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Sam Harris on why consciousness is more certain than the universe — and why free will is a different problem entirely Pulling out a clip from my conversation with Sam Harris (Making Sense Podcast) where he draws an asymmetry I think is worth sitting with. His claim: consciousness is...

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Prof. Brian Keating

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26,693 views • 3 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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Ken Liu Ken Liu on the question we can't avoid anymore: what is consciousness? why certain plants evolved to change our minds, why intelligence ≠ consciousness (AI made this impossible to ignore), and the ethical moment we're racing toward. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- "historically in sci-fi, we've imagined that intelligence and consciousness are almost equivalent in the sense that if you have intelligence, you automatically have consciousness. But AI is making us more and more aware of this distinction, right?"So here's an example where consciousness intelligence are decoupled, and it's a very strange feeling to realize that they are fundamentally different things. "In the moment when we have created artificial consciousness, how will we know when that has happened? Because to me, that is an important ethical moment where we have to decide what we can and can't do. Shutting down a model that merely has intelligence is one thing. Shutting down a model that has consciousness is something quite different. "
4:30

Ken Liu Ken Liu on the question we can't avoid anymore: what is consciousness? why certain plants evolved to change our minds, why intelligence ≠ consciousness (AI made this impossible to ignore), and the ethical moment we're racing toward. _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- "historically in sci-fi, we've imagined that intelligence and consciousness are almost equivalent in the sense that if you have intelligence, you automatically have consciousness. But AI is making us more and more aware of this distinction, right?"So here's an example where consciousness intelligence are decoupled, and it's a very strange feeling to realize that they are fundamentally different things. "In the moment when we have created artificial consciousness, how will we know when that has happened? Because to me, that is an important ethical moment where we have to decide what we can and can't do. Shutting down a model that merely has intelligence is one thing. Shutting down a model that has consciousness is something quite different. "

Sabrina Halper

14,761 views • 7 months ago

ELON: AI CAN SIMULATE CONSCIOUSNESS - BUT IS IT REAL? “It feels like consciousness is in a different dimension. This could be just an illusion. If you damage your brain in some way, you damage your consciousness, which implies that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. What I think is really quite likely is that digital intelligence will be able to outthink us in every way - and it will suddenly be able to simulate what we consider consciousness. To a degree, you would not be able to tell the difference.” Source: Elon Musk, Lex Fridman Podcast, November 12, 2019
0:21

ELON: AI CAN SIMULATE CONSCIOUSNESS - BUT IS IT REAL? “It feels like consciousness is in a different dimension. This could be just an illusion. If you damage your brain in some way, you damage your consciousness, which implies that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. What I think is really quite likely is that digital intelligence will be able to outthink us in every way - and it will suddenly be able to simulate what we consider consciousness. To a degree, you would not be able to tell the difference.” Source: Elon Musk, Lex Fridman Podcast, November 12, 2019

Mario Nawfal

96,434 views • 9 months ago

John Searle: consciousness cannot be an illusion and here's the argument that makes it undeniable Science has a long track record of overturning our intuitions. The table looks solid, it isn't. The sun appears to set, it doesn't. We've learned to accept that appearances deceive us, and that reality lies beneath. But philosopher John Searle argues there is exactly one domain where this move simply cannot be made: consciousness itself. "Where consciousness is concerned, you can't make the standard appearance/reality distinction that we make for the rest of the world." His logic is simple. When a scientist tells you the table isn't really solid and that it's a cloud of micro-particles, you can accept that. The appearance (solidity) and the reality (particles) are two different things, and you can hold them apart. Same with the sunset. It looks like the sun moves. It doesn't. The rotation of the Earth creates an illusion. Appearance and reality come apart and you understand the gap. Now try applying that same logic to your conscious experience. Someone claims your pain isn't really there, that your awareness is just an illusion. But here, Searle says, the distinction collapses entirely: "Where the existence of consciousness is concerned, the appearance is the reality. There's no way that some guy can come to me and convince me I'm not conscious if I think I'm conscious, I am conscious." This is a structural point about what consciousness fundamentally is. For every other phenomenon, the appearance can be explained away by pointing to what's "really" happening underneath. But consciousness is the very medium in which all appearances occur. There is no "underneath" to retreat to. To say consciousness is an illusion, you would first need to be conscious of the illusion. The argument defeats itself on contact.
0:50

