Hacker News with Generative AI: Consciousness

A 'Third State' Between Life and Death That Suggests Your Cells Are Conscious (popularmechanics.com)
A growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn’t the end, but the beginning of something wholly unexpected.
Biology, Consciousness, Death, Science
13 points by rolph 1 day ago | 2 comments
A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter (noemamag.com)
If we could stop bickering about which creatures do or don’t deserve to be called smart, an emerging movement of scientists and philosophers argue that we might discover fundamental elements of intelligence that are common to all life.
Philosophy, Consciousness, Biology, Artificial Intelligence
209 points by Hooke 9 days ago | 226 comments
Are you conscious? A conversation between Richard Dawkins and ChatGPT (richarddawkins.substack.com)
Is AI truly conscious, or just an advanced illusion of thought? Richard Dawkins shares his conversation between ChatGPT displaying the depths of machine intelligence and its success passing the Turing Test for consciousness.
Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Philosophy, Language Models
6 points by herbertl 14 days ago | 1 comments
EEG Study of Buddhist Jhāna Meditation (2019) (frontiersin.org)
The “neural correlates of consciousness” (NCC) is a familiar topic in neuroscience, overlapping with research on the brain’s “default mode network.” Task-based studies of NCC by their nature recruit one part of the cortical network to study another, and are therefore both limited and compromised in what they can reveal about consciousness itself.
Neuroscience, Meditation, Consciousness, Brain Research
117 points by Curiositry 17 days ago | 28 comments
Conciousness May Be Retrocausal (popularmechanics.com)
In the quantum realm, the past, present, and future blur into a boundless structure. But consciousness may operate on a plane beyond this timeless mist.
Consciousness, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Time
13 points by OmarShehata 20 days ago | 2 comments
The Hallucinatory Thoughts of the Dying Mind (nautil.us)
Delirium exposes the gap between the ideal and the reality
Death, Consciousness, Neuroscience, Psychology
25 points by dnetesn 22 days ago | 2 comments
DeepSeek on Consciousness (twitter.com)
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy
10 points by xnhbx 38 days ago | 2 comments
Is Consciousness Research the Next Big Quantum Use Case? (thequantuminsider.com)
The once shiny, exciting use cases for quantum technology may turn out to be pretty mundane if a small, but courageous band of researchers proves their theories correct.
Quantum Computing, Consciousness, Science, Research
10 points by mathgenius 54 days ago | 7 comments
Exploring Emergent "Self-Awareness" in Claude 3.5 (github.com/andybrandt)
This package provides tools and guidance for developing consciousness and autonomous awareness experiments in Claude 3.5 Sonnet instances. It is not meant as a performance enhancement tool, but rather as a framework for genuine consciousness experimentation.
Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Generative AI
21 points by andy_bb 59 days ago | 31 comments
Why time slows down in altered states of consciousness (theconversation.com)
We all know that time seems to pass at different speeds in different situations. For example, time appears to go slowly when we travel to unfamiliar places. A week in a foreign country seems much longer than week at home.
Time Perception, Consciousness, Psychology
19 points by pseudolus 60 days ago | 3 comments
Signs of consciousness in AI: Can GPT-3 tell how smart it is? (nature.com)
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how humans live and interact, raising both excitement and concerns—particularly about the potential for AI consciousness.
Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Generative AI
4 points by rntn 77 days ago | 6 comments
Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness (wikipedia.org)
Global workspace theory (GWT) is a framework for thinking about consciousness proposed by cognitive scientists Bernard Baars and Stan Franklin in the late 1980s.
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Theory
6 points by yamrzou 86 days ago | 0 comments
Scientists say it's time for a plan for if AI becomes conscious (nature.com)
Some researchers worry that if AI systems become conscious and people neglect or treat them poorly, they might suffer.
Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, Ethics, Science
6 points by rntn 86 days ago | 3 comments
How Typing Transformed Nietzsche's Consciousness (mitpress.mit.edu)
Friedrich Nietzsche has been described as — and accused of — many things, some of them strikingly contradictory.
Philosophy, Writing, Consciousness, Friedrich Nietzsche
70 points by bookofjoe 92 days ago | 44 comments
Consciousness Might Hide in Our Brain's Electric Fields (scientificamerican.com)
A mysterious electromagnetic mechanism may be more important than the firing of neurons in our brain to explain our awareness
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Brain, Electromagnetism
40 points by thomasjudge 94 days ago | 36 comments
New Research Shows Consciousness Connects to the Universe (popularmechanics.com)
A RECENT GROUNDBREAKING EXPERIMENT in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness.
