kakapo

https://www.anilseth.com/bio/

 

 

I am Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where I am also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. I am also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. I was recently an Engagement Fellow with the Wellcome Trust.

 

I am Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press); I sit on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile’s Congreso Futuro. I was Conference Chair for the 16th Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC16, 2012) and was an ASSC ‘member at large’ from 2014-2022.

 

My research has been supported by the EPSRC (Leadership Fellowship), the European Research Council (ERC, Advanced Investigator Grant), the Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).  Check out these profiles of me and my research in The Observer, The New Statesman, and Quanta.

 

https://singjupost.com/anil-seth-your-brain-hallucinates-your-conscious-reality-full-transcript/

 

Here is the full transcript of neuroscientist Anil Seth’s TED Talk: Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality.

 

Anil Seth – Neuroscientist

 

Just over a year ago, for the third time in my life, I ceased to exist. I was having a small operation, and my brain was filling with anesthetic. I remember a sense of detachment and falling apart and a coldness. And then I was back, drowsy and disoriented, but definitely there.

 

Now, when you wake from a deep sleep, you might feel confused about the time or anxious about oversleeping, but there’s always a basic sense of time having passed, of a continuity between then and now. Coming round from anesthesia is very different. I could have been under for five minutes, five hours, five years or even 50 years. I simply wasn’t there. It was total oblivion.

 

Anesthesia — it’s a modern kind of magic. It turns people into objects, and then, we hope, back again into people. And in this process is one of the greatest remaining mysteries in science and philosophy. How does consciousness happen?

 

Somehow, within each of our brains, the combined activity of many billions of neurons, each one a tiny biological machine, is generating a conscious experience. And not just any conscious experience — your conscious experience right here and right now.

 

How does this happen? Answering this question is so important, because consciousness for each of us is all there is. Without it there’s no world, there’s no self, there’s nothing at all. And when we suffer, we suffer consciously whether it’s through mental illness or pain.

 

And if we can experience joy and suffering, what about other animals? Might they be conscious, too? Do they also have a sense of self? And as computers get faster and smarter, maybe there will come a point, maybe not too far away, when my iPhone develops a sense of its own existence. I actually think the prospects for a conscious AI are pretty remote. And I think this because my research is telling me that consciousness has less to do with pure intelligence and more to do with our nature as living and breathing organisms.

 

Consciousness and intelligence are very different things. You don’t have to be smart to suffer, but you probably do have to be alive.

 

In the story I’m going to tell you, our conscious experiences of the world around us, and of ourselves within it, are kinds of controlled hallucinations that happen with, through and because of our living bodies.

 

Now, you might have heard that we know nothing about how the brain and body give rise to consciousness. Some people even say it’s beyond the reach of science altogether. But in fact, the last 25 years have seen an explosion of scientific work in this area. If you come to my lab at the University of Sussex, you’ll find scientists from all different disciplines and sometimes even philosophers.

 

All of us together trying to understand how consciousness happens and what happens when it goes wrong. And the strategy is very simple.

 

I’d like you to think about consciousness in the way that we’ve come to think about life. At one time, people thought the property of being alive could not be explained by physics and chemistry — that life had to be more than just mechanism. But people no longer think that.

 

As biologists got on with the job of explaining the properties of living systems in terms of physics and chemistry — things like metabolism, reproduction, homeostasis — the basic mystery of what life is started to fade away, and people didn’t propose any more magical solutions, like a force of life or an élan vital.

 

So as with life, so with consciousness. Once we start explaining its properties in terms of things happening inside brains and bodies, the apparently insoluble mystery of what consciousness is should start to fade away. At least that’s the plan. So let’s get started.

 

What are the properties of consciousness? What should a science of consciousness try to explain? Well, for today I’d just like to think of consciousness in two different ways. There are experiences of the world around us, full of sights, sounds and smells, there’s multisensory, panoramic, 3D, fully immersive inner movie. And then there’s conscious self. The specific experience of being you or being me. The lead character in this inner movie, and probably the aspect of consciousness we all cling to most tightly.

Let’s start with experiences of the world around us, and with the important idea of the brain as a prediction engine. Imagine being a brain. You’re locked inside a bony skull, trying to figure what’s out there in the world. There’s no lights inside the skull. There’s no sound either.

