This article explains in simple language why some aspects of consciousness are actually easy to understand. One can even come closer to understanding the physical realization of artificial consciousness. And all this becomes clear only after considering such a thing as time.The thing is that time as we perceive it does not exist. But for some reason, researchers of consciousness and philosophers draw conclusions based on the ârealityâ of subjective perception of time, which leads to a violation of the applicability of this concept. This simple but not obvious mistake for many leads to the "mystery" of the work of consciousness. And all that was needed was to understand what exactly in our reasoning was excessively abstracted from reality.So what is consciousness? Is it possible to transfer it to our modern computers and what is wrong with time? If interested, welcome to cat. The article will not attempt to hammer nails with a tomograph , because I do not have it, as well as candidate crusts . Nevertheless, I assume that the article will be of interest to many.âHave you traveled in the past?â
- No.
- So I did not travel. But it exists.
Imagine that all of humanity is a big sect that believes in a fictional pasta monster. Sounds like nonsense. However, in practice there are a lot of such " pasta monsters ", and we all completely believe in them, because they are useful in practice. One such useful âpasta monsterâ is time.Since the concept of time is very useful in everyday life, and everyone has a sense of time from birth, no one criticizes this faith. It is obvious, after all, that time exists "in the present."It seems to us that time has a certain âflowâ speed, and that the past objectively exists - âafter all, I just read the text,â any person will say, appealing to the reality of the past.Moreover, we never perceive the world âin the momentâ: even while reading a text or listening to music, it is necessary to perceive a certain period of time , and not a single âframeâ. Therefore, in our perception, the past exists along with the present , as something real and tangible. Having such a perception, it is very convenient to observe the world around and draw conclusions about the processes taking place in it. But it is just as easy to forget about the fictitious nature of âtimeâ, having made a logical mistake at the very beginning of reasoning and as a result of â getting lost in three pines â. This is exactly what happened with philosophical discourse about consciousness, and in science as a whole, too.Indeed, only in words we are all adherents of critical thinking, but in practice we just like a certain idea and we are no better than religious fanatics .Where is the "past"
It doesn't matter how long the event happened. When trying to recall an event a decade ago, or if only a millisecond has passed, our brain will not make a journey into the past . All that will be given to us is a set of sensations, images, in a word - a set of signals in the brain, which is here (in the head) now.These signals, which we draw pictures from the past, are absolutely always in the âpresentâ . They never " teleport " from the past. And âpastâ we absolutely always call what is actually in the present, in the present . Thus, the "past" is nothing more than a symbol. Itâs like a sticker with an inscription attached to the âinformation folderâ.
The same signals in the brain can be indicated by the past, the future, or even can be indicated by another concept, outside the temporal context, such as beautiful or terrible.So, an important fact - remembering the past, the brain does not actually travel to the past . This means that everything that is given to us in subjective experience is, in fact, always located in the "present . " This is a very important point, which is already enough to understand a lot about the work of consciousness and not only.In fact, no one has ever seen the present "past". Even in physical experiments, we do not have access to it. In general, the past does not exist. We call the past a set of sensations in the present. And the past is only a designation of some part of the âinformationâ in the process model called âtimeâ.At this stage, one can find fault with my words, for example, that the âpresent moment of timeâ is actually also a fictitious concept, and nobody really knows how it really is there. This point will be touched upon later in the article, and now itâs enough convention that the state of subjective experience is always located in the present moment and the brain cannot travel to the past. Your CEP .How to fit subjective experience in the present
The mere fact that one cannot travel to the past and that everything that really exists exists in the present is already enough to marvel at how the consciousness works and how primitive our modern computers are. After all, if the past does not exist, then subjective experience should fit in the present moment of time . And even if we assume that much in subjective experience only seems to us and is an illusion (roughly speaking, some of the information is replaced by the banal sensation âI knowâ), it still turns out that subjective experience is a lot of information that needs to be somehow to store and process simultaneously for 1 "step" of consciousness, and this step is equal to the minimum possible period of time.We do not have the right to âsmearâ the phenomenon of consciousness in time, like butter on a sandwich, since a âcontainerâ in the form of the past, where you could place a whole series of interactions of individual elements of consciousness, simply does not really exist. This "container" is only in our brain in the form of memory, which creates some illusions for us, which are of course useful in everyday life, because they help us navigate in reality. But alas, our memory is the same âpresent pastâ as the mathematical model of an electron is a real elementary particle âelectronâ. Well, or if you want an easier example, the difference here is between a real car and its design.Small digression