John Searle: consciousness cannot be an illusion and here's the argument that makes it undeniable Science has a long track record of overturning our intuitions. The table looks solid, it isn't. The sun appears to set, it doesn't. We've learned to accept that appearances deceive us, and that reality lies beneath. But philosopher John Searle argues there is exactly one domain where this move simply cannot be made: consciousness itself. "Where consciousness is concerned, you can't make the standard appearance/reality distinction that we make for the rest of the world." His logic is simple. When a scientist tells you the table isn't really solid and that it's a cloud of micro-particles, you can accept that. The appearance (solidity) and the reality (particles) are two different things, and you can hold them apart. Same with the sunset. It looks like the sun moves. It doesn't. The rotation of the Earth creates an illusion. Appearance and reality come apart and you understand the gap. Now try applying that same logic to your conscious experience. Someone claims your pain isn't really there, that your awareness is just an illusion. But here, Searle says, the distinction collapses entirely: "Where the existence of consciousness is concerned, the appearance is the reality. There's no way that some guy can come to me and convince me I'm not conscious if I think I'm conscious, I am conscious." This is a structural point about what consciousness fundamentally is. For every other phenomenon, the appearance can be explained away by pointing to what's "really" happening underneath. But consciousness is the very medium in which all appearances occur. There is no "underneath" to retreat to. To say consciousness is an illusion, you would first need to be conscious of the illusion. The argument defeats itself on contact.

Big Brain Philosophy

17,476 views • 4 months ago

According to Bentov, consciousness evolves to the 'absolute' which is the source of all consciousness. Matter, composed of quanta of energy, is the vibrating, changing component of pure consciousness. The absolute is fixed, manifest and invisible. Bentov proposed that the brain acts as a transducer, converting the energy of consciousness into the electrical and chemical signals that are used to communicate information within the body. He also believed that the brain has the ability to tune into different frequencies of consciousness, allowing individuals to experience different states of awareness. Bentov's theory is based on the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe and is not limited to the brain or the body. He argued that consciousness is non-local, meaning it is not bound by space and time and can exist independently of the physical body. Bentov's theory has been influential in the field of consciousness studies, but it remains a subject of debate and is not widely accepted by mainstream science.
2:39

According to Bentov, consciousness evolves to the 'absolute' which is the source of all consciousness. Matter, composed of quanta of energy, is the vibrating, changing component of pure consciousness. The absolute is fixed, manifest and invisible. Bentov proposed that the brain acts as a transducer, converting the energy of consciousness into the electrical and chemical signals that are used to communicate information within the body. He also believed that the brain has the ability to tune into different frequencies of consciousness, allowing individuals to experience different states of awareness. Bentov's theory is based on the idea that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe and is not limited to the brain or the body. He argued that consciousness is non-local, meaning it is not bound by space and time and can exist independently of the physical body. Bentov's theory has been influential in the field of consciousness studies, but it remains a subject of debate and is not widely accepted by mainstream science.

Vicky Verma

390,608 views • 2 years ago

Had the pleasure of speaking with Philip Goff , philosopher and panpsychist, about AI consciousness. Key moments: - On AI sentience: consciousness is biological, not computational. In his view, no current AI is conscious, nor would computation based AI be. How does this relate to his panpsychist worldview of consciousness? There are different takes on panpsychism within the community. His own view is that it's not clear how micro-conscious particles actually create a unified conscious system. - We need collaboration between scientists and philosophers on consciousness research. On a practical level, divide scientists into teams that work on separate philosophical assumptions and see what comes out of it (granted there are resources to run such experiments). - Perhaps consciousness brings new causal dynamics not reducible to known physics/chemistry — "strong emergence," as Philip calls it. As a contrast: Sean Carroll argues physics runs the whole show, but neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell argues that biological complexity might behave in ways physics wouldn't predict. In other words, we look to physics to solve the consciousness problem, but that might be the wrong path, especially if consciousness is biological rather than computational. The link to the full discussion below.
0:41

Had the pleasure of speaking with Philip Goff , philosopher and panpsychist, about AI consciousness. Key moments: - On AI sentience: consciousness is biological, not computational. In his view, no current AI is conscious, nor would computation based AI be. How does this relate to his panpsychist worldview of consciousness? There are different takes on panpsychism within the community. His own view is that it's not clear how micro-conscious particles actually create a unified conscious system. - We need collaboration between scientists and philosophers on consciousness research. On a practical level, divide scientists into teams that work on separate philosophical assumptions and see what comes out of it (granted there are resources to run such experiments). - Perhaps consciousness brings new causal dynamics not reducible to known physics/chemistry — "strong emergence," as Philip calls it. As a contrast: Sean Carroll argues physics runs the whole show, but neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell argues that biological complexity might behave in ways physics wouldn't predict. In other words, we look to physics to solve the consciousness problem, but that might be the wrong path, especially if consciousness is biological rather than computational. The link to the full discussion below.