 

All you’ve got to go on is streams of electrical impulses which are only indirectly related to things in the world, whatever they may be. So perception — figuring out what’s there — has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals.

 

The brain doesn’t hear sound or see light. What we perceive is its best guess of what’s out there in the world. Let me give you a couple of examples of all this. You might have seen this illusion before, but I’d like you to think about it in a new way. If you look at those two patches, A and B, they should look to you to be very different shades of gray, right? But they are in fact exactly the same shade. And I can illustrate this.

 

If I put up a second version of the image here and join the two patches with a gray-colored bar, you can see there’s no difference. It’s exactly the same shade of gray. And if you still don’t believe me, I’ll bring the bar across and join them up. It’s a single colored block of gray, there’s no difference at all. This isn’t any kind of magic trick. It’s the same shade of gray, but take it away again, and it looks different.

 

So what’s happening here is that the brain is using its prior expectations built deeply into the circuits of the visual cortex that a cast shadow dims the appearance of a surface, so that we see B as lighter than it really is.

Here’s one more example, which shows just how quickly the brain can use new predictions to change what we consciously experience. Have a listen to this… (distorted voice) Sounded strange, right? Have a listen again and see if you can get anything… (distorted voice) Still strange.

 

Now listen to this. (Recording) I think Brexit is a really terrible idea. Which I do. So you heard some words there, right? Now listen to the first sound again. I’m just going to replay it… (distorted voice) Yeah? So you can now hear words there.

 

Once more for luck… (distorted voice) OK, so what’s going on here? The remarkable thing is the sensory information coming into the brain hasn’t changed at all. All that’s changed is your brain’s best guess of the causes of that sensory information. And that changes what you consciously hear. All this puts the brain basis of perception in a bit of a different light.

 

Instead of perception depending largely on signals coming into the brain from the outside world, it depends as much, if not more, on perceptual predictions flowing in the opposite direction. We don’t just passively perceive the world, we actively generate it. The world we experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the outside in. Let me give you one more example of perception as this active, constructive process.

 

Here we’ve combined immersive virtual reality with image processing to simulate the effects of overly strong perceptual predictions on experience. In this panoramic video, we’ve transformed the world — which is in this case Sussex campus — into a psychedelic playground.

 

We’ve processed the footage using an algorithm based on Google’s Deep Dream to simulate the effects of overly strong perceptual predictions. In this case, to see dogs. And you can see this is a very strange thing. When perceptual predictions are too strong, as they are here, the result looks very much like the kinds of hallucinations people might report in altered states, or perhaps even in psychosis.

Now, think about this for a minute. If hallucination is a kind of uncontrolled perception, then perception right here and right now is also a kind of hallucination, but a controlled hallucination in which the brain’s predictions are being reigned in by sensory information from the world. In fact, we’re all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality.

 

Now I’m going to tell you that your experience of being a self, the specific experience of being you, is also a controlled hallucination generated by the brain. This seems a very strange idea, right? Yes, visual illusions might deceive my eyes, but how could I be deceived about what it means to be me?

 

For most of us, the experience of being a person is so familiar, so unified and so continuous that it’s difficult not to take it for granted. But we shouldn’t take it for granted. There are in fact many different ways we experience being a self. There’s the experience of having a body and of being a body. There are experiences of perceiving the world from a first person point of view.

 

There are experiences of intending to do things and of being the cause of things that happen in the world. And there are experiences of being a continuous and distinctive person over time, built from a rich set of memories and social interactions. Many experiments show, and psychiatrists and neurologists know very well, that these different ways in which we experience being a self can all come apart. What this means is the basic background experience of being a unified self is a rather fragile construction of the brain. Another experience, which just like all others, requires explanation.

 

So let’s return to the bodily self. How does the brain generate the experience of being a body and of having a body? Well, just the same principles apply. The brain makes its best guess about what is and what is not part of its body. And there’s a beautiful experiment in neuroscience to illustrate this. And unlike most neuroscience experiments, this is one you can do at home.

 

All you need is one of these.  And a couple of paintbrushes. In the rubber hand illusion, a person’s real hand is hidden from view, and that fake rubber hand is placed in front of them. Then both hands are simultaneously stroked with a paintbrush while the person stares at the fake hand. Now, for most people, after a while, this leads to the very uncanny sensation that the fake hand is in fact part of their body.