By the way, about illusions. In this article, illusion means an erroneous interpretation of sensations, rather than doubts about the fact of their presence. For example, if a person experiences hallucinations and sees a flying elephant, this does not mean that there are no corresponding signals in his brain. They, signals, obviously are. But in the case of hallucination, these signals do not mean that the flying elephant object exists in reality, since the root cause of the signals is the brain itself, and not the object in the outside world. Thus, not everything in subjective experience can be called an illusion, only interpretation can be interpreted by us incorrectly. But the fact of having sensations can no longer be illusory. It is important here not to get confused, which means âfact of availabilityâ. For example, if a person remembers an event that actually was not there, then there is a fact of the presence ofsensations themselves . And already the interpretation of the sensations that they were caused by a real event, since there is a memory - is erroneous .And this is also a very important point. The fact is that something in subjective experience, sooner or later, must have identity with matter, with reality. Subjective experience cannot be only an absolute illusion, which, for example, is created by our brain. If we assume that absolutely everything that relates to consciousness is an illusion, then this casts doubt on the existence of the observed reality itself, which is given to us in sensations. But if reality is illusory too, then is consciousness then illusory? A logical error occurs. Therefore, at least the fact of sensations, roughly speaking âobservationâ, but without the obligatory comprehension and memorization of the observed, sooner or later rests simply on the fact of existence, unites with reality, with matter. The sensations are just there, just as the matter is just there, and in fact it should be one and the same.Otherwise, âhelloâ parallel worlds, esotericism, soul and everything else.But back to subjective experience
So, subjective experience should fit in a moment of time. This imposes very severe restrictions on the possible realization of subjective experience. The information carrier, which is our subjective experience, should in this case be implemented on such physical principles that all its elements have connections in the present moment of time. There are no such connections in our computers. Any signal in a computer is a series of successive interactions, somewhat reminiscent of a toy in the form of a pendulum of balls that transmit momentum to each other.
Of course, it is possible to put many parallel processes in one microcircuit case and thus increase the âsystem complexityâ at a time. But these processes will not have connections with each other in a moment of time. In essence, they will exist as independent processes. From the fact that many processes are placed in one "box" they still do not become connected. Just now they are located closer to each other.To indicate the essence of the difference between modern computing systems and consciousness , I propose introducing two concepts - fragmentation in time and fragmentation in space ."Discontinuity in time" or why your laptop is still unconscious
Of course, many processes in the brain can be âsmeared in timeâ, as they simply prepare information for consciousness, and therefore they do not need to concentrate in the moment in time. However, sooner or later all information must be concentrated in one moment of time in order to become a subjective experience. Otherwise, it will be just pieces of information that will not create a âwhole picture of the worldâ of consciousness - it (a whole picture of the world) simply will not exist.What happens when a person observes computer computing? That's right - he has the illusion that he has a complicated computer in front of him. But at any given moment in time, the computer is not a very complicated physical process - just like some kind of transistor in the processor opens and starts to pass current. The computer, in fact, does not even have direct instant access to its memory, because any processor access to the computer's memory is a very long time series of interactions of individual elements. And the computer cannot process all the information contained in its memory at once, it can only process it in turn.But a person, unlike a computer, remembers all of his intermediate states: a person remembers how he downloaded a task into a computer, how the computer counted for a long time, and how the computer eventually issued an answer. Human memory unites, â sticks together â all the moments of the computerâs existence into one whole picture, from which it becomes clear that the computer is a complex mechanism that solves some problem almost like a person. And all would be well, but the past does not exist.We call the past the remembered âpicturesâ that exist in the present in our brains. This means that the intermediate states of the computer in this example exist only in the imagination of a person, but in reality only what exists at the moment. Well, what does a computer look like in a âslice of timeâ? Itâs not that there is no consciousness, there even an arithmetic operation on the example of adding numbers will not be performed.Thus, a person in his perception artificially combines disparate processes in time into a single whole . For example, many processes integrate into a single image of a computer. But these processes in reality are not one. A computer, in fact, exists only in the imagination of a person, but in reality it is always just some small process (small in comparison with the âmemory of the past conditions of a computerâ). After all, the past, where there were many previous processes, no longer exists. It exists only in human memory, i.e. being a priori something abstract, not real.In reality, a computer always exists only in time. This is the only thing that really exists, "for real." And at any given moment in time, not such complex processes as the person sees in the memories proceed in the computer.The processes in the computer at any given moment do not carry information about what they were N steps back. Everything, the world has changed, and now it's just a different reality. And only a person in his memoirs knows what these processes in a computer are, which means that they carry meaning only for a person. The flow of electrons in a specific transistor of the processor is not aware that it turns out to be, this is part of the processing of some information. This stream of electrons could exist in the same way in another system, not being a process of processing information of our computer. It could be, for example, part of an incandescent filament in a flashlight bulb."Fragmentation in space"