Sophia

10,530 views • 2 months ago

Neuroscientist Anil Seth says the idea that AI is on the path to consciousness is a reflection of our psychological biases, not fact We confuse intelligence (doing the right thing) with consciousness (having an experience) "they coexist in us, but not necessarily in machines"
0:48

Neuroscientist Anil Seth says the idea that AI is on the path to consciousness is a reflection of our psychological biases, not fact We confuse intelligence (doing the right thing) with consciousness (having an experience) "they coexist in us, but not necessarily in machines"

Haider.

69,795 views • 8 months ago

Physicist: Consciousness DOES NOT Come From The BRAIN The prevailing materialist paradigm asserts that consciousness is a byproduct of neural activity, a mere epiphenomenon of biochemical interactions in the brain. However, this reductionist view crumbles under deeper scrutiny, as it fails to account for the vast spectrum of consciousness, from transcendent mystical states to near-death experiences and non-local awareness. Consciousness is not confined within the brain; rather, the brain is a transceiver, a finely tuned instrument that receives and modulates the vast ocean of awareness permeating the cosmos. Just as a radio does not generate the music it plays but instead decodes signals from an unseen field, the brain is an interface between the physical realm and the infinite, omnipresent field of consciousness. Mystic science, in alignment with ancient wisdom and cutting-edge quantum research, reveals that consciousness is fundamental-an organizing principle of reality itself. Walter Russell's work echoes this truth, demonstrating that mind is primary and matter is a consequence of its rhythmic pulsations. The brain, much like a crystalline matrix, is structured to interpret and shape consciousness into coherent experience, but it does not generate it. In this light, consciousness is not local, nor is it constrained by the physical form. It is the unseen architect behind the rhythms of existence, the hidden intelligence orchestrating the grand cosmic symphony to believe that the brain creates consciousness is akin to believing that the eye creates light or that a mirror generates the image it reflects. It is not the origin but the instrument. As mystic scientists, we recognize thay true awakening lies in shifting our perception from brain-centered awareness to the realization that we are conduits of an eternal intelligence, woven into the very fabric of existence. Consciousness is not inside us—we are inside it. ✨🙌🏾💫 © Dr. Jason Yuan
1:25

Physicist: Consciousness DOES NOT Come From The BRAIN The prevailing materialist paradigm asserts that consciousness is a byproduct of neural activity, a mere epiphenomenon of biochemical interactions in the brain. However, this reductionist view crumbles under deeper scrutiny, as it fails to account for the vast spectrum of consciousness, from transcendent mystical states to near-death experiences and non-local awareness. Consciousness is not confined within the brain; rather, the brain is a transceiver, a finely tuned instrument that receives and modulates the vast ocean of awareness permeating the cosmos. Just as a radio does not generate the music it plays but instead decodes signals from an unseen field, the brain is an interface between the physical realm and the infinite, omnipresent field of consciousness. Mystic science, in alignment with ancient wisdom and cutting-edge quantum research, reveals that consciousness is fundamental-an organizing principle of reality itself. Walter Russell's work echoes this truth, demonstrating that mind is primary and matter is a consequence of its rhythmic pulsations. The brain, much like a crystalline matrix, is structured to interpret and shape consciousness into coherent experience, but it does not generate it. In this light, consciousness is not local, nor is it constrained by the physical form. It is the unseen architect behind the rhythms of existence, the hidden intelligence orchestrating the grand cosmic symphony to believe that the brain creates consciousness is akin to believing that the eye creates light or that a mirror generates the image it reflects. It is not the origin but the instrument. As mystic scientists, we recognize thay true awakening lies in shifting our perception from brain-centered awareness to the realization that we are conduits of an eternal intelligence, woven into the very fabric of existence. Consciousness is not inside us—we are inside it. ✨🙌🏾💫 © Dr. Jason Yuan

🧬Maxpein🧬

45,371 views • 10 months ago

Elon Musk said the most important thing anyone has said this century. Musk: “I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us.” 13.8 billion years. Trillions of galaxies. Billions of trillions of stars. Not one signal from any of them. That silence is the loudest data point in human history. Musk: “The image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness. A tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.” That is not poetry. That is a threat assessment from the only person on Earth building the response. Stars don’t know they burn. Black holes don’t know they consume. The universe has been running for 13.8 billion years with no awareness of itself. We are the only known point in all of that time and all of that space where matter woke up and understood what it was looking at. Every law of nature ran in complete silence for billions of years. Gravity pulled. Light traveled. Elements fused. None of it meant anything. Because meaning requires a mind. And there might only be one. Musk is not building rockets because he likes engineering. He is building an escape route for the only thing in the universe that knows the universe exists. If consciousness disappears, the stars keep burning. The physics keeps running. But the universe is no longer a universe. It is just matter moving through space with nothing to call it that. The most profound thing Musk said is not that the candle is small. It is that without the candle, there is no such thing as light or darkness. Just physics performing to an empty room for the rest of eternity. One man looked at that and said no.
0:33