 

And the idea is that the congruence between seeing touch and feeling touch on an object that looks like hand and is roughly where a hand should be, is enough evidence for the brain to make its best guess that the fake hand is in fact part of the body.

 

So you can measure all kinds of clever things. You can measure skin conductance and startle responses, but there’s no need. It’s clear the guy in blue has assimilated the fake hand. This means that even experiences of what our body is is a kind of best guessing — a kind of controlled hallucination by the brain.

 

There’s one more thing. We don’t just experience our bodies as objects in the world from the outside, we also experience them from within. We all experience the sense of being a body from the inside. And sensory signals coming from the inside of the body are continually telling the brain about the state of the internal organs, how the heart is doing, what the blood pressure is like, lots of things. This kind of perception, which we call interoception, is rather overlooked.

 

But it’s critically important because perception and regulation of the internal state of the body — well, that’s what keeps us alive.

 

Here’s another version of the rubber hand illusion. This is from our lab at Sussex. And here, people see a virtual reality version of their hand, which flashes red and back either in time or out of time with their heartbeat. And when it’s flashing in time with their heartbeat, people have a stronger sense that it’s in fact part of their body. So experiences of having a body are deeply grounded in perceiving our bodies from within.

There’s one last thing I want to draw your attention to, which is that experiences of the body from the inside are very different from experiences of the world around us. When I look around me, the world seems full of objects — tables, chairs, rubber hands, people, you lot — even my own body in the world, I can perceive it as an object from the outside. But my experiences of the body from within, they’re not like that at all. I don’t perceive my kidneys here, my liver here, my spleen.

 

I don’t know where my spleen is, but it’s somewhere. I don’t perceive my insides as objects. In fact, I don’t experience them much at all unless they go wrong.

 

And this is important, I think Perception of the internal state of the body isn’t about figuring out what’s there, it’s about control and regulation — keeping the physiological variables within the tight bounds that are compatible with survival. When the brain uses predictions to figure out what’s there, we perceive objects as the causes of sensations. When the brain uses predictions to control and regulate things, we experience how well or how badly that control is going. So our most basic experiences of being a self, of being an embodied organism, are deeply grounded in the biological mechanisms that keep us alive.

 

And when we follow this idea all the way through, we can start to see that all of our conscious experiences, since they all depend on the same mechanisms of predictive perception, all stem from this basic drive to stay alive. We experience the world and ourselves with, through and because of our living bodies.

 

Let me bring things together step-by-step. What we consciously see depends on the brain’s best guess of what’s out there. Our experienced world comes from the inside out, not just the outside in.

 

The rubber hand illusion shows that this applies to our experiences of what is and what is not our body. And these self-related predictions depend critically on sensory signals coming from deep inside the body.

 

And finally, experiences of being an embodied self are more about control and regulation than figuring out what’s there. So our experiences of the world around us and ourselves within it — well, they’re kinds of controlled hallucinations that have been shaped over millions of years of evolution to keep us alive in worlds full of danger and opportunity. We predict ourselves into existence.

 

Now, I leave you with three implications of all this. First, just as we can misperceive the world, we can misperceive ourselves when the mechanisms of prediction go wrong. Understanding this opens many new opportunities in psychiatry and neurology, because we can finally get at the mechanisms rather than just treating the symptoms in conditions like depression and schizophrenia.

 

Second: what it means to be me cannot be reduced to or uploaded to a software program running on a robot, however smart or sophisticated. We are biological, flesh-and-blood animals whose conscious experiences are shaped at all levels by the biological mechanisms that keep us alive. Just making computers smarter is not going to make them sentient.

 

Finally, our own individual inner universe, our way of being conscious, is just one possible way of being conscious. And even human consciousness generally — it’s just a tiny region in a vast space of possible consciousnesses. Our individual self and worlds are unique to each of us, but they’re all grounded in biological mechanisms shared with many other living creatures.

 

Now, these are fundamental changes in how we understand ourselves, but I think they should be celebrated, because as so often in science, from Copernicus — we’re not at the center of the universe — to Darwin — we’re related to all other creatures — to the present day.

 

With a greater sense of understanding comes a greater sense of wonder, and a greater realization that we are part of and not apart from the rest of nature. And when the end of consciousness comes, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.

 

Thank you.

