Can we upload our consciousness into a computer?

You see are certain amount of conversation in futurist circles about the idea of people living forever by uploading their brains into a computer. The idea is that if the brain is “simply” a collection of (albeit very complex) circuits sending signals to each other (these circuits are the neurons and collections of neurons linked […]

Who’s there?

Lately I’ve been musing on the following ideas related to consciousness and free will. Our conventional view of “will” going back thousands of years is that we are, on some level, mental or even spiritual beings and from this mental or spiritual “stuff” thought originates. So this mental spirit thinks “I need some coffee,” and […]

Brain freedom

An interesting L.A. Times article explores the state of the brain of freestyle rappers! In an unlikely pairing, two professional rappers have teamed up with researchers from the National Institutes of Health to study what happens in the brain during freestyle rapping. The results, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that the process […]

Idle hands

I’ve mentioned in the past the book “The User Illusion.” Much of this book discusses the idea of the unconscious – the part of your mind that wills actions you are not conscious of. This of course, sounds like freaky Freudian voodoo to a lot of people but it’s really just describing a lot of […]

Dream vibrations

I had an interesting experience in regards to dreaming this weekend. I was lying asleep, and having a dream which involved operating a computer. At one point, a confirmation window popped up on the screen, and I had to click yes or no. I can’t remember what I clicked, but once I did, I could […]

Behind the times

One interesting assertion made in “The User Illusion” — the tome on consciousness I’ve been raving about — is that humans consciously experience events in their environment about a half second after they occur. So, you might be looking at a pretty flower, but you’re actually seeing that flower in the state it was in […]

Final notes from The Painted Bird

A lot of what “The User Illusion” — the book I just finished on consciousness — is about is the limitations built into various modes of communication. For instance, you can send someone a letter, but that letter can never convey the subtleties of emotion that could be conveyed via the human voice. Or, using […]

Life before consciousness?

I continue my reading of “The User Illusion,” and arrive at an interesting chapter where the book reports on the work of Julian Jaynes, of Princeton, who argues that consciousness is a relatively new evolution in human beings. Man had no consciousness as recently as 3000 years ago. Jaynes expresses the crux of this idea […]

The 40 bit limit

I’m continuing to read this book “The User Illusion,” which is a overall survey of the study of human consciousness. I’ve gotten to one interesting section where the author is describing the two “persons” within a human. There is the “I” — the conscious self which provides our generally accepted narrative for life. Then there […]

The code to the universe

I’ve been reading this interesting book called “The User Illusion” about… well, I’m not quite sure what it’s about. It’s supposed to be about the nature of human consciousness, but so far the author has been mostly talking about math equations and thermodynamics. There is an interesting section on the mathematician Kurt Godel. Godel examined […]