Elon Musk said the most important thing anyone has said this century. Musk: “I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us.” 13.8 billion years. Trillions of galaxies. Billions of trillions of stars. Not one signal from any of them. That silence is the loudest data point in human history. Musk: “The image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness. A tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.” That is not poetry. That is a threat assessment from the only person on Earth building the response. Stars don’t know they burn. Black holes don’t know they consume. The universe has been running for 13.8 billion years with no awareness of itself. We are the only known point in all of that time and all of that space where matter woke up and understood what it was looking at. Every law of nature ran in complete silence for billions of years. Gravity pulled. Light traveled. Elements fused. None of it meant anything. Because meaning requires a mind. And there might only be one. Musk is not building rockets because he likes engineering. He is building an escape route for the only thing in the universe that knows the universe exists. If consciousness disappears, the stars keep burning. The physics keeps running. But the universe is no longer a universe. It is just matter moving through space with nothing to call it that. The most profound thing Musk said is not that the candle is small. It is that without the candle, there is no such thing as light or darkness. Just physics performing to an empty room for the rest of eternity. One man looked at that and said no.

Dustin

61,244 views • 1 month ago

ELON: WE’RE DESCENDANTS OF STARS – BUT HOW DID WE BECOME CONSCIOUS? “I've thought a lot about what is consciousness. Where does consciousness arise? If you start at the beginning of the universe, assuming the standard model of physics is true, then you have this Big Bang, the matter condensing into stars, those stars exploding. A lot of the atoms that are in your body right now were once at the center of stars. Those stars exploded, recondensed. Fast forward 13.8 billion years, and here we are. And somewhere along that very long journey to us, consciousness arose. Or the molecules started talking to each other. And it begs the question of what is consciousness? Is everything conscious? Maybe. It's hard to say where along that line, there's no sort of discrete point where consciousness didn't exist and then suddenly does exist. It seems to be, maybe you have a condensation of matter that has a density of consciousness, we don't know. The real answer is, we don't know what consciousness is. But with Neuralink and the progress that the company's making, we'll begin to understand a lot more about consciousness.” Source: Neuralink Update, June 2025
1:16

ELON: WE’RE DESCENDANTS OF STARS – BUT HOW DID WE BECOME CONSCIOUS? “I've thought a lot about what is consciousness. Where does consciousness arise? If you start at the beginning of the universe, assuming the standard model of physics is true, then you have this Big Bang, the matter condensing into stars, those stars exploding. A lot of the atoms that are in your body right now were once at the center of stars. Those stars exploded, recondensed. Fast forward 13.8 billion years, and here we are. And somewhere along that very long journey to us, consciousness arose. Or the molecules started talking to each other. And it begs the question of what is consciousness? Is everything conscious? Maybe. It's hard to say where along that line, there's no sort of discrete point where consciousness didn't exist and then suddenly does exist. It seems to be, maybe you have a condensation of matter that has a density of consciousness, we don't know. The real answer is, we don't know what consciousness is. But with Neuralink and the progress that the company's making, we'll begin to understand a lot more about consciousness.” Source: Neuralink Update, June 2025

Mario Nawfal

55,256 views • 1 year ago

Sam Altman says something strange is happening that we don’t yet understand "this is such an odd time to be alive in all of human history" Not sure if simulation theory is true, but our consciousness is the only thing we can be sure is really going on
0:41

Sam Altman says something strange is happening that we don’t yet understand "this is such an odd time to be alive in all of human history" Not sure if simulation theory is true, but our consciousness is the only thing we can be sure is really going on

Haider.