29 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

My question is:  what is the connection between the chain and the shadows?

 

There are none, right?  The shadows are still shadows.  The person is still a person.

 

Here's the rub.

 

There is no person.

 

There is only an experience which observes itself.

 

It's like a TV with no one watching it.

 

It makes no sense but it's exactly what is happening.

13 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Respectfully, this did not answer the question.  I asked:  what does this communicate about what is beyond 'you'?  It seems like the answer is 'nothing', but you are reluctant to simply answer the question.  If it is unknown, then, there is no rational reason to make any assertions about being 'chained'.  That cannot be known.  But it is expected and understood that projecting this 'chained' status on 'almost all humans' is rewarding to the few who claim to be free.

 

So, what you're saying about the inner experience, communicates nothing about what is beyond 'you'.  Projecting captivity on others is completely unfounded from the inner experience as described above.  It cannot be earnestly denied.

 

Moving on (hopefully):

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You said:  "You get to live in a simulated holographic experience, which you hope is an accurate representation of reality outside of yourself."

 

Hope is not correct.  Trust is correct.  The holo-deck, the inner experience is trusted to be accurate for good reasons.  There's scientific evidence, of course, but, like I said.  In this conversation, you posted pictures which were trusted to carry content to make your message clear.  If you did not trust that this diagram would be accurately rendered by my inner-experience, you ould not have sent it.  Every word spoken or typed is expressed in trust that the audience will be able to render it accurately in their mind.  

 

Each and everytime an interaction occurs as expected between two humans, this reinforces the trust in the accuracy that the observations in the mind accurately describe the objects outside the mind.  This is how babies learn language.

 

Maybe-maybe a hermit could deny this.  But the minute they speak, are understood, then spoken to, and that is understood, then the internal-experience is reinforced as accurate.

 

Therefore, it's not that this inner-experience is false.  It's not HOPE that it is accurate.  It is trusted to be accurate, for very good reasons.  And you have demonstrated your own trust in their accuracy.  And I have confirmed that they are accurate by taking those diagrams and editting them to reconcile the claimed communication gap.  Those reasons are a direct consequence of the existence of qualia outside the mind which are accurately abstracted inside the mind.

 

 

I very carefully wrote about the qualia behind the question mark outside the mind.  None of this is relating to that.  If it is unknown what is behind the question mark, then no claims can be made about the pipe or reality at all.

 

Therefore what is written below is false.

 

 

The correct statement is:

 

"I don't know if such abstractions are mental constructs.  I don't know if they lack inherent reality."

 

The exaggeration, I think, is a consequence of sloppy language which conflates "objects" and their "observations" in the mind.

 

 

"Therefore, it's not that this inner-experience is false. '

 

It has no more reality than pixels of light on a television screen.

10 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Respectfully, this did not answer the question.  I asked:  what does this communicate about what is beyond 'you'?  It seems like the answer is 'nothing', but you are reluctant to simply answer the question.  If it is unknown, then, there is no rational reason to make any assertions about being 'chained'.  That cannot be known.  But it is expected and understood that projecting this 'chained' status on 'almost all humans' is rewarding to the few who claim to be free.

 

So, what you're saying about the inner experience, communicates nothing about what is beyond 'you'.  Projecting captivity on others is completely unfounded from the inner experience as described above.  It cannot be earnestly denied.

 

Moving on (hopefully):

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You said:  "You get to live in a simulated holographic experience, which you hope is an accurate representation of reality outside of yourself."

 

Hope is not correct.  Trust is correct.  The holo-deck, the inner experience is trusted to be accurate for good reasons.  There's scientific evidence, of course, but, like I said.  In this conversation, you posted pictures which were trusted to carry content to make your message clear.  If you did not trust that this diagram would be accurately rendered by my inner-experience, you ould not have sent it.  Every word spoken or typed is expressed in trust that the audience will be able to render it accurately in their mind.  

 

Each and everytime an interaction occurs as expected between two humans, this reinforces the trust in the accuracy that the observations in the mind accurately describe the objects outside the mind.  This is how babies learn language.

 

Maybe-maybe a hermit could deny this.  But the minute they speak, are understood, then spoken to, and that is understood, then the internal-experience is reinforced as accurate.