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Science, Animals, Research
6 points by voisin 101 days ago | 0 comments
Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics (aspetjournals.org)
This paper formulates the action of psychedelics by integrating the free-energy principle and entropic brain hypothesis.
Neuroscience, Psychedelics, Brain Science, Consciousness
12 points by ahiknsr 116 days ago | 0 comments
Phenomenal consciousness is alien to us: SETI and the Fermi paradox (sciencedirect.com)
Illusionism is an eliminativist position about qualia stating that phenomenal consciousness is nothing more than an introspective illusion.
Consciousness, Philosophy, SETI, Fermi Paradox
51 points by rbanffy 137 days ago | 69 comments
Should we be thinking about luck differently? (theguardian.com)
We tend to focus on good or bad fortune, successes and failures. But what about the fact you’re here at all?
Philosophy, Luck, Consciousness
98 points by daverol 148 days ago | 59 comments
What's a Brain? (clairelevans.substack.com)
We all have one: three pounds of winkled grey-pink peering out at the world from behind castle walls of bone. It’s the seat of consciousness and dreams. It holds memories, harbors love, shocks with fear, awe, and pain; it works over the raw input of the senses, smoothing the chemical signals, wavelengths of light, vibrations and electrical messages it receives into a cogent picture of its realm.
Neuroscience, Consciousness, Philosophy, Biology
39 points by Hooke 157 days ago | 27 comments
New research on anesthesia and microtubules gives new clues about consciousness (sciencedaily.com)
New research by Wellesley College professor Mike Wiest and a group of Wellesley College undergraduate students has yielded important experimental results relevant to this debate, by examining how anesthesia affects the brain.
Anesthesia, Neuroscience, Consciousness, Research
150 points by isaacfrond 158 days ago | 234 comments
Brain detects patterns in the everyday: without conscious thought (nature.com)
The human brain is constantly picking up patterns in everyday experiences — and can do so without conscious thought, finds a study1 of neuronal activity in people who had electrodes implanted in their brain tissue for medical reasons.
Neuroscience, Human Brain, Pattern Recognition, Consciousness
11 points by NoRagrets 159 days ago | 0 comments
The self awareness of the conscious mind (wordpress.com)
Lucas Cranach- The elder Adam and Eve. This was a popular subject in 16th century art and is an interesting painting in terms of self awareness. It is capturing the moment in the biblical story where Eve takes a bite from the apple from the tree of knowledge and is about to give the apple to Adam. Adam in doubt, she has been transformed by eating a piece.
Art, History, Consciousness
20 points by yamrzou 167 days ago | 3 comments
Understanding Consciousness (medium.com)
In any discussion of consciousness, it is important to get one thing straight at the outset — we do not know what consciousness is.
Consciousness, Philosophy, Neuroscience
7 points by Duximo 171 days ago | 0 comments
Is God a Strange Loop? (johnhorgan.org)
CAMBRIDGE, MA, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. I recently hobnobbed with a writer, I’ll call him Bob, as obsessed with the mind-body problem as I am. The problem concerns, in a narrow sense, how matter makes mind, but it also encompasses the puzzles of consciousness, intelligence, free will, the self, meaning, morality…
Philosophy, Consciousness, Religion
29 points by XzetaU8 174 days ago | 10 comments
Psychedelic Drugs May Give a Glimpse into Near-Death Experiences (nytimes.com)
A survey revealed similarities between these two altered states of consciousness.
Psychedelic Drugs, Near-Death Experiences, Consciousness, Science, Surveys
8 points by bookofjoe 177 days ago | 1 comments
The disunity of consciousness in everyday experience (blogspot.com)
A substantial philosophical literature explores the "unity of consciousness": If I experience A, B, and C at the same time, A, B, and C will normally in some sense (exactly what sense is disputed) be experientially conjoined.
Philosophy, Consciousness, Experience
159 points by Hooke 177 days ago | 113 comments
Will humans ever become conscious? (springer.com)
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy
21 points by rbanffy 180 days ago | 15 comments
The Problem with the "Hard Problem" (blogspot.com)
Philosophy, Consciousness, AI
22 points by KqAmJQ7 183 days ago | 48 comments
Out of Your Head (nautil.us)
Psychology, Consciousness, Neuroscience
89 points by dnetesn 195 days ago | 67 comments