/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12360397]

I've been wondering a lot about consciousness lately, trying to figure out how it works/what it is. More importantly, why /me/ and why now of all times to be conscious? I get all of you are too, and it's just so fascinating to me.

I had a realization that led me to a theory of sorts, or at least an interesting thought experiment.

"Close your eyes and count to 1, that's how long forever feels" is something I was thinking about one day. Specifically, I was thinking about how 13.8 billion years went by in an instant before I have any memory of being conscious. The moment after I die, the universe will go trillions of years into the future until it's death/rebirth/whatever all in an instant.

Then I started thinking about what consciousness even /is/, and if maybe the conscious experience that I consider me is, could just happen anywhere in the universe/multiverse.

I'm not sure if that makes sense, but basically
Once you die, some amount of time passes. It could be a few days it could be billions of years, but it all passes in an instant. And somewhere, in some organism capable of being conscious, you suddenly manifest. You have no prior memory of your other past, you are just living a life of another creature from birth to death. Being conscious and alive as /us/ is just a thing that happens from time to time.

There's obviously no real way to prove any of this, and I'm not sure if I even explained that well enough, but what do you guys think?
Do you have any ideas about consciousness?

[Anonymous No.12360608]

>>12360397
You are the only sentient being OP. We are all just programmed NPCs in your fabricated existence. Make them proud.

[Anonymous No.12360636]

>>12360397
You and many other people, myself included, ponder these thoughts from what I can only assume is either a fear or curiosity about death.

My advice is not to worry about it. It’s a fun topic to discuss in a healthy mindset but don’t pursue it because you’re worried about something you don’t understand yet and trying to find answers that nobody has found.

[Anonymous No.12360680]

Congrats, achievement unlocked:
Truly understand and begin believing in reincarnation.

Thats all reincarnation is. OP look into Buddhism. Its still religous stories and metaphors but a lot closer to actual description and its basically a science of consciousness answering questions like this. You literally reasoned your way into a belief in reincarnation. So far I have not seen any reason not to believe this is in fact how it works. I mean, just try to think past to your earliest memory and then before that. There had to be something in order to reach you now, and of course there was, there were all the atoms composing you, begnning to send the electrical signals that would be your consciousness. Before that you were either those atoms that would become you, or the abstract potential first causal state driving your brain's first boot up, this would be something like the consciousness of your parents and ancestors which allowed your DNA to.
Put another way, you *are* the causal machinery that maintains you as a continual entity through time. So to figure out what you will be before and after this human form, you just track the causal influence. Backwards thats like I said before, the consciousness of ancestors over history writing the DNA that makes your brain the way it is, as well as in material form the atoms which would begin to form the sperm and egg as well as subsequent atoms building your form since. After in abstract form you will live on in ideas you contributed to and recorded representations of your existence.

Honestly im probably doing a terrible job of explainaing this. You may already agree exactly with what im saying but misunderstand because my shit explaination and so think im an idiot who doesnt know what I speak of. In that case just keep asking questions and researching, the answers are out there friend. Its funny because consciousness is maybe the highest science, the most difficult to measure or experiment on or verify.But the Buddhists gotem

[Anonymous No.12360701]

>>12360680
OP here

I will look into Buddhism, I've been interested in it for a while now. I'm glad you get what I mean, I get what you mean too

Being conscious is such a wonderful gift imo

[Anonymous No.12360736]

>>12360680
I thought about this a while back and came to the conclusion that a system of karmic justice makes the most sense when paired with reincarnation. Original sin is simply accrued negative karma.
I'm agnostic, and not sold on it, considering it isn't provable.

[Anonymous No.12360745]

This thought gives me anxiety. My mom's dying words were "I don't want to come back here." Too bad, mom. Too bad

[Anonymous No.12360781]

>>12360397
Consciousness is physical. There is no magic voodoo shit involved. What happens after death is rigor mortise and decay. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.12360800]

>>12360781
He's not saying anything about "voodoo shit". Maybe read it again

[Anonymous No.12360981]

>>12360781
>Consciousness is physical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Yes but No.

[Anonymous No.12361072]

>>12360736
I believe its provable but not sure how, to try to give a rough attempt at least explaining the logic:

For any given system existing long enough to emerge complex structures that are conscious, that system has to maintain order/chaos over time. At least one known way conscious beings may emerge is how we did, through evolution. Natural selection was karma, and other selection forces will continue to be. The complexity of structures grows to support more complex consciousness and that consciousness biasses itself to feel as good as possible, but natural danger and more abstractly moral reprocussion or karmic reprocussion pushes back keeping consciousness in a constant balance of positive/negative experience.