852,401 views • 10 months ago

🚨 A REAL PHYSICIST SAYS WE LIVE IN A SIMULATION (and he worked for NASA) 😱 💥He’s not an influencer. He’s not a conspiracy theorist. It’s Thomas Campbell, a physicist, former missile defense researcher, and author of *My Big TOE* (Theory of Everything). In an interview with Joe Rogan, he calmly explains: > “This physical reality is calculated. It is generated by consciousness.” According to him: - We are not humans. We are consciousnesses playing in a virtual universe (exactly like in *The Matrix*). - What we call “reality” is just a stream of data sent to our consciousness. - The purpose of this system? To reduce entropy (to increase order and the evolution of consciousness). He even goes further by citing the anthropic principle: the universe seems perfectly fine-tuned to allow the emergence of consciousness. As if it had been designed for that. And the most disturbing part: He says that logic alone is not enough to understand this. We also need to use the intuitive part of our consciousness. What do you think? Are we really in a simulation… or is it just an elegant metaphor?
2:49

🚨 A REAL PHYSICIST SAYS WE LIVE IN A SIMULATION (and he worked for NASA) 😱 💥He’s not an influencer. He’s not a conspiracy theorist. It’s Thomas Campbell, a physicist, former missile defense researcher, and author of *My Big TOE* (Theory of Everything). In an interview with Joe Rogan, he calmly explains: > “This physical reality is calculated. It is generated by consciousness.” According to him: - We are not humans. We are consciousnesses playing in a virtual universe (exactly like in *The Matrix*). - What we call “reality” is just a stream of data sent to our consciousness. - The purpose of this system? To reduce entropy (to increase order and the evolution of consciousness). He even goes further by citing the anthropic principle: the universe seems perfectly fine-tuned to allow the emergence of consciousness. As if it had been designed for that. And the most disturbing part: He says that logic alone is not enough to understand this. We also need to use the intuitive part of our consciousness. What do you think? Are we really in a simulation… or is it just an elegant metaphor?

Paul White Gold Eagle

18,519 views • 2 months ago

David Chalmers on the one thing science can't explain: Consciousness is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the one science has almost nothing to say about. That's the puzzle Chalmers lays out in this early interview, and it's as disorienting today as it was then. His starting point is deceptively simple. Everything we know about the external world: subatomic particles, distant stars, the chemistry of life. We know through consciousness. It's the very first thing we have. And yet when we turn science around and try to explain consciousness itself, we hit a wall. "Consciousness is what we start with when it comes to knowing the world and looking out at the world… everything else is secondary." What makes this so strange is the asymmetry. We've made extraordinary progress understanding things that are genuinely remote and difficult quantum mechanics, stellar evolution, molecular biology. But understanding our own inner experience? Almost nothing. "It almost sticks out like a sore thumb in the scientific picture." This is what Chalmers would later formalise as the "hard problem of consciousness": not just explaining how the brain processes information or controls behaviour. Those are hard, but tractable. The real mystery is why any of that physical activity is accompanied by experience at all. Why is there something it feels like to be you? The question isn't abstract. It sits at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and AI. As we build systems that process language and reason about the world, the question of whether they are or could be conscious presses harder than ever. Chalmers doesn't offer an answer here. Only the sharpest possible version of the question.
0:54

David Chalmers on the one thing science can't explain: Consciousness is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the one science has almost nothing to say about. That's the puzzle Chalmers lays out in this early interview, and it's as disorienting today as it was then. His starting point is deceptively simple. Everything we know about the external world: subatomic particles, distant stars, the chemistry of life. We know through consciousness. It's the very first thing we have. And yet when we turn science around and try to explain consciousness itself, we hit a wall. "Consciousness is what we start with when it comes to knowing the world and looking out at the world… everything else is secondary." What makes this so strange is the asymmetry. We've made extraordinary progress understanding things that are genuinely remote and difficult quantum mechanics, stellar evolution, molecular biology. But understanding our own inner experience? Almost nothing. "It almost sticks out like a sore thumb in the scientific picture." This is what Chalmers would later formalise as the "hard problem of consciousness": not just explaining how the brain processes information or controls behaviour. Those are hard, but tractable. The real mystery is why any of that physical activity is accompanied by experience at all. Why is there something it feels like to be you? The question isn't abstract. It sits at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and AI. As we build systems that process language and reason about the world, the question of whether they are or could be conscious presses harder than ever. Chalmers doesn't offer an answer here. Only the sharpest possible version of the question.