Another illusion of the complexity of the processes surrounding us may arise due to the gluing of unconnected processes into a single whole, but space does not act as a separator of processes. For example, in the same computer there are processes that take place independently for a long time and only once or several times intersect. But a person in his imagination combines these processes into one whole image.For comparison, the process of the satelliteâs rotation around the planet in the neighboring solar system is in no way connected with the process of current flow in the 220 volt network through a table lamp in Professor Ivanovâs apartment on planet Earth. But if you mentally put these processes âin one boxâ, then gluing of these processes into a single image may occur. Alas, this is exactly what happens with the computer; it is only in our imagination that it is an integral image, and not disparate processes. Under the case of the same processor, there are many phenomena that at a given moment in time may not affect each other at all. Yes, sooner or later they will intersect somewhere, but most of the time they are just independent phenomena, they even âdonât knowâ about each other, and only a person is aware that all this is generally called a âcomputerâ.Physical realization of consciousness
So, it turns out that consciousness cannot be made only from inert processes. Even if these processes proceed very quickly, they still do not suit us. We can use processes stretched out in time only to prepare information for awareness, having previously processed it. Our task is somehow to provide an instant connection between the individual elements of memory, so that the entire amount of information can fit in a moment in time and eventually become a complex subjective experience.Perhaps a question will arise here - why on earth is this condition âsufficientâ for the formation of subjective experience?Everything is simple - there must be identity between subjective experience and some real physical phenomenon. If this identity does not exist, then we will be forced to come up with either a parallel reality where our subjective experience exists, because it is not in our ordinary reality, or we will recognize the subjective experience as an illusion and fall into a logical trap. We do not need parallel realities, why introduce new entities. So there is only one thing left. In fact, the basis of subjective experience is simply the fact of the existence of matter, because matter is subjective experience .Therefore, if there is a certain physical phenomenon, then there is a subjective experience. Another thing is that we are interested in a complex subjective experience, like in a person: that there is an interpretation of sensations and immersion in a fictional world, which is a reflection of the real world.Perhaps such a complex subjective experience arises when there is a set of interconnected sensations, something like a graph of sensations-concepts - a complex construction of relationships. And it is precisely these interconnections that we must realize.So far, the only thing that suits the role of such connections is quantum teleportation of information. If we take only electrochemical bonds or even electromagnetic interaction, then it simply wonât work out for us to create instantaneous simultaneous connections between memory elements.In what form does time exist
I promised in an article that Iâll explain a little more about time. If interested, an explanation under the spoiler.What is time, , . , . , . . , , â , .
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- Consciousness cannot be transferred to computing systems based on the principles of the design of modern computers.
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In fact, there can be many more conclusions. For example, that consciousness can be combined into one, or one consciousness can be divided into two parts. It is possible that local areas may exist in the brain with its own subjective experience, which is separate from the main âmainâ subjective experience.Ultimately, if we understand how the instantaneous connections between memory elements in the human brain are realized, in theory it will be possible to create a real âtelepathicâ communication channel by combining two consciousnesses that are physically separated into one.You can also now answer the question of free will. On the one hand, since consciousness and matter are one and the same, the manifestations of matter can be designated as a kind of âwillâ. But on the other hand, for a person, his expression of will is rather a symbol of his own actions. And such a designation, alas, is nothing more than a simple designation: "I did," "I decided so." And such a designation has a very indirect relation to the very phenomenon of a change in the state of matter, i.e. in fact, it does not give control over the situation, but gives the illusion of control. Similar illusions apply to our inner âIâ - this is a designation that has a very indirect relation to the phenomenon of consciousness. In essence, âIâ is simply an idea, without which consciousness could well exist. Those. these are two different concepts.There are many other issues that may be a continuation of this article. For example, if matter is subjective experience, why does only information from the experience of the physical body get into the conscious area and the person does not feel, say, âmatter itselfâ around itself? In fact, such questions have a simple but not very clear answer. In fact, in such matters, the main thing is to understand what we really call, as is the case with time.