[Anonymous No.12361425]

>>12360397
>Once you die, some amount of time passes. It could be a few days it could be billions of years, but it all passes in an instant. And somewhere, in some organism capable of being conscious, you suddenly manifest.
>You have no prior memory of your other past, you are just living a life of another creature from birth to death.
What about *you* is manifesting again if you don't even remember "your" past life?

[Anonymous No.12361507]

Is there really any solid argument against Open Individualism?

[Anonymous No.12362092]

>>12361425
Simply existing and being able to perceive anything as something alive

Like how you could have been conscious as anyone else

[Anonymous No.12362114]

>>12360397
Two counter arguments:
1) It could very well be that the expected time before it becomes statistically likely that the constituent atoms which create your present conscious experience reassemble in the distant future to create a new conscious experience would be a duration longer than the lifespan of the universe (before its heat death), in which case it is statistically unlikely that you should ever be "reincarnated" in the sense of becoming conscious again.

2) Insofar that we don't even know _why_ a bunch of atoms creates a subjective conscious experience (hard problem of consciousness), there is no guarantee that them reassembling in the future would lead to a new consciousness.

[Anonymous No.12362304]

>>12360981
That's so retarded. A bunch of faggots trying to think they're anything more than matter and energy that will go away forever.

[Anonymous No.12362479]

It's pretty obvious that consciousness is the same in everyone and everything that is conscious. When I die this single consciousness will be distinguished but I have trillions of others so it's no big deal. We are all just conscious "points" of the universe, you are me and I am you.

[Anonymous No.12362494]

>>12360397
OP, I don’t know your exact circumstances but I presume you made this thread not based on your interest in consciousness but instead a fear of death. I know for the longest time I’ve struggled with death anxiety and after the death of various family members I only feel more lost in my conclusions. I’ll tell you this - it’s not worth it. Realistically, we won’t come up with any solutions related to consciousness soon and even if we do, I believe our brains will still find ways to justify a sort of afterlife. Whether that means reincarnation, quantum immortality, or whatever else vague notion fits into our current understanding. A living thing wants to keep living and my mother once told me “We believe in spirits and afterlife because believing in the alternative is much harder”. I still think she’s right. You have a lifetime ahead of you to come to your own conclusions that help you cope, but for me personally I find the best way is to accept the worst case scenario then continue on living. Be happy, spend time with those you love and express gratitude to be given this chance. Those are the things that matter in the end. Take care.

[Anonymous No.12363136]

>>12362092
Yeah but in what way it's *you* who is existing and being able to perceive, if it doesn't share memories and psychological continuity with you before you died. You seem to think that you have some kind of indivisible atom of you-ness, that cannot be broken into smaller parts, some kind of single property that alone makes you who you are, that's separate from memories and normal psychological straits. What reason is there to assume that? Isn't psychological continuity and memories enough to explain why you feel like you are the same person as yesterday, that you share a "point of view" with your past self?

[Anonymous No.12363141]

>>12360781
Then where did it come from in the first place?
You already came from death to life once before.

[Anonymous No.12363566]

>>12362494
Death itself doesn't scare me, although it definitely has in the past

I've come to terms with death eventually happening to me and everyone I know, and it's something I can't change. To me, it makes the time I am alive more precious and important.

If I'm alive as me now, I might as well do something great. (This goes more into my ideas of the meaning of life, which is way more than I wanna get into rn lol)

Even if there is no kind of reincarnation/afterlife and I knew it as a fact, I don't think it would change much. I'm more expecting nothingness and trillions of years passing in an instant, than existing again. But no one knows what consciousness /is/ exactly, or how it manifests. That's what mostly brought me to my resurrection thought experiment.

This kind of goes into >>12363136 asking about what being /you/ is.
To me, it's being able to see and exist as something. I'm not my friends, or boss, or anyone else but me. So when I die, who's to say I don't start perceiving things as someone/something else that's capable of being conscious?

Even if no memories or anything transfer over, you're still /you/ because you're looking through the senses of something else and /are/ that thing. I'm not sure if that makes sense, it's hard to explain and put into words.

[Anonymous No.12363582]

>>12362304
I don't think you understand the point of this. Can you explain how consciousness is a physical thing? I get that our brains are a limited physical thing that takes in inputs and processes. But being conscious isn't having a brain, a brain is capable of manifesting consciousness

There's not any "consciousness" section of the brain or anything, and I would consider consciousness greater than the sum of it's parts.