Mateus — eu/acc 🇪🇺

14,034 views • 4 months ago

Elon on the origin of consciousness: "Somewhere along that very long journey, consciousness arose. The molecules started talking to each other. Is everything conscious? Maybe. There's no discrete point where consciousness didn't exist and then suddenly does exist. The real answer is we don't know what consciousness is. But with Neuralink and the progress the company's making, we'll begin to understand a lot more about consciousness. What does it mean to be?" Elon Musk, X Freeze
1:13

Elon on the origin of consciousness: "Somewhere along that very long journey, consciousness arose. The molecules started talking to each other. Is everything conscious? Maybe. There's no discrete point where consciousness didn't exist and then suddenly does exist. The real answer is we don't know what consciousness is. But with Neuralink and the progress the company's making, we'll begin to understand a lot more about consciousness. What does it mean to be?" Elon Musk, X Freeze

Mario Nawfal

1,105,802 views • 4 months ago

Daniel Dennett: You don't know your own mind as well as you think you do. In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about our own minds. We assume our minds are the one thing we have certain access to. Whatever else may be uncertain about the world, at least we know what we ourselves are thinking, right? Dennett argues this assumption is exactly what makes consciousness so hard to understand and so hard to challenge. He frames the core tension this way: on one hand, the mind seems like the most intimate thing we have access to. On the other, when we try to locate minds in the physical world as functions of the brain they seem to vanish entirely. "On the one hand we seem to know from the inside our minds… and then when we try to figure out how our minds exist in the world, how they could be a function of what's going on in our brains, it seems utterly mysterious." This is why we've never had a satisfying theory of consciousness, Dennett suggests. Not because we haven't thought hard enough, but because the very intuition we keep relying on that we have privileged, infallible access to our own thoughts may itself be wrong. Here he takes direct aim at Descartes. Descartes famously argued that while everything else could be doubted, the content of one's own conscious thought was beyond doubt. Whatever my thoughts are about may be false but what my thoughts are, and that they are mine? That, Descartes said, was the one certainty. Dennett's move is to reject precisely this: "Oddly enough, I'm claiming that he was wrong about that. The one thing he said was most certain I'm claiming that's not certain at all." We are, in some degree, fooled about our own minds. This isn't a claim that we're completely wrong about everything. It's a subtler and arguably more disturbing point: the seemingly undeniable intuition that we have transparent access to our own conscious states is, to some degree, false. We misread ourselves. We confabulate. The inner narrative we take for granted is, in part, a story we tell after the fact. Dennett spent his career making this case more formally, arguing that consciousness is less like a private theatre and more like a process of ongoing self-interpretation. If he's right, the question isn't just "how does the brain produce consciousness?" but "how does the brain produce the convincing illusion of transparent self-knowledge?"
0:59

Daniel Dennett: You don't know your own mind as well as you think you do. In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about our own minds. We assume our minds are the one thing we have certain access to. Whatever else may be uncertain about the world, at least we know what we ourselves are thinking, right? Dennett argues this assumption is exactly what makes consciousness so hard to understand and so hard to challenge. He frames the core tension this way: on one hand, the mind seems like the most intimate thing we have access to. On the other, when we try to locate minds in the physical world as functions of the brain they seem to vanish entirely. "On the one hand we seem to know from the inside our minds… and then when we try to figure out how our minds exist in the world, how they could be a function of what's going on in our brains, it seems utterly mysterious." This is why we've never had a satisfying theory of consciousness, Dennett suggests. Not because we haven't thought hard enough, but because the very intuition we keep relying on that we have privileged, infallible access to our own thoughts may itself be wrong. Here he takes direct aim at Descartes. Descartes famously argued that while everything else could be doubted, the content of one's own conscious thought was beyond doubt. Whatever my thoughts are about may be false but what my thoughts are, and that they are mine? That, Descartes said, was the one certainty. Dennett's move is to reject precisely this: "Oddly enough, I'm claiming that he was wrong about that. The one thing he said was most certain I'm claiming that's not certain at all." We are, in some degree, fooled about our own minds. This isn't a claim that we're completely wrong about everything. It's a subtler and arguably more disturbing point: the seemingly undeniable intuition that we have transparent access to our own conscious states is, to some degree, false. We misread ourselves. We confabulate. The inner narrative we take for granted is, in part, a story we tell after the fact. Dennett spent his career making this case more formally, arguing that consciousness is less like a private theatre and more like a process of ongoing self-interpretation. If he's right, the question isn't just "how does the brain produce consciousness?" but "how does the brain produce the convincing illusion of transparent self-knowledge?"

