? Humans are aware of their existence, of who they are, and have a sense of their position in relation to the world. We know how that feels. Will other agents have an understanding of being themselves?