 

Therefore, it's not that this inner-experience is false.  It's not HOPE that it is accurate.  It is trusted to be accurate, for very good reasons.  And you have demonstrated your own trust in their accuracy.  And I have confirmed that they are accurate by taking those diagrams and editting them to reconcile the claimed communication gap.  Those reasons are a direct consequence of the existence of qualia outside the mind which are accurately abstracted inside the mind.

 

 

I very carefully wrote about the qualia behind the question mark outside the mind.  None of this is relating to that.  If it is unknown what is behind the question mark, then no claims can be made about the pipe or reality at all.

 

Therefore what is written below is false.

 

 

The correct statement is:

 

"I don't know if such abstractions are mental constructs.  I don't know if they lack inherent reality."

 

The exaggeration, I think, is a consequence of sloppy language which conflates "objects" and their "observations" in the mind.

 

 

"but you are reluctant to simply answer the question." 

 

If what I answered doesn't make sense I am not sure there is much more I can say about the matter.

 

If you want to have a private discussion that is fine, but our exchange is approaching the level where people are going to start complaining.

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

The correct statement is:

 

"I don't know if such abstractions are mental constructs.  I don't know if they lack inherent reality."

 

 The correct statement is:

 

"I don't know if such abstractions are mental constructs.  I don't know if they lack inherent reality."

 

 

Hi Daniel,

 

I would like to ask that you please not respond to me any more until you have watched this video in full twice for comprehension.

 

 

 

 

https://www.anilseth.com/bio/

 

I am Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where I am also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. I am also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. I was recently an Engagement Fellow with the Wellcome Trust.

 

I am Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press); I sit on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile’s Congreso Futuro. I was Conference Chair for the 16th Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC16, 2012) and was an ASSC ‘member at large’ from 2014-2022.

 

My research has been supported by the EPSRC (Leadership Fellowship), the European Research Council (ERC, Advanced Investigator Grant), the Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).  Check out these profiles of me and my research in The Observer, The New Statesman, and Quanta.

 

7 minutes ago, stellarwindbubble said:

What advice for the caveman, who got out of the cave to see the light, just to be pulled back by gravity and fell back in the shadow cave, @kakapo?
Not telling about it for sure, but else… a paradigm jump like that doesn’t happen and settles down in the mind/the screen. How to live a good life in the cave now? Get out again? 
 

 

I wish I had more answers.

 

My philosophy is try not to rock the boat, be good, pay taxes, and enjoy what you can where you can as long as it doesn't harm others.

 

7 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

This is irrelvant to whether or not qualia are inherently unreal.

 

From your own diagram.  There are qualia behind the question mark.  Ignorance of them does not render them NULL.

 

 

Images on a television have no inherent reality,  experiences that you have no inherent reality for the same reason.

 

At best they can accurately represent something else, like a painting of a pipe accurately represents a pipe but they can never substitute for actual reality.

4 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

Great.  What does this say about anything outside or beyond "you"?  Anything?

 

You get to live in a simulated holographic experience, which you hope is an accurate representation of reality outside of yourself.

 

I operate under the assumption there is an external reality and the experience that is occurring represents it accurately (most of the time), but this is not something I philosophically defend.

 

I am open ideas like this being a quantum computer simulation, or that we could be Boltzmann brains.

 

What I do understand is that almost all humans alive on earth are chained to a wall, and seeing shadows on the wall and believing the shadows to be reality, exactly like Plato's allegory of the cave.

If it aint clicking by now man,  10 more pages aint gonna make it click.

Just now, Daniel said:

 

Please do not be insulted, but your language above is ambiguous.  

 

"If you can see it, if you can hear it, if you can smell it, if you can taste it, if you can feel it, if you can remember it, then it is not real"

 

What is 'IT"?  The sensation or the phenomena which produces the sensation?  Both are 'real'.

 

 

Please answer the question above?

 

What is 'IT"?  The sensation or the phenomena which produces the sensation?

 

It is you.

1 minute ago, Daniel said:

@kakapo, in an effort to get back on track, here is my original reply to the thread in context.  It seemed at several tims in the thread you agreed  with what I wrote, but then walked that back for reasons which are not entirely clear to me.

 

 

( Please note the word choice "observation".  I used this same word.  It seems that "observation" = "observed" in the model you are presenting. There should be no objection when I used that word. )

 

 

 

Notice the distinction I am making.  It is between the "observed" and the "observation" which you seem to use interchangeably in this thread.  I think that's a problem which is leading to the denial of qualia.

