I think your 100 billion people holding thousands of hands each are definitely conscious. I also think the United States and in fact nearly every nationstate are probably conscious as well. Also, my Linux system may be conscious.
I believe consciousness is, at its core, a very simple system: something closer to the differentiation operator than to a person. We merely think that it is a complicated big thing because we confuse the mechanism with the contents—a lot of complicated systems in the brain exchange data using consciousness in various formats, including our ego. However, I believe just consciousness—the minimal procedure in itself—is simply not actually very mysterious or complicated as far as algorithms go.
A meme, in text form:
“Textbooks from the Future”
A time traveller handing a professor a book, simply labeled “Consciousness”. The man is clearly elated, as the book is very thin. Behind the time traveller’s back is a trolley carrying a very thick book labelled “Cognitive algorithms that use consciousness, vol. 1.”
I think your 100 billion people holding thousands of hands each are definitely conscious. I also think the United States and in fact nearly every nationstate are probably conscious as well. Also, my Linux system may be conscious.
I believe consciousness is, at its core, a very simple system: something closer to the differentiation operator than to a person. We merely think that it is a complicated big thing because we confuse the mechanism with the contents—a lot of complicated systems in the brain exchange data using consciousness in various formats, including our ego. However, I believe just consciousness—the minimal procedure in itself—is simply not actually very mysterious or complicated as far as algorithms go.
A meme, in text form:
“Textbooks from the Future”
A time traveller handing a professor a book, simply labeled “Consciousness”. The man is clearly elated, as the book is very thin. Behind the time traveller’s back is a trolley carrying a very thick book labelled “Cognitive algorithms that use consciousness, vol. 1.”