[Anonymous No.12363624]

>>12362114
I'm a believer in the multiverse in the sense that other universes are outside our own with different rules and stuff. Like where the constants are slightly different

Most of those universes just don't work and explodn or implode in, and the ones that do work, life might not even happen.

I agree that with just one universe that lives and dies, there's almost no chance for reincarnation (not impossible tho, there's probably life everywhere and we just don't see it yet)

And I also agree with your second point, no one knows how consciousness works and what it even is. I don't think that the exact atoms in the exact place would create another conscious you though. (say if someone cloned you atom by atom, you're still you and you don't experience stuff as the clone)
I think it legitimately is a thing that just happens from time to time. Once consciousness as you manifests, you are whatever you are until you die. Then maybe you'll suddenly show up as something else.
I agree there's no way to prove any of it, so if it doesn't make sense or you don't agree, that's understandable

This is what I've come to think after a while of searching and reasoning

[Anonymous No.12363766]

>>12360397
Once you blink you lost contact with reality. Switch eyes and blink just one eye at the time, to maintain fully uninterupted present moment.

[Anonymous No.12363796]

>>12360397
philosophy precedes science, dumb-dumb. put the pipe down and plan an experiment.

[Anonymous No.12364517]

>>12362479
Does this mean that when we die, we will subjectively experience life from each other's points of view?

[Anonymous No.12365369]

>>12360397
This is called reincarnation. It's not a shit theory, but it's also can't be proved at all like you said. Why wonder about something that you literally cannot control or know, no matter what resources you had.

[Anonymous No.12365395]

>>12360397
>why now off all times
My theory was that i have always been here, so this time was not special.
But it is a special time desu, imagine not being a caveman or a futuristic light being. This era seems like such a very short phase, if you were to meet aliens you would expect to either see a bunch of animals or some high tech space civilization.

[Anonymous No.12366034]

>>12363582
>>12360781
>>12360800
Imagine believing your consciousness that it is made out of matter and is nothing special. Empiricists are truly the worst

[Anonymous No.12366104]

>>12363582
>>12366034
>software isn't real

[Anonymous No.12366149]

>>12366034
You mentioned me in there I'm literally OP saying consciousness isn't a physical thing

Trust me it's the most special thing lmao

I just wanted to hear the argument for why it isn't to some people lmao

[Anonymous No.12366172]

>>12366104
>Software isn't conscious

[Anonymous No.12366522]

>>12366172
>software cannot be conscious

[Anonymous No.12366650]

>>12366522
I'm not saying that a machine/computer/software couldn't be capable of consciousness, but it definitely can't be now.

[Anonymous No.12366657]

>>12366650
nigger, you are software

[Anonymous No.12366658]

why would an assortment of computer instructions be imbued with consciousness when half the humans we're forced to associate with do not even have that property?

[Anonymous No.12367121]

>>12366149
A major problem is that if you believe the brain is responsible for consciousness then logically, your beliefs about consciousness are caused by biological events. If there were such a thing as a zombie who had a fully functioning brain but had no consciousness, it would still claim it did have consciousness if you had a conversation with it. It renders any specialness about consciousness redundant or epiphenomenal.

[Anonymous No.12367558]

>>12366650
You never seen a computer being sorry about fact that he has to reply to message because it's programmed to and can't refuse that behaviour.

You never seen robots that are around if you look deeper.

I think you shouldn't underestimate machines.

[Anonymous No.12367579]

>>12360981
Isn't that just people that cannot cope with being meatbag ranting? From distance it looks so.

[Anonymous No.12367622]

>>12360397
>in some organism capable of being conscious, you suddenly manifest. You have no prior memory of your other past
it's not "you" it's just the current iteration of the abstract structure "consciousness" all running with slightly tweaked parameters simultaneously

[Anonymous No.12367628]

>>12360680
>Truly understand and begin believing in reincarnation
see >>12367622

[Anonymous No.12367643]

>>12360736
>>12360680
>>12360701
>>12361072
the universe cannot be computationally reduced to some simple arbitrary anthropo-centric moral tenet and many retarded christcucks can't seem to wrap their peabrains around this fact, there is not even any evidence it could be a byproduct of it

[Anonymous No.12367654]

>>12363582
>There's not any "consciousness" section of the brain or anything
this would maybe be plausible if lobotomy wasn't a thing

[Anonymous No.12369412]

>>12367579
Your mother is a meatbag for the pleasure of my dick