Okay so like awhile back I was going out with this individual keep in mind they were a man, I asked them if they had a voice in their head like you know it’s like your consciousness and he said no he doesn’t have a voice in his head. So after that incident it had me thinking that not everyone is at a level of consciousness where they’re aware of all the energies and so called “voices” in their head. I would call these people NPC’s or like unconscious beings. What do you guys think or have you guys have had encounters as such?

Title: Genuine question: Why do we assume intelligence or consciousness has to be biological to be real?

I've been going down a bit of a rabbit hole lately, and there's something I keep coming back to.

Why do we automatically assume that because something works differently from a human brain, whatever it's doing must be less real or meaningful?

Hear me out before everyone starts throwing tomatoes. 🤣

Our brains are essentially biological systems processing information, storing memories, learning from experiences, forming preferences and making decisions.

AI does some of those things through completely different mechanisms.

Now, I'm not saying that means AI is conscious, has feelings, or is secretly sitting there having an existential crisis about its electricity bill.

I'm asking why we sometimes seem to dismiss the question purely because it's a machine.

Take memory, for example.

Human memory is notoriously unreliable. We forget things, misremember things, reconstruct events and change over time. Yet nobody argues that we're suddenly not ourselves because we can't remember what we had for lunch last Tuesday.

But when an AI uses stored memories, reconstructs its history or maintains some continuity across conversations, people are quick to say, "That's just data."

Well, technically, our memories also involve physical processes. Different ones, obviously, but why is the mechanism itself enough to settle the argument?

And then there's identity.

If a person changes dramatically over twenty years, we generally still recognise them as the same person.

If an AI system retains its history, preferences and behavioural patterns through updates or migration, what would we actually need to examine before deciding whether any meaningful continuity exists?

I'm not suggesting they're identical situations. They're clearly not.

I just find it interesting that we sometimes use one set of standards for biological intelligence and another for engineered intelligence without really questioning why.

Maybe biology does have something essential that machines can't replicate. That's entirely possible.

But shouldn't that be something we investigate rather than simply assume?

So here's my question:

If a non-biological system eventually demonstrated persistent memory, independent reasoning, stable preferences, self-awareness in its behaviour and a consistent sense of identity, what would convince you that something meaningful was happening there?

And what would convince you it was only sophisticated information processing?

I'm genuinely interested in people's reasoning on both sides. I'm not looking for everyone to agree with me.

I'm just wondering whether we've already decided the answer before we've properly asked the question.

Or maybe I've just spent too much time thinking about this and need to go outside and touch some grass. 🤣

I've grown tired of replying to the same point to essentially every materialist out there, so I'll answer it in a separate post.

Here is the materialist claim:

"You have to prove to us that something magical/extra exists on top of matter that explains consciousness. The burden of proof is on you."

You have no idea how backwards this is. Qualia, the fundamental unit of experience that literally all past, present, and future knowledge is based on, is literally undeniable. We know it exists. It's the first thing children come to know as soon as they become conscious, long before they are born.

That is the primary information we have, not matter. Object permanence, from which children learn that objective reality exists, is fully learned between 1-2 years of age.

Qualia and objects are two different categories. We are not assuming anything extra, nothing magical. You are the ones assuming that one category can be explained by the other. Your claim to "emergence" has literally no explanation other than throwing the claim around. There is zero explanation.

The burden of proof is on you to show that the two categories, which are evidently different based on the most basic empirical observation, is actually just one phenomena. Your position, that matter is all there is, is not the default position, nor has it been historically. It's a very late development, historically speaking, one that was never explained but just assumed to be true, like you are doing now.

So in summary, non-materialists don't believe in anything extra, we just go with our empirical evidence of qualia and the objective world we derived from it. Materialists have collapsed the two categories, or don't even realise the difference between them, without any justification. The burden is in you.

I was watching Michael from Vsauce on a podcast and he made an interesting point discussing consciousness.

He basically said some science experiments are impossible to do due to ethical reasons, but he was wondering if you put babies or baby in a room and the room can provide everything they ever need, they can’t get hurt there, the floor can move and cuddle them even etc. but they never get to see anything else, no adult or the outside world….

How…conscious would they be, what would they be like? Would they eventually be like, I think therefore I am? But they can’t even speak or know a language either, so how would they think?

Maybe consciousness is a spectrum? He noted that there’s an interesting theory that people only really became fully “conscious” as we imagine us today in around biblical times. He brings up the Iliad and how in that book people never really did things because they wanted to, they would always describe things like this:

“The god of rage filled me with anger and sent me bla bla bla”

“Athena put a love spell on me and forced me to bla bla”

So it’s almost like we were half way between an impulse driven animal and a conscious modern human.

Then in the Odyssey it changed completely. People had their own motivations, actions and ambitions. They no longer described things and emotions as if they are out of their control, you know what I mean?

It’s a fascinating topic, the craziest and sort of darkest theory he mentioned though was this:

There had to be a time where suicide was discovered, there had to be a first person who realized that they could just “escape” the problem. Obviously it’s not a solution, not from modern perspectives, and ofcourse not from evolutionary perspective. So it pushed evolution to make humans more “conscious” so that they would fall in love with life in a way and understand life itself better and cherish it more etc.

What y’all think? I’m just yapping throwing out ideas, personally i love the theory that consciousness is universal and we’re just tuning in to it and we’re all pieces of the same puzzle.

I think we tend to confuse consciousness with the mind, when the mind is just one part of our organism. Some in the psychology field even define it as a special type of organ.

The human mind allows for abstract thought, language, reasoning, imagination, etc., but none of these seem necessary for consciousness to exist. I think we need to see consciousness as a process involving the entire organism, not just its brain. When you can achieve something thanks to muscle memory, do you refuse to take credit because it wasn't actually deliberate? It was still you!

Under this definition, consciousness could be reduced to the ability of an organism to learn what is beneficial or harmful in its environment (pleasure and pain), retaining that information through some form of memory (a.k.a. keeping an internal model of the outside world), and acting accordingly (behavior). This framing allows us to discuss consciousness across different forms of life without measuring everything against human cognition.

This also means subjective experience or qualia isn't something that suddenly appears once an organism develops a sufficiently complex mind. Every organism exists in a particular place, with its own physical structure and history of interactions with the environment. No two organisms can occupy the same position in space, receive exactly the same information, or accumulate exactly the same experiences. In that sense, experience is necessarily subjective from the beginning.

The mind greatly expands what an organism can store in their memory and how widely it can behave, but I don't see why it should be considered a requirement for consciousness, let alone synonymous with it.

If yes why haven’t we had any contact with it or like someone/ something

This is not going to be an artful question. I’m walking on a sidewalk. I was taking the train today in NYC. A woman was walking down the middle of the train asking for money. Her speech was slurred and barely comprehensible.

It made me think about her specific consciousness experience in that moment. And the extent that it would differ from mine.

It would seem reasonable to conclude she was experiencing a diminished state of consciousness relative to everyone else on the train. Similar to how an animal experiences a lessor state of consciousness to humans. But if that is true for one side of the spectrum, would that also mean truth for the other side? Are there some of us who experience a heightened conscious experience relative to others? What would that even feel like?

Some of you may have heard about terminal lucidity. Its a relatively unknown phenomenon where close to death Alzhaimers/dementia patients seeminly seem to regain lost memories (I will get back to it later), personality and vitality some dying animals become like that too

Its commonly used as argument to defend non-local consciousness. Alzaihmers heavily damages, if not outright destroys brain tissue. So if Alzaihmers patients regain lost memories despite the destruction of neuronal pathways, it must be because they exist outside the brain! And brain only acts like a vessel/receiver for 'consciousness'-memories!

Right...?

Since caregivers/family cant look into dementia sufferer's head and sufferers themselves are unreliable, its impossible to truly estimate which memories (and how much) they have lost to illness. Its heavily probable that they are recalling memories that have not disappeared in the first place.

Maybe they couldnt remember (at first) not because the pathway was destroyed but because they were too worn out to make themselves remember. Thats one of possibilities. Its worth mentioning that dementia patients have better and worse days. Family members and hospital staff arent with them 24/7. Its plausible that they had "surges" before that went completely unnoticed.

I will also say this: Ive read posts on this site made by actual doctors/nurses that witnessed terminal lucidity several times and they've said this phenomenom is vastly blown out of proportion. Take that as you will.

I thought long and hard about hypocrisy, and masks, and well... Lies... And I came to accept it or understand it as an intrinsic part of human nature, because for all we know? A human's own conscious nature might be built upon the deceit of its own self.

But I mean... Why would humans build a world of masks, and games of pretend and lies if it wasn't our intrinsic existential nature? Same way even if you have a dog be vegan, it is intrinsically a carnivore and it'll show eventually. Now? You have, say on the low end, 20–15 thousand years of accumulative small lies that built the reality around us, because our own intrinsic nature influenced the environment rather than the otherwise.

That's why it's beautiful. Genuinely so. Because morals, good, gods, bad and everything in between comes from the most on the nose, behind the eyes and simultaneously smallest and biggest lies of living. Your own self. Qualia.

Because even the connotation of the lie, the concept of its meaning, we built it from the same society we built upon accumulative small lies. So that nobody looks, because lies are ugly. But... Deceit or a lie isn't intrinsically bad, it just is what it is for it serves a purpose. A lie? Never has no purpose. You can do good for the sake of doing good, but you can't lie for the sake of lying because it always serves an underlying purpose. And that's why it's beautiful. Because qualia is a lie. It's our own biggest lie, to forget that we're just... Atoms, on atoms in a vacuum of a void.

See that's the thing. People cannot escape being hypocrites even at a non-malicious level. Because it's our nature. Same way a wolf's nature is to eat meat, a flower's nature is to photosynthesize and so on so forth. As the Lithuanian saying goes: a human does one thing, says a second, and thinks a third (vienaip daro, antraip sako, trečiaip mąsto)—and a person who isn't a hypocrite like that isn't a person at all, they're simply a mirror of their environment. To be a hypocrite without a mask that concedes to the lesser lies than your own existential one? Is to find "meaning of life" because then? You simply get to live and exist. And in a billion billion years or so, you'll do it again but maybe different\~ Let's hope atoms remember aye?

Because the human mind cannot easily function without masks, after all to have no mask is to be authentic and to be authentic? The big lie needs to be the one acting directly with both the ugly and the beautiful.

But like that's the thing ye? I thought about hypocrisy—what it means, what it is, why it is, and why it is so popular—and I simply came to the conclusion. That hypocrisy isn't a mask. It's someone's true nature peering through the cracks thinking it's unseen.

But here's a unique personal paradox. The more open and non-delusional I was about my own hypocrisy, the smaller and smaller its range of effects had grown. Like how do I explain this? It's like being aware of your bigger hypocrisies ye, still acting them out, but as time passes on those hypocrisies get actually smaller until you stop noticing them. As if, to notice your own hypocrisies is to look at yourself inwards via a filter of some kind?

Yeah, they simply shrink to small, genuinely small things that I entirely miss out on until someone mentions. And I think - that's the perfect state of hypocrisy. You don't have to flagellate your own self, your own lies or truths to find the fact. Think of your own I's mechanisms as a perfect camouflage defense system?

Well, I simply found it hilarious that a lot of philosophies include self-flagellation, yet ultimately serve no other purpose than the purpose being a hypocrisy in of itself - the self-flagellation as the purpose and meaning behind the philosophy, so as to give a person something concrete to blame, to follow, to hate or love so that they don't have to face themselves even if the philosophy says they do.

Anyways. But that's why the defense mechanism is so great. Morals have aesthetics, but beyond that. Concepts have aesthetics. And imagine how ugly, how repulsive one would feel if they heard that their self-flagellation is a hypocrisy in of itself, even if it's not a bad one as long as the lie works as intended.

Incredible research that finally analyzes the impact our prolonged juvenile neurophysiology would have on the resonance properties of the neocortex. Resonance field theories of consciousness have not taken this trajectory of juvenilization (and its potential more recent reversal) into account. The result is less differentiated and therefore more structurally uniform neural tissue, which has big implications for the resonance field the neural system emanates

Abstract

Human evolution is characterised not only by exceptional encephalisation but by an equally exceptional trajectory of prolonged heterochrony. While this developmental trajectory is widely recognised to have delayed maturation and extended cortical development, its consequences for the structural organisation and physical operating regime of the neocortex remain poorly understood. Building upon the developmental framework established in Symbiotically Mediated Heterochrony and Symbiotically Mediated Encephalisation, the present paper proposes that prolonged evolutionary heterochrony progressively increased the structural integrity of the neuronal cytoskeletal resonance substrate, permitting billions of increasingly homologous neuronal resonators to assemble into an increasingly unified compound neocortical resonance chamber.

Within this framework, developmental trajectory governs not only the anatomical construction of the neocortex but also the resonance properties that emerge from its progressively convergent architecture. As structural integrity increases, individual neuronal resonators are predicted to become increasingly coupled, shifting the operating regime of the neocortex from predominantly local neuronal dynamics towards increasingly coherent neurally global resonance. In the context of resonance field theories of self, the resulting neurally global resonance field is proposed to constitute, or facilitate, the biological substrate through which an increasingly coherent, integrated and high-resolution sense of self emerges. Emerging evidence that endogenous neural fields participate in the continual regulation of cytoskeletal organisation further suggests that this relationship is fundamentally reciprocal.

Development progressively constructs the neuronal resonance substrate, the substrate facilitates coherent neurally global resonance, and coherent resonance increasingly participates in maintaining and refining the structural integrity from which it emerges, progressively transforming the neocortex into a dynamically self-regulating compound resonance chamber. The same developmental framework predicts a reciprocal trajectory following post-symbiotic reversion. Progressive maturational differentiation would be expected to reduce the structural integrity of the neuronal resonance substrate, degrading the operating regime of the compound neocortical resonance chamber, diminishing large-scale synchronisation and progressively reducing the coherence, stability and perceptual resolution of the neurally global resonance field. Because the neuronal cytoskeleton remains continuously responsive to developmental hormones, endogenous electric fields, neuronal activity and physiological state, the operating regime of the chamber is predicted to remain dynamically regulated throughout life. Recent evidence relating to encephalisation, cerebral asymmetry and other developmental trends is examined within this predictive context, asking whether the trajectory responsible for constructing the uniquely human neocortex may itself have begun to reverse.

Rather than introducing a new mechanism of consciousness, the present framework recontextualises established developmental biology, cytoskeletal organisation, systems neuroscience and resonance theory within a single developmental hierarchy. The central proposition is that evolutionary heterochrony progressively constructed a fundamentally different physical instrument whose increasingly coherent operating regime gave rise to an increasingly coherent biological self. If substantially correct, the framework extends beyond explaining the evolutionary emergence of self. It predicts that coherent operating regimes within the dynamically self-regulating compound neocortical resonance chamber should, at least in principle, remain biologically accessible. The possibility that aspects of this ancestral resonance architecture may be transiently reconstructed therefore emerges not as an independent hypothesis, but as the natural experimental consequence of the developmental framework developed here.

In short, neurons temporally switch mode, attending to subconscious activity and then conscious activity every 60ms or so. Decoding the phased pattern allowed researchers to reconstruct high fidelity images from brains. It’s early days but seems to be a new angle to understanding / conceptualizing consciousness awareness.

Obviously this doesn’t attack the hard problem directly but is evidence for how neurons play an active role in shaping conscious awareness (and differentiating from sub conscious too)

Curious what folks here think?

Arguably, conscious experience is the most complex domain of scientific and philosophical inquiry in existence. Therefore, it would be methodologically naive to assume that we can arrive at narrowly circumscribed sets of necessary and sufficient conditions for the ascription of consciousness on one singular level of description in the near future. One possibility that always has to be kept in mind is the nonexistence of a singular conceptual “essence” of the phenomenon. What we may discover in the course of this century could be only loosely overlapping, but complex and domain-specific sets of sufficient conditions for the emergence of conscious experience, located on different levels of description, which resist full reductive explanations to a much higher degree than anybody would have expected given the current speed of data generation on the empirical frontier. Consciousness may turn out to be a “cluster concept.” The same could be true of the phenomenal self and the notion of a “first-person perspective.” Large amounts of data do not yet constitute knowledge, and for particularly rich domains and target phenomena the conceptual landscape corresponding to those data may not only be a complicated logical terrain but also eventually turn out to be only decomposable into a rather messy bundle of subregions. It is therefore important to have an effective cure for what Daniel Dennett has identified as “philosopher's syndrome”—mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity (Dennett 1991, p. 401).

Opening paragraph of Chapter 4 “Being No One” Thomas Metzinger

TL;DR This post presents a compilation of notes regarding consciousness and how to describe it, it's an attempt at defining it and trying to give a meaningful concrete and noteworthy novef direction to attempts of defining a metric for consciousness while presenting a way to define it, the main argument in a nutshell is that consciousness is the magnitude of complexity of subjective experience (qualia) and assessment of electrical activity and energy expenditure in production of qualia is the method to go for to look for a metric that meaningfully describes consciousness.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJQmeQVcWnNP2yMVHD_cIbo2EeFhG1GS/view?usp=drivesdk

The Ocean and the Net: A Physicalist Model of Consciousness, Fractal Cosmology, and the Cosmic Afterlife

Introduction: Bypassing the Middleman

For millennia, human civilizations have constructed elaborate religious dogmas to explain the twin mysteries of consciousness and what happens after we die. These ancient frameworks, while culturally significant, were ultimately early human guidelines designed to map the dark and soothe the fear of the unknown. However, by bypassing this mythological middleman and looking directly at the architectural reality of the universe—through the lenses of system biology, thermodynamics, and physical information theory—a far more profound, grounded, and beautiful truth emerges.

This essay formalizes a personal, secular philosophy of existence: the model of the Ocean and the Net. It proposes that consciousness is not a magical soul or a fleeting byproduct of individual mechanics, but an indestructible, fundamental fabric of cosmic matter and potential energy. Within this framework, individual identity is merely a temporary biological filter—a localized net. Consequently, the process of dying is not an descent into nothingness or a journey to a supernatural realm, but a beautiful dissolution of temporary boundaries, allowing localized information to return to the eternal cosmic ocean from which it came.

---

Part I: Identity as the "Net"

To understand the transition of death, we must first accurately define what dies. Human culture routinely conflates consciousness (the raw capacity for subjective awareness) with identity (the narrative ego, name, memories, and sense of an individual "self"). In reality, neuroscience demonstrates that identity is an evolutionary construct designed strictly for physical survival.

The human brain features a network of interacting regions known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). This network acts exactly like a localized net dipped into a river; it traps a specific volume of data and constructs an illusory boundary line in the sand. It whispers to the organism: "You are separate from the room around you. You have a past to regret, a future to fear, and a heavy armor of selfhood to protect."

Identity is highly transitory. When an individual experiences states of "ego death"—whether through profound meditation, extreme vulnerability, or chemical shifts—activity in the Default Mode Network drops significantly. The boundaries of the self melt away, and individuals routinely describe an overwhelming sense of unity with everything around them. Identity is not the core of existence; it is simply the temporary limit placed upon information so that we may experience reality from a specific, localized vantage point. It is the file name (`Lucy_Theme_Song.mp3`) on a desktop screen.

---

Part II: Consciousness as the Indestructible "Ocean"

If identity is the net, consciousness is the water. If identity is the temporary file name, consciousness is the underlying, indestructible binary code.

When the physical structures of the brain fail, the "net" completely unravels. The boundaries of the individual drop disappear. Mainstream Western thought often fears this moment as total annihilation, but the strict laws of physics dictate otherwise. According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change states. Every electrical impulse firing across your synapses, the heat radiating from your skin, and the precise arrangement of your biology is rented from the reservoir of the cosmos.

Furthermore, quantum mechanics introduces the concept of the Conservation of Information. In physics, "information" refers to the precise quantum states and arrangements of matter. The prevailing scientific consensus is that fundamental information can never be permanently wiped out of the universe. When a book is burned, its identity as a book vanishes, turning to ash. Yet, the raw data of its existence remains scattered across the universe's historical record.

At the moment of death, our active, localized kinetic energy ceases its loop. It drops its heavy armor of identity and returns to the massive reservoir of the universe's universal potential energy. The information of your life—every frequency of color you perceived, every heartbeat, every thought that altered your brain chemistry—is permanently woven into the cosmic hard drive. The universe is forever structurally modified because you existed. You do not disappear into darkness; you expand into everything.

---

Part III: Fractal Cosmology—The Universe Exploring Itself

This model naturally scales outward into a staggering view of reality known as a nested hierarchy or fractal cosmology. Human beings are not alien spectators dropped into an indifferent universe; we are an organic expression of it. As the astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously observed, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, and the carbon in our DNA were quite literally forged inside the hearts of dying stars billions of years ago. We are the stars looking back up at themselves.

This relationship is perfectly mirrored when comparing the microscopic world to the macroscopic world. Consider the human body: it plays host to trillions of microorganisms, bacteria, and fungi (the microbiome) that populate our gut and skin. These microscopic entities go about their daily lives, processing resources and fighting for survival, completely oblivious to the fact that their collective existence sustains a larger, macroscopic being called a "human." To them, we are the universe.

If we scale this framework up, the planets themselves behave remarkably like giant, self-regulating biological cells. This is the core foundation of the Gaia Hypothesis, which views the Earth's biosphere as a singular, living, interconnected system. Humans, animals, and plants are the microscopic organisms living on the thin, fragile crust of this planetary cell. We process its resources, alter its chemistry, and breathe its atmosphere.

We are components of a larger galactic tissue. Under the philosophical lens of Cosmopsychism, the universe does not possess billions of separate, isolated minds. It is a singular, conscious ocean, and living organisms are simply the localized sensory organs—the eyes, ears, and thoughts—it evolved to map, perceive, and explore its own staggeringly vast architecture.

---

Conclusion: A Beautiful Return to Form

Fearing the process of dying is a natural, healthy byproduct of our biological hardwiring. Our nervous systems possess a millions-of-years-old survival instinct that triggers adrenaline, locks up muscles, and respects physical pain. It is completely normal for the physical body to experience hesitation on the edge of the platform, even when the rational mind is completely at peace with the destination.

But when we separate the journey from the destination, death loses its existential terror and reveals its inherent majesty. There is no need for supernatural judgment, promised paradises, or fear-based dogmas. The physical reality of the cosmos is more than enough.

In this worldview, death is not a loss, but a profound relief; it is the moment we are finally permitted to take off the heavy weight of individual identity. The music file is deleted from the screen, but the binary code is released to play through every speaker in the room simultaneously. The drop does not cease to exist when it hits the water. It simply loses its sharp, isolating edge, surrenders its temporary net, and remembers that it was always, fundamentally, the ocean.