
My Own Personal Nothingness: From childhood hallucination to theoretical physics - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/my-own-personal-nothingness-rp
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MisterOctober
A couple things I note :

1) Lightman's description of his hallucinationish experience at the age of
nine, wherein he perceived all time in one instant [or had the sensation of
doing so], reminds me of Julian Barbour ["The Discovery of Dynamics"] and his
hypothesis that all spacetime exists simultaneously -- not in a Minkowski-eque
'loaf,' but in a static collection of mathematical configuration spaces, each
of which represent a "now" [which word, coincidentally, concludes Lightman's
article].

2) I can relate to Lightman's notion of 'Nothingness' as it relates to quantum
field theory -- when I first cracked Tony Zee's "QFT in a Nutshell," I'm
pretty sure I experienced the same feeling of complete inconsequentiality
described by Lightman, though for totally different reasons.

~~~
whatshisface
> _hypothesis that all spacetime exists simultaneously_

One day, physicists will learn to recognize when they're doing 17th century
philosophy.

~~~
Luc
That can only be said by someone who's never read Barbour's books.

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dschuetz
I once felt the same "nothingness" once when I was 22 while reading a good
book on a train. Eventually I closed the book to reflect on what I've read and
there it was - the feeling of ultimate insignificance and a total immersion in
spacetime. It was awesome and frightening at the same time.

But, it takes a physicist to make associative connections of that feeling to
Quantum Field Theory. His article is a particularly good read in that regard,
thanks for sharing! It made me revisit my understanding of Quantum Fields. How
full of _something_ the supposed "nothingness" actually is!

------
cerealbad
position yourself as an alien observer who happened to have evolved
trilobozoan radial symmetry. you might have conceptual models of two separate
oppositions and a third (their constant mixing) and build corresponding
mathematics to reflect your biological nature.

or perhaps some parasite or virus which requires a host body. in which case
you must concern yourself with your own survival, the survival of your host
and the stability of the host/virus system, often tending towards co-
dependence to ensure future generations. these types of entangled systems are
how life tends to really operate, from the dust mites on your skin to the
bacteria in your gut it's a giant complicated mess of competing and
cooperating hierarchical dependencies which are taking a rather more risky
route towards increasing entropy than an icy comet orbiting our sun every few
thousand years.

human cognitive experience is a tiny sliver of the humanity engine, and often
breaks in quirky ways- see drugs.

~~~
alfredallan1
One doesn’t need to go to the trouble of imagining oneself as an alien
observer to do this. There are many examples closer to home.

Many migratory birds have a sort of fifth sense (I don’t recall the
nomenclature) that allows them to “feel” the earth’s magnetic field, and do
not have the the red-blue-green combination for their primary colors - the
world view of a bird and a human in a skyscraper looking down at the scenery
below/around would already be significantly different.

Or fish, for example, it’d be interesting to imagine life in the water, moving
around at the flick of a tail.. The point being, one’s experience of reality
is highly dependent on the physical apparatus one is equipped with.

~~~
goldenkey
But if one wants to understand what layers can be peeled off conscious
experience while still all the while continuous, then senses can safely go out
the window. All one is left with is pure thought fueled by memory..but even
memory can be inhibited by different drugs. Pure thought lacks space..lacks
sense of self. Can even lack time..no order of thoughts..just an oscillating
jumble.

Pure thought is the ultimate nature of consciousness because it has the
fingerprint of the universe - interaction - without referencing it -- only
manifested by it.

A bunch of machine learning neurons on my computer have no notion of anything
lest I feed it to them. But calculation -- ie. interaction - they are
given..and based on. In fact, giving them sensory input about the world is
nice but isn't the inherited notion of computation, calculation, and
information/memory/storage much more fundamental and genetic to this universe?
Not some specific form like a curated data set?

Everything in this universe has the mark of its laws and ultimate fundamental
nature. But I think the simpler systems show much more of an imprint.

Pure thought is one of the most distilled fingerprints of the nature of
fundamental interaction of this universe.

~~~
alfredallan1
Are thoughts necessary to consciousness? One can be consciousness yet not be
possessed of any thoughts.

Thoughts in a human's biological apparatus are essentially neurons firing off
in the brain, e.g. replaying an incident stored in memory. A computer can do
much the same thing, with different apparatus of course, yet it’d not be
considered conscious. Not that it couldn’t be (it could well be possible for a
lifeform to be constructed of circuitry, it just isn’t (yet) known if or how),
just that it wouldn’t be.

If the above is indeed true, it’d be inferred that consciousness is of the
nature of consciousness itself. If the abstract notion of thinking can be
reified either in a human (biological) form or an electronic form, it stands
to reason that the only thing different between the two must be that which
distinguishes the human from the machine, i.e. consciousness.

Thus, in the paradigm of “thought” in this discussion, all consciousness is,
is the awareness of the process of thinking, or of the thoughts as they come
and go. Because a thought cannot be considered to be aware of itself, it can
only be the object of awareness, the subject being the consciousness
manifested in said human. The same reasoning applies to paradigms other than
“thought”, e.g. “experience”.

A computer with sensors can detect itself falling to the floor, as can a human
with their senses. An appropriately programmed computer can even take
preventive action (e.g. some hard disks disconnecting/parking the head) as can
a human, by virtue of their instincts/memories. But a computer would not be
considered to be conscious of the fall. Only an entity in possession of
consciousness can be considered to truly experience things. So neither
thoughts nor senses are determinants of consciousness. Nor are they of the
nature of consciousness. Only consciousness is of the nature of consciousness,
everything else is a simulation thereof.

It is a coincidence (or part of a grand design, for the theologically
inclined) that the particular configuration of matter in a human supports the
manifestation of consciousness. It is questionable if all life forms are
indeed capable of consciousness. Equally questionable if there can exist
varying levels of manifestation of consciousness. Plants, presumably would be
at the lower end.

~~~
goldenkey
Self awareness is not a prerequisite for consciousness..even awareness goes
away on strong psychadelics. I think computation and thought are pretty much
the same. Every computation requires consciousness to be performed..an
observer.

~~~
alfredallan1
Awareness doesn’t exactly go away on strong psychedelics. If it did, how’d one
be able to make the recollection of strange things happening. There’s some
primal level of awareness remanining to observe that the majority of the motor
and cognitive functions are impaired. How else would one be able to “remember”
that one was indeed “unaware”? Being aware (after the event) of having been
unaware (under the influence) indicates there was some lingering awareness
remaining.

~~~
goldenkey
If any system that retains memory of downsampled inputs has consciousness,
then consciousness must be caused by calculation plus memory. This makes a lot
of sense.

~~~
alfredallan1
Yes, it makes sense, kinda.

What doesn’t make sense is a computer also has calculation + memory. So is the
computer conscious?

If the answer is yes, then okay, computers are conscious and the only reason
they don’t feel pain (etc.) is the lack of appropirate sensors and the lack of
programming to process the input from those sensors.

If the answer is no, then consciousness must be something separate from both
calculation and memory.

I think human bias will play a large role in whether one answer yes or no
above.

