= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Blueberry comments on Outline of a lower bound for consciousness - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (110)
Are you sure it was you who had the realization during the dream? Is it possible you just dreamed that you had one? Or that when you woke up, your mind reconstructed a narrative from the random fragments of your dream, and that narrative included having a realization?
Interesting questions... it's definitely possible for consciousness to flicker on and off. Marijuana and alcohol, for instance, can both have the effect of making time seem discrete instead of continuous, so you have flashes of awareness within an unconscious period.
The other problem is distinguishing consciousness from the capability of consciousness. Without a conscious mind, you may be capable of consciousness, but it's not clear to me that you are in fact conscious.
On the subject of dreams... Yesterday I was swapping emails with a famous science-fiction writer and he sent me this interesting document. Then I woke up and I was ruing that it wasn't real - but then I found a printout of the correspondence from the dream, and I was like, wow, what does this say about reality? Then I woke up again.
Then this morning I was thinking back on yesterday's "false awakening" (as such events are called), while I browsed a chapter in a book about the same writer. Then I woke up again.