I'm pulling the "twitter is a microblog" rule even though twitter is pretty mega now, hope that's ok.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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I think, when we finally do have a generally-accepted definition of consciousness, we will be deeply unsettled by how simple it is. How unprofound. Like a magic trick after you know how it works. And I think it will require us to think hard about what to do with animals and software that have it.
Personally I'm in the "consciousness is an illusion and every time you go to bed a different person wakes up in the morning" camp.
I would consider this to be two separate, semi-related concepts asserted together, one that consciousness is an illusion, and one that you are a different person each day.
The first point draws many questions; consciousness is an illusion of what? What mechanism causes the illusion? How does it cause it? Why does the illusion exist? And you may note that you could replace illusion in those questions with consciousness and be left in a similar (though still distinct) place. So simply calling consciousness an illusion seems to me to kick the can down the road without actually addressing the problem.
As for being a different person after a lapse in awareness, I’d like to take it a step further and say that you could be considered a new person with every change in moment. It’s easy enough to look back 10 years and say “yeah, that’s a younger me, but they’re not the same as me I can just see the path that led to where I am now.” Getting closer, you may feel different today compared to yesterday depending on various factors (sleep, diet, events), but are you a different person because you slept and had a lapse of awareness, or because the state of your mind and thoughts have shifted? When your internal monologue (or equivalent thought) asks “what is this guy talking about?” Is it not thinking “what” in a brand new context given the words it is responding to, forming a new beginning to a thought that puts the mind in a unique state primed to then enter a new state of “is?” And if the mind is in a unique state of novelty, could the person attached to the mind be considered distinct from the person that existed before?
There is a reason the word revelation exists, it indicates when a person has a novel thought that changes their perspective or way of thinking, altering who they are. Would they not be a new person despite being aware of the process of their change? Due to the above points I don’t think new personhood only occurs at sleep, but constantly. The rate of change may quicken or slow, but the change is always there.
By consciousness being an illusion I mean that we place great value on the uninterrupted continuation of our consciousness, but I think it's likely that it (exactly as you suggest) only really exists in the moment. The illusion would then be the illusion that consciousness is uninterrupted, when in reality you're almost constantly recreating yourself from memory.
This would, incidentally, make us concerningly similar to current AI models.
Of course I have no way of actually knowing any of this. It's just what I'm betting on, because otherwise I think it's really hard to explain any unconsciousness (be it sleep, general anesthesia, suspended animation or the Star Trek transporter) as anything short of death. My belief "solves" this problem by rejecting the whole premise of uninterrupted consciousness.
I feel like that's exactly why we don't have a generally-accepted definition of consciousness. Western ethics assigns special protection to whatever is conscious, so it is convenient to come up with a definition of consciousness, which excludes groups you want to exploit.
Tale as old as time, or at least the conscious idea of time. Whatever consciousness is, we are it. Those humans over there though? Who's to say they aren't sub-humans? Isn't it our job to enlighten them and also take their land and food and things and selves?