Are brains a prerequisite for consciousness? Holoprosencephaly is a cephalic disorder in which the prosencephalon fails to develop into two hemispheres. In lay terms, there is no brain atop the brain stem. What of a baby with no brain? Could it think? Could it form language? The answer is yes. Baby born without most of… Continue reading The Case for Plant Consciousness
Super Human: The Mailing List!
There are three ways to unlock the mind’s superpowers. One way is academic: years of training, hard work, and practice. Another is through inheritance: the right genes are passed down through favorable ancestry. Will Freeman is more anxious than other teens. When his new friend Lily Powers invites herself over and the two go treasure… Continue reading Super Human: The Mailing List!
The Social Dilemma, So-Called Objective Reality, and Higher Mind
What we regard as objective reality is but a convenience, a virtual representation, created by us, aiding in our quest for reproduction. 1Keynote address: Perception, Illusion, and Truth | Donald Hoffman Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman uses the analogy of the computer Desktop. The Desktop isn’t an accurate representation of the alternating voltages inside a computer,… Continue reading The Social Dilemma, So-Called Objective Reality, and Higher Mind
Lucid Dreaming, Waking, and Distraction
As a teen, I was a natural at lucid dreaming. I could— no exaggeration— realize I was dreaming four or five times a night. It was lots of fun. Mostly flying, but you can imagine what else a teenager might want to dream about.
Caesar’s Last Breath and ESP
“Brain Art” by Ars Electronica, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The story goes that in 44 BC in Rome, Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of his own senators, crumpling to the floor with a final gasp. This last breath contained around 25 sextillion (that’s 25 followed by 21 zeroes) air molecules, which would… Continue reading Caesar’s Last Breath and ESP
Is Humanity a Self-Aware System? How Might We Know?
When asked, on Waking Cosmos, about the prospects of AI become self-aware, Dean Radin suggested [quote to follow], any system with a sufficient number of connections might become self-aware. Which got me thinking… humanity is a system. It has billions of nodes and trillions of connections. Humanity meets Dean’s thought-experiment criteria for being self-aware. But,… Continue reading Is Humanity a Self-Aware System? How Might We Know?