Consciousness is a mathematical pattern: Max Tegmark at TEDxCambridge 2014
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As a physicist, Max Tegmark sees people as "food, rearranged." That makes his answer to complicated questions like "What is consciousness?" simple: It's just math. Why? Because it's the patterns, not the particles, that matter. Learn more about Max Tegmark at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mathematical.html and TEDxCambridge at http://www.tedxcambridge.com. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.
Comments
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I have a depressing thought originated from a deep nihilistic hopelessness, while back I was in a bad way, when asked if I was suicidal, I said, "that would require hope, that we understand consciousness, enough to know it ends when the heart stops"
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Does this explain why my jokes arent funny?
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He vastly overgeneralizes in the area of substrate independence when applied to computation. If he is correct then you should be able to build computationally equivalent circuits using transistors OR vacuum tubes or sets of gears. How would you develop quantum computer qbits with gears or even vacuum tubes, when such a computer depends on quantum phenomenon? If something as relatively simple as a quantum computer (as compared to a human brain) is substrate dependent, then his entire premise regarding consciousness is questionable.
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Geometric fractal paterns?
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I lost him when he made the assumption that only the brain is conscious :|
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I think there is one more ingredient / property in order for an information processing system become conscious that he missed: that it must be complex enough to 'model itself', i.e., to be self-aware and 'think' about itself in a meta-level. This is I think one of the biggest difference between human-level consciousness and (most) animals consciousness. Humans can easily model itself inside its model of the world, and that is how we can properly react, plan and anticipate our surroundings. Some other animals might be able to do this as well, to a limited extent, e.g. look up the mirror test for animals.
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I need to have a friend like Max Tegmark to talk about these things. The best response my S/O has come up with so far about black holes and white holes is that white holes are like assholes because things only come out of them. he got a point there somewhere i know it
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He looks and talks like he hasn't slept for weeks
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what a Nob
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Cool, finally someone talking about consciousness the way I believe it is, a dynamic pattern of information emergent from and dependent upon our physical brains.
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Up, so the consciousness and every things in our universe can be explained in terms of atoms and energy and patterns? What's new in this talk?
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I love how everybody is ignoring the fact that we do not fully understand the biochemistry of life, nor the origin of it.
Biochemistry -> Neurons -> Consciousness
I think we should focus more on tracing the origin of life to find these kind of answers. -
If a carrot had consciousness, how would we know ?
The more I research this stuff, the more I feel that consciousness is the raw material for everything. We have to stop thinking of consciousness from such a ethnocentric point of view. consciousness is different from awareness, different from the ability to think. Consciousness appears in unlimited sorts, producing results so different to each other that it's hard to see it's the connection between all things. -
14:53 Q "What breaths fire into an information processing system & makes it conscious?", A "Nothing: What matters is simply the structure of the information processing" Then it's not nothing it is the structure of the information processing & not "simply"
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When you go to sleep consciousness doesn't "go away" this is shown by the fact that when you wake up you might remember some of your dreams & the fact that you was aware during that dream otherwise you couldn't forget a dream Also lucid dreaming shows that consciousness is maintained during dreaming. This is the classic mistake of confusing the contents of consciousness with consciousness itself! I would expect more from a genius of the level of Tegmark.
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How do you know other arrangements of matter other than the brain don't have consciousness?
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Maybe the "Soul" is like a quantum wave Function which in a way is outside the law of Physics but when it collapses it comes within the domain of physics although not a single collapse which is unpredictable but only after a large number of collapses have happened
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Another great TED talk. The human brain is wired for pattern recognition and this talk shows why.
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The coolest thing about our brains, is that it has all these separate systems and processes, that heavily influences our actions, but barely touches our consciousness. Even our conscious decisions are unconsciously driven by these background processes as shown by Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.-J. & Haynes, J.-D. Nature Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/nn.2112 (2008)
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cocaine??
16m 37sLenght
3847Rating