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We May Be Surrounded by Trillions of Conscious Beings, Research Suggests—And They Aren’t Human
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A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
Is this the game where we stretch the meaning of words beyond usefulness to force an exciting story. Consciousness is a peculiar state, if everything is then nothing is, is that the point of the exercise.
nah i don't think that everything is conscious but all living beings are.
My point is that if you do accept that human consciousness is a special case then you would still need a word for that level of sentience, and why not keep consciousness as that word and find another for the more general appreciation of environment that non-human terrestrial organisms possess. In truth I think there is already a word for that general condition and the word is life, I think an awareness of your place and a feeling for its beauty is a defining characteristic of all life.
People stretch the word "consciousness" to include things like free-will, human-level intelligence, articulating an understanding of the world, having ideologies, etc.
It's very close to the classical greek word ψυχή, soul, from where we get psyche. And very close to how many christians have understood "soul".
But often scientific inquiry leads us to realize how fictional and self-serving our understandings are. Souls aren't real and consciousness in the brain is just an information sorting process.
Much of life may exhibit that process to some degree. Unsurprising, really - information sorting as complex as ours should have precursors.
No, you just don't know what you're talking about...
A simple aromatic ring can experience two states and prefer one or the other, they're not only a basic conciouness, but they're OCD too. Whichever state they prefer, they start organizing shit like that. And that leads to biological life.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10068-4
That paper covers a lot of what you'll need to know for that to make sense.
But that's also why true alien life is a 50/50 death sentence no matter what, if they have "left hand biology" any contamination would be a total wipeout. At the base level the new addition would outcompete the host base level, because nothing would be capable of using it as food.
Like that shit in the 80s with Revinar, it was an HIV medication that was liquid, however a crystalline molecule was created accidentally. Which made an entire production facility inoperable, no matter what they did they kept getting crystals not liquid.
Then it started spreading to other facilities and they could track it from specific people moving between locations.
Because just a single molecule in a lab was enough to make all future distiliations copy it.
Revinar is like a brick mansions, "left hand biology" is the scale of a single brick.
And an Aromatic ring can just be some kid who spends all day making little bricks for fun.
this is like the thing about prions which are proteins that make other proteins fold into a copy of themselves, thereby spreading.
they're not alive as we understand it (they don't have genetic code), they're just a single big molecule copying itself all over the world.
another example, as you've already said, is crystals growing over time (metabolism) in aequous solutions.
Got a source for this "Revinar" crystal business? I wasn't able to find what you are mentioning when I search for it, and it conflicts with my understanding of chemistry.
In general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_polymorph
The actual thing I was thinking of and not my butchered spelling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritonavir
But thanks for actually asking
@givesomefucks @TriplePlaid Veritasium did a video about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksn5yrsC3Wg
There was a recent Verstasium video about it.
Consciousness is more like gravity or electrical charge than a cognitive state. It permeates space and is an inherent property of matter and energy. I think the narrow definition we have had for it is in need of expanding, and the science keeps going in that direction.
Sounds a little hippy to me but 'there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy' so if it is the case we will still need a word for what consciousness did mean. Why not leave consciousness alone and find a new word to mean the interconnectedness of grifting ideas to make a living.
Science isn't a philosophy, its a process for approaching the truth. Yes, I can't prove what I am saying and it is based more on a strong feeling than direct proof. I think the question of consciousness is a particularly important one, and we know very little about it still.
Your first line is science is a means to find truth, your second line is I have no proof I just feel it.
Edit. I did not mean for that to sound so aggressive, I disagree with some of what you said but you are genuine.
The science is the means, not the truth.
Well, the scientific method is, not sure if that also applies to the definition of science as s singular word.
You treat science/knowledge as a philosophy when it is inherently incomplete and always will be.
Yeah...
Because it is?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10068-4
Most people just can't understand that shit, so when someone talks about it in easy to use terms, it sounds "a little hippy".
Like, that's where the hippies got their words from in the first place bro...
"Vibing" is an accurate scientific description of two consciousnesses that are agreeable with each other. The people saying it don't always understand it, but most of what "hippies" say about consciousness is pretty fucking accurate.
Why keep insisting the people who always used the term correctly stop because it doesn't match the simplified version you were taught decades ago in jr high?
The forced degradation of words is unhelpful, a word will still be needed to differentiate the unparalleled state of mind from the emerging properties of complex systems. Concepts like consciousness and God are often commandeered to peddle tenuous ideas to the great unwashed and it is ultimately unsustainable. And while we are about it computational modelling is a license to find what you want to find.
Then stop doing it...
You're trying to make people who use the word correctly stop, because you never knew what it meant.
And of fucking course youre plugging chat it's now.
Source?
There isn’t enough hard science to prove it either way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Then I choose to support the way that isn't woowoo space magic.
What is it about non-materialism that you guys seem to find so upsetting? Is it that it decenters your experience of the self? Is it the idea of unknowable truth? Its like I have attacked you personally by suggesting another way of looking at reality.
Edit: One of the reasons I have rejected materialism/physicalism is that you can’t have free will under it. Its deterministic. I think most people, even those that turn to that way of thinking for comfort, find the idea of no free will disturbing.
I reject it for the same reason I am staunchly anti-religious: I think the acceptance of magical thinking is a net negative for society.
Free will is overrated. It feels like we have it and whether it's real or not has no impact on our actions. You've traded one illusion for another.
I would contend that believing all can be known is magical thinking on its own.