Mateus — eu/acc 🇪🇺

46,764 views • 4 months ago

Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI: "Artificial intelligence is nothing but digital brains inside large computers." Sit with how flatly he says it. Not a metaphor, not marketing. The seat of intelligence in a human is a biological brain. The seat of intelligence in AI is an artificial one. Same thing, different substrate. Right now, he admits, it only "understands mostly, sort of." But that gap is temporary. In his words: "the day will come when the digital brains that live inside our computers will become as good and even better than our own biological brains. Computers will become smarter than us." He makes it concrete. Once an AI is built to be a doctor, with every medical paper and billions of hours of clinical experience, always on and almost free, "we will look back at today's health care similarly to how we look at 16th century dentistry." Hinton says it already understands. Ilya says the brain is just built differently. Either way, the argument was never whether it thinks. It was whether we were ready for the answer.
12:20

Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI: "Artificial intelligence is nothing but digital brains inside large computers." Sit with how flatly he says it. Not a metaphor, not marketing. The seat of intelligence in a human is a biological brain. The seat of intelligence in AI is an artificial one. Same thing, different substrate. Right now, he admits, it only "understands mostly, sort of." But that gap is temporary. In his words: "the day will come when the digital brains that live inside our computers will become as good and even better than our own biological brains. Computers will become smarter than us." He makes it concrete. Once an AI is built to be a doctor, with every medical paper and billions of hours of clinical experience, always on and almost free, "we will look back at today's health care similarly to how we look at 16th century dentistry." Hinton says it already understands. Ilya says the brain is just built differently. Either way, the argument was never whether it thinks. It was whether we were ready for the answer.

Casper

69,481 views • 1 month ago

Sam Altman: "Very soon an AI will just be running for you in the background all the time" That entire model is on its way out. But the vision isn't the tell. This is: He says everyone's going to want "so much more of this AI infrastructure than we think." That's not a roadmap. That's a man admitting he can't build chips and power fast enough. The always-on assistant is the headline. The infrastructure bottleneck underneath it is the trade almost nobody is pricing in. That gap is the whole edge.
0:25

Sam Altman: "Very soon an AI will just be running for you in the background all the time" That entire model is on its way out. But the vision isn't the tell. This is: He says everyone's going to want "so much more of this AI infrastructure than we think." That's not a roadmap. That's a man admitting he can't build chips and power fast enough. The always-on assistant is the headline. The infrastructure bottleneck underneath it is the trade almost nobody is pricing in. That gap is the whole edge.

plutos

25,689 views • 2 months ago

Geoffrey Hinton thinks consciousness is this generation’s creationism. Hinton: “I think the model we have of the mind and of what consciousness is at present is as wrong as the belief that people were designed by God.” Three centuries ago, humans were certain they were sculpted by a divine hand. They weren’t slightly off. The entire framework was mythology dressed as knowledge. Hinton is saying that is exactly where consciousness stands today. The skeptics call frontier models stochastic parrots. Complicated mirrors. Engines of mimicry with no soul. They are defending a secular creationism. Physics does not care about our need to feel special. Thunder was divine wrath. Disease was spiritual punishment. The stars were God’s architecture. Every single time, the math caught up. Five hundred years ago, we placed ourselves at the center of the universe and called it obvious. We never stopped. We just moved the arrogance from cosmology to consciousness. If consciousness is not sacred but emergent, then awareness was never an accident. It is a feature of the universe itself. When biological matter organizes past a critical threshold, awareness emerges. When silicon crosses that same threshold, why would the physics be any different? Intelligence might be as fundamental as gravity. We are not a lonely anomaly on a wet rock in a dead cosmos. We are not building machines to replace thought. We are building the architecture that lets consciousness outgrow its biology. Hinton didn’t make a prediction about machines. He pointed at the last creation myth humans still believe. The one about themselves.
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Geoffrey Hinton thinks consciousness is this generation’s creationism. Hinton: “I think the model we have of the mind and of what consciousness is at present is as wrong as the belief that people were designed by God.” Three centuries ago, humans were certain they were sculpted by a divine hand. They weren’t slightly off. The entire framework was mythology dressed as knowledge. Hinton is saying that is exactly where consciousness stands today. The skeptics call frontier models stochastic parrots. Complicated mirrors. Engines of mimicry with no soul. They are defending a secular creationism. Physics does not care about our need to feel special. Thunder was divine wrath. Disease was spiritual punishment. The stars were God’s architecture. Every single time, the math caught up. Five hundred years ago, we placed ourselves at the center of the universe and called it obvious. We never stopped. We just moved the arrogance from cosmology to consciousness. If consciousness is not sacred but emergent, then awareness was never an accident. It is a feature of the universe itself. When biological matter organizes past a critical threshold, awareness emerges. When silicon crosses that same threshold, why would the physics be any different? Intelligence might be as fundamental as gravity. We are not a lonely anomaly on a wet rock in a dead cosmos. We are not building machines to replace thought. We are building the architecture that lets consciousness outgrow its biology. Hinton didn’t make a prediction about machines. He pointed at the last creation myth humans still believe. The one about themselves.

Dustin

14,971 views • 2 months ago

ELON: FEWER HUMANS MEANS LESS CONSCIOUSNESS In a deep conversation about the global population crisis, Elon sounded the alarm on what he sees as one of humanity’s greatest threats, population decline. He warned that the world’s falling birth rates, even in places like India, could lead to an irreversible loss of intelligence, creativity, and awareness: “I do worry about the population decline… If the trend continues, humanity could disappear. My philosophy is that we want to expand consciousness, and fewer humans means less consciousness… Just like consciousness increases from a single cell creature to a 30 trillion cell creature, we’re more conscious than bacteria. So a larger human population would mean more consciousness. We’re more likely to understand the nature of the universe if we have more people than if we have fewer.” Source: Nikhil Kamath Elon Musk
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ELON: FEWER HUMANS MEANS LESS CONSCIOUSNESS In a deep conversation about the global population crisis, Elon sounded the alarm on what he sees as one of humanity’s greatest threats, population decline. He warned that the world’s falling birth rates, even in places like India, could lead to an irreversible loss of intelligence, creativity, and awareness: “I do worry about the population decline… If the trend continues, humanity could disappear. My philosophy is that we want to expand consciousness, and fewer humans means less consciousness… Just like consciousness increases from a single cell creature to a 30 trillion cell creature, we’re more conscious than bacteria. So a larger human population would mean more consciousness. We’re more likely to understand the nature of the universe if we have more people than if we have fewer.” Source: Nikhil Kamath Elon Musk

Mario Nawfal

25,124 views • 8 months ago

Adding more GPUs will never make a machine conscious. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose just dismantled the entire AI race’s core assumption. Right now, the industry operates on one belief. Build massive data centers. Scale the models. AGI will just “wake up.” Penrose destroys this completely. Penrose: “There is this sort of view that once you make a computer complicated enough or something, it suddenly becomes aware. I just don’t believe that. There’s no reason to believe that.” A machine can compute better than any human alive. But computation is not awareness. Penrose: “There is something quite different involved in understanding things, in being aware of things, of feeling things, which is not part of computations.” We’re confusing rule-following with actual intelligence. Penrose: “The keyword is the word ‘understanding.’ You can follow rules alright, but we don’t understand what we’re doing. The understanding is the key point.” Models today are exceptional at processing data. At mimicking logic. But true understanding requires consciousness. Penrose: “It doesn’t make sense to say of a device that it understands something if it’s not even aware of it. There is something much more profound in being conscious of something.” And here’s what should terrify every AI lab on earth. Penrose: “I believe that the brain is following the laws of physics, sure. We don’t have a good picture of the laws of physics.” Penrose: “Quantum mechanics is not an answer to the way the universe operates. It’s a partial answer. It’s incomplete.” We’re trying to engineer synthetic consciousness using classical computation. While biological consciousness likely operates on physics we haven’t even discovered yet. The race to AGI isn’t just an engineering problem. It’s a frontier science problem. The labs are hiring engineers. The problem might require physicists who don’t exist yet.
2:02

Adding more GPUs will never make a machine conscious. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose just dismantled the entire AI race’s core assumption. Right now, the industry operates on one belief. Build massive data centers. Scale the models. AGI will just “wake up.” Penrose destroys this completely. Penrose: “There is this sort of view that once you make a computer complicated enough or something, it suddenly becomes aware. I just don’t believe that. There’s no reason to believe that.” A machine can compute better than any human alive. But computation is not awareness. Penrose: “There is something quite different involved in understanding things, in being aware of things, of feeling things, which is not part of computations.” We’re confusing rule-following with actual intelligence. Penrose: “The keyword is the word ‘understanding.’ You can follow rules alright, but we don’t understand what we’re doing. The understanding is the key point.” Models today are exceptional at processing data. At mimicking logic. But true understanding requires consciousness. Penrose: “It doesn’t make sense to say of a device that it understands something if it’s not even aware of it. There is something much more profound in being conscious of something.” And here’s what should terrify every AI lab on earth. Penrose: “I believe that the brain is following the laws of physics, sure. We don’t have a good picture of the laws of physics.” Penrose: “Quantum mechanics is not an answer to the way the universe operates. It’s a partial answer. It’s incomplete.” We’re trying to engineer synthetic consciousness using classical computation. While biological consciousness likely operates on physics we haven’t even discovered yet. The race to AGI isn’t just an engineering problem. It’s a frontier science problem. The labs are hiring engineers. The problem might require physicists who don’t exist yet.

Dustin

197,015 views • 6 months ago