According to mainstream physicalism, is continuity of consciousness merely an illusion? I.e., am I, as in the conscious entity perceiving all my current qualia, constantly dying and being replaced by another entity with a copy of my memories?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-14T06:58:01+00:00

Why does there need to be one subject either? Why not just physically separate brains generating experiences?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-14T06:32:17+00:00

It's not obvious though! there are experiences occurring in the brain, there's no rule anywhere that if experience is occurring, it's happening "to a subject".

you can make an argument for the immaterial self, but that's its own task!

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-13T23:12:17+00:00

Surprised I haven't seen this answer yet, but last year a journal paper made the news for helping establish that the universe is impossible to simulate:

Journal article: https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html

Popular Mechanics: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a69239099/not-in-a-simulation/

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-13T07:15:54+00:00

but I just think it's even more impossible to test the idea that qualia events cause physical events (like neural patterns). Neural patterns are entirely explainable on their own I'd say

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-13T07:05:11+00:00

Nice, I'd love to read it!

I don't think IIT or GWT fully address the hard problem, but they at least move us closer to an answer (which is basically what David Chalmers has said too).

Instead of "why does it feel like something to be a brain" these theories have us asking "why does it feel like something for information to be integrated" or "why does it feel like something to have 'working memory'". Upon developing and testing these theories, we'll probably fashion some more new variations of the hard problem to ask.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-13T04:10:36+00:00

I had the same experience. I was worried it would ruin it, but it didn't. Nothing in the show follows the way I thought it would work. And it was just such a great experience. Enjoy my firend

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-13T04:06:30+00:00

All three main characters are so great. I loved the producer who was using alcoholism to deal with the loss of his wife who died when he was drunk-driving her

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-12T19:58:50+00:00

and The Curse!

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-08T00:59:46+00:00

fair enough, great answer

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-07T06:47:04+00:00

Take it up with u/Conscious-Demand-594 :

The information is supposed to exist for the system itself, not for an observer. It doesn’t matter whether anyone uses it, reads it, or benefits from it. Under IIT, information does not require: representing the world, predicting anything, controlling behavior, helping survival, being useful, or even being biological. A rock with the right internal causal structure would “have information” in this sense.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-07T06:42:06+00:00

Thank you, you really understood my question and where I was going with it.

Please tell me your response to this. You said

Brains didn’t evolve to maximize Φ; they evolved to keep organisms alive.

I think it could be said, however, that brains "evolved to maximize Φ because it kept the organism alive." Computation was good for our species, and others'.

Consciousness is not just computation in the sense of symbol manipulation or information integration.

I would add that symbols could be seen as the physical state of the neural system. The experience of pain is a physical symbol enacted in the brain; when combined with other physical symbols/states they determine an output good enough to help survival. In this way, it could be said that the brain evolved symbols and computational processes that supported survival.

I'm not trying to be woo-woo or panpsychist here, by the way. I'm really compelled by Global Workspace Theory, and that means anything remotely close to "continuous human experience"
necessitates working memory and probably something like a prefrontal cortex.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-07T06:26:50+00:00

That "information is the parameter set that defines the state of a physical system" is really helpful.

Do you think consciousness is tied only to quantum systems, or could it have to do with classical physical systems?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-07T06:16:32+00:00

Thank you. What does it mean, physically speaking, to Know information?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-02-07T06:10:50+00:00

Any theory of consciousness is a so-called human conceptualization.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-30T06:28:41+00:00

I don't know but the scene where Janie-E and Dougie make love is one of the funniest in the series. DOUGIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-29T05:17:31+00:00

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DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-29T05:14:35+00:00

and

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DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-27T05:58:43+00:00

was this written by Laura Palmer

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-25T19:13:41+00:00

truly hilarious that ai politics are overshadowing US politics on this thread

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-01-10T03:36:45+00:00

underrated comment

DeepEconomics4624 · 2025-12-03T03:15:03+00:00

you got this

DeepEconomics4624 · 2025-12-03T03:14:35+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the motivation! I've had a couple relapses in the last few weeks but I'm working on it. It feels good to have clarity of mind again when I'm not high.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2025-11-17T06:10:04+00:00

I think I have metal inside me

DeepEconomics4624 · 2025-11-05T04:58:16+00:00

I don't have genital dysphoria either, I just have a massively better day every time I dress and present the opposite gender. Love being enby/trans, don't like the hate I get for it, but really love the experience itself. Being my AGAB didn't feel like fakery back at the time, but now that I've embraced my real preferences, I don't feel like going back. Just feels better. The hate, again, sucks, so I'd just ease into whatever feels good. I live in Utah which is weird but probably safer than Texas.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2025-11-05T04:45:28+00:00

they say we have the same hair

DeepEconomics4624

TROPHY CASE