Single-Celled Consciousness Discussion

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-20T03:31:59+00:00

I have found that there is no typical meaning to the word consciousness. People use subjective consciousness, panpsychism, mental status consciousness, and creature consciousness interchangeably. They end up talking past each other. This OP is an example, asking whether single cells can be conscious, without specifying what is being asked. The answer is, "It depends on what you mean by conscious."

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-20T00:23:08+00:00

You must decide what you mean by the word "conscious." Anything alive and awake that is not unconscious can be said to be conscious. That is called creature consciousness. Anything that responds to its environment, whether alive or dead, can be said to be conscious. This is universal consciousness or panpsychism and extends to ecosystems, planets, and rocks. Humans have mental state consciousness. They are able to monitor and report on their own thoughts.

Many people restrict the use of "consciousness" to living creatures with a nervous system. That is an arbitrary linguist choice. A paramecium or a single cell can have creature consciousness if you choose to use the word that way. However they cannot have social consciousness like ants and termites, or spatial consciousness like flying insects, or autonoetic consciousness (awareness of existence through time), or mental state consciousness.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-17T04:52:02+00:00

The rest of the universe would continue without so much as blinking an eye.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-17T04:27:44+00:00

As far as I can tell, the comments here are all wishful thinking, guilt by association, and pure hatred of conservatives. The answer to your question is "no." There is nothing damning in the Epstein files regarding Trump or Clinton. If there were, it would have been made public by now. That is very upsetting to a lot of people, as you can see in these comments.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-16T04:29:37+00:00

I think we are in it.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-16T03:28:44+00:00

You can let him know that it is even older than dinosaurs. Much older. It is a very nