
Consciousness Is Emergent Need - daly
First, understand the &#x27;emergent&#x27; behavior. Traffic jams &quot;emerge&quot;. They are not related to cars. They can happen with people pushing through an exit or sand clogging up a hole.<p>Second, understand &quot;need&quot;. Things that impact a system and threaten its smooth functioning create a &quot;need&quot;. For instance, you &quot;need&quot; to urinate. A cell &quot;needs&quot; to eliminate waste. A city &quot;needs&quot; to remove trash.<p>Needs generate a response. The response (urinating, cell waste dumping, trash collection) is a systematic attempt to reduce the &quot;need&quot;.<p>&quot;Consciousness&quot; is the &quot;awareness of the need&quot; giving focus to a response.<p>Many non-human things exhibit &quot;consciousness&quot;. If a traffic jam blocks a major highway into a city the city will mobilize resources to clear the road (otherwise &quot;city death&quot; due to lack of, say food delivery, will occur.)<p>Cells need to eliminate waste or cell death occurs.<p>Computers show no signs of having any need and thus are not conscious.<p>The internet, however, does show &quot;emergent need&quot; since an outage will generate a reponse to repair, reroute, or correct the problem. There are many &quot;sensory systems&quot; in the internet that can detect and respond to threats that might cause failure.<p>Thus &quot;consciousness&quot; is an emergent behavior.
======
aiscapehumanity
Not sure if it's the whole explaination, but it's a great observation of one
major element of a truly dynamic system such as consciousness