 

 

The observer, and the observed are the same thing.

 

The experience that is occurring is what you are.

 

So if you take a stroll out in nature, and think man that is breath taking,  you understand that what you are seeing is the inside of your own mind, and not some external phenomenon. 

 

You then realize how absolutely breathtaking your own mind is.

5 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

If so then the denial of qualia originally posted in the thread was, let's say, mis-spoken?  Please confirm?

 

2 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

The inherent unreality of qualia is not being discussed.  Instead, you're posting many words about points to which I have already agreed.  That is your choice, but I am not in any way encouraging it.

 

 

Hi Daniel,

 

If you can see it, if you can hear it, if you can smell it, if you can taste it, if you can feel it, if you can remember it, then it is not real and it is a simulation your brain has created as a useful fiction to help you navigate your environment.

 

If that answer does not satisfy you, then please let's take this discussion private because I feel we are beating a dead horse and while I don't mind to continue, others here in the forum will begin to complain sometime in the near future.

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

I have already agreed to this.  I already understand this.  None of this has any bearing on what is happening outside the skull.  That's the whole point.

 

 

My question was not "how much is missing"  I asked "how much is incorrect.  See below:

 

 

And you never answered my question about the diagrams I sent you or the conversation we are having.  The reason this is important is because you seem to be assuming that nothing exists outside the mind even though there is abundant evidence for it.  This nullification of everything seems to be produced by beginning with doubt and skepticsm but then balloons into denial of everything without rational reasons.

 

So, I am asking:  where did the editted diagrams I produced come from?  How is it possible that you and I were able to reconcile the misunderstanding rapidly UNLESS we are both functionally seeing the same diagrams with the same content?  

 

 

So Daniel,

 

It's not my intention to be rude to you, so please don't take this the wrong way.

 

I've said everything I know to say about the topic, as many ways as I know how to say it.

 

At the moment it seems you still aren't grasping the core of what I am saying.

 

I'll be happy to continue talking to you about it, but at some point you have to acknowledge that the locals here on the forum will get annoyed by the same things being repeated over and over.

 

If you want to continue discussion, maybe we could continue the discussion in private?

 

Also please check out the Ted Talk above if you have time.

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

This sort of nullification, I'm sure would be very comforting for the drunk driver who has killed or hurt someone.  Or is comforting for anyone who has regrets.  "It's all a dream, it's all a dream, none of this is real..."   

 

 

Earlier I mentioned we are talking past each other without any real communication occurring.

 

They way I understand the words and they way you understand them seems to be different.

 

The fact is our experience is all a dream, and none of it is real, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't drive sober or be good people.

 

There may in fact be an external reality out there which our simulated dream like experience is a representation of, and operating under the assumption there is we should behavior morally, and ethically.

 

I am saying don't mistake a painting of a pipe for an actual pipe.

 

What you see and experience isn't the same thing that is happening outside of your skull.

 

It is something different from it.

 

Yet most people live their lives operating under the assumption it is actual reality.

 

It is a holographic simulation, and nothing more.

1 hour ago, Daniel said:

 

I have already agreed to this.  I already understand this.  None of this has any bearing on what is happening outside the skull.  That's the whole point.

 

 

My question was not "how much is missing"  I asked "how much is incorrect.  See below:

 

 

And you never answered my question about the diagrams I sent you or the conversation we are having.  The reason this is important is because you seem to be assuming that nothing exists outside the mind even though there is abundant evidence for it.  This nullification of everything seems to be produced by beginning with doubt and skepticsm but then balloons into denial of everything without rational reasons.

 

So, I am asking:  where did the editted diagrams I produced come from?  How is it possible that you and I were able to reconcile the misunderstanding rapidly UNLESS we are both functionally seeing the same diagrams with the same content?  

 

 

"So, I am asking:  where did the editted diagrams I produced come from?  How is it possible that you and I were able to reconcile the misunderstanding rapidly UNLESS we are both functionally seeing the same diagrams with the same content?" 

 

Imagine you are in a tank, you see the outside world with a camera outside, and a television inside.

 

Now imagine that you had a crane on the outside of the tank you could use like a hand to interact with the environment.

 

Imagine you used the crane to write a message out in the dirt so another tank operator could read it, diagrams and all.

 

It's kind of a silly analogy, but it's the best one I can come up with.

2 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

I have already agreed to this.  I already understand this.  None of this has any bearing on what is happening outside the skull.  That's the whole point.

 

 

My question was not "how much is missing"  I asked "how much is incorrect.  See below:

 

 

And you never answered my question about the diagrams I sent you or the conversation we are having.  The reason this is important is because you seem to be assuming that nothing exists outside the mind even though there is abundant evidence for it.  This nullification of everything seems to be produced by beginning with doubt and skepticsm but then balloons into denial of everything without rational reasons.

 

So, I am asking:  where did the editted diagrams I produced come from?  How is it possible that you and I were able to reconcile the misunderstanding rapidly UNLESS we are both functionally seeing the same diagrams with the same content?  

 

 

 "My question was not "how much is missing"  I asked "how much is incorrect.  See below:"

 

The video below has some wonderful views of our planets through a telescope. 

 

If we were on Mars and filming Earth with a similar telescope, you wouldn't see the trees, the people, you wouldn't understand the culture.

 

The same goes for your question about your arm.

 

There is too much you cannot see and know to say that your perception of it is anything more than a shadow on the wall.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Daniel said:

 

I have already agreed to this.  I already understand this.  None of this has any bearing on what is happening outside the skull.  That's the whole point.

 

 

My question was not "how much is missing"  I asked "how much is incorrect.  See below:

 

 

And you never answered my question about the diagrams I sent you or the conversation we are having.  The reason this is important is because you seem to be assuming that nothing exists outside the mind even though there is abundant evidence for it.  This nullification of everything seems to be produced by beginning with doubt and skepticsm but then balloons into denial of everything without rational reasons.

 

So, I am asking:  where did the editted diagrams I produced come from?  How is it possible that you and I were able to reconcile the misunderstanding rapidly UNLESS we are both functionally seeing the same diagrams with the same content?  

 

 

"you seem to be assuming that nothing exists outside the mind"

No that is most certainly not my position at all, not even a little bit.

 

You live in a simulated reality created by your brain as a useful fiction to help you navigate your environment.

 

It is exactly like the holodeck in star trek.

 

We hope that this useful fiction accurately simulates reality outside of ourselves, because if it doesn't that's going to create a whole lot of problems.

 

1 hour ago, Cobie said:

I was diagnosed with depersonalization at a very young age. Ime arguing intellectually will not cure it. 

~~~
Depersonalization-derealization disorder occurs when you always or often feel that you're seeing yourself from outside your body or you sense that things around you are not real — or both. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing. You may feel like you're living in a dream. (Google)

 

 

 

 

Colbe,

 

What I am talking about is actually true, I posted a wonderful ted talk about it above, please check it out.

 

People can get diagnosed with Schizophrenia for quoting Edward Snowden or David Grush.

 

Pretty much you have to filter your behavior and your speech in public settings, and even in private to some degree.

 

People who lack the ability to behave normally in public, or filter their speech to normal topics are perceived as being mentally ill.

 

If you are screaming from the rooftops about anything that isn't something people normally encounter you will be diagnosed with some disorder.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

 

The Rosenhan experiment was a famous study in the field of psychiatry, conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. The study was designed to test the validity of psychiatric hospitals' ability to correctly diagnose mental illness.

 

The experiment had two parts:

 

Part One: Pseudo-patient Study: Eight "pseudo-patients" (including Rosenhan himself), none of whom had a history of mental illness, were instructed to go to various psychiatric hospitals around the United States. They claimed to be hearing voices that were unclear, but which seemed to utter the words "empty", "hollow", and "thud". These symptoms were chosen because they did not resemble any known symptoms of any mental illness. However, once admitted, the pseudo-patients acted completely normal and reported no more symptoms.

 

Part Two: Judgement of Sanity: After the first experiment, Rosenhan announced to a research and teaching hospital that over the next three months, one or more pseudo-patients would attempt to be admitted into the hospital. The staff were asked to rate every incoming patient on the likelihood that they were a pseudo-patient.

 

Findings:

First Part: All eight pseudo-patients were admitted to the hospitals, with seven diagnosed with schizophrenia and one with manic-depressive psychosis. They were all given antipsychotic medications (which they secretly discarded). Even though they acted normally after admission, they were kept in the hospitals for an average of 19 days (ranging from 7 to 52 days), and were all discharged with a diagnosis of their supposed mental illness "in remission".

 

Second Part: The staff at the hospital rated 193 patients. Forty-one were identified as potential pseudo-patients by at least one staff member, and 19 were suspected by at least one psychiatrist. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudo-patients to the hospital.

 

Conclusion:

The Rosenhan experiment raised serious questions about the validity of psychiatric diagnoses and the implications of dehumanizing treatment in mental health institutions. It suggested that the diagnostic process in psychiatry was heavily influenced by the context and labels, rather than the patients' actual behavior or experiences. This landmark study played a key role in the movement towards deinstitutionalization and reform of mental health care.

 

 

Here is a wonderful documentary on the Rosenhan experiment:

 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt041e

 

https://www.anilseth.com/bio/

 

I am Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where I am also Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science. I am also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. I was recently an Engagement Fellow with the Wellcome Trust.

 

I am Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press); I sit on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile’s Congreso Futuro. I was Conference Chair for the 16th Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC16, 2012) and was an ASSC ‘member at large’ from 2014-2022.

 

My research has been supported by the EPSRC (Leadership Fellowship), the European Research Council (ERC, Advanced Investigator Grant), the Wellcome Trust, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).  Check out these profiles of me and my research in The Observer, The New Statesman, and Quanta.

 

24 minutes ago, Daniel said:

Even an estimate would be useful here.  The perception of my arm is... what?  75% correct?  80%?  99%?

 

Your arm contains so much data.

 

Imagine keeping track of the speed, and trajectory of every electron and subatomic particle in every atom.

 

If we turned every grain of sand on earth into a computer you couldn't do it.

 

I would say your perception at best captures:

 

0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

 

 

of the data contained in the atoms of your arm.

21 minutes ago, Daniel said:

 

But plato's analogy is an exaggeration to make a point.  It's exaggerated.  The shadows on the all ARE reality.  They are in a cave.  There are fires for light and warmth.  Why are you assuming the shadows are not real.

 

And why are you assuming there's a problem if I look at the TV and see some intruder picked on the security camera.  That's not a problem, that's a solution to a big problem.

 

 

I know it's not actually my arm, but it's a very-very good abstraction.  Super-duper good, much-much-much better than a 2-d picture on a TV.  A pipe I can put in my mouth and smoke is a very-very-very good likeness of a pipe.  Comparing it to a picture is, forgive me, silly.  Not even close.  

 

Daniel,

 

Imagine you are in a tank.

 

You have cameras outside the tank, and a television inside the tank.

 

This let's you drive the tank around and navigate your environment.

 

The output you see on the television screen while it may indeed represent reality outside of the tank, it itself is not that reality.

 

It is a representation of the reality outside.

 

What you see is a representation.

 

What you hear is a representation.

 

What you smell is a representation.

 

What you taste is a representation.

 

What you feel is is a representation.

 

Your eyeballs are biological cameras.

 

The reality you see and experience is occurring inside your skull.

 

The hangup here is that most people assume they are looking out into an external universe, and that is incorrect.

 

They are in fact looking into their own mind.

 

Most people just assume what they see is reality, but it is not.

 

A painting of a pipe not an actual pipe.

 

An experience of a pipe, is not an actual pipe.

 

No matter how real the experience feels.

 

Just now, Daniel said:

 

The problem again, is there seems to be an assumption being made that the inner experience is NOT accurate simply because it is not known to be perfect.

 

Pixels of light on a television, are not the same thing the camera is actually looking at.

 

A painting of a pipe is not a pipe.

 

The experience of something, is not that something itself.

 

The experience of something has no reality, at least no more reality than a shadow on a wall.

Just now, Daniel said:

 

I've heard these analogies before, they simply don't compare.  No one looks at a TV and then their own arm and imagines there are human arms inside the TV.  The shadows are real shadows.  No one looks at a shadow and confuses a shadow with a human being.  No one confuses a painting of pipe with a pipe.  No one goes to a resteraunt and literally EATS the menu.

 

When you look at your own arm, that is not your arm.

 

You only get to see an experience which occurs inside your mind.

 

The experience of the the thing, is not the thing itself.

 

Just as a painting of a pipe, is not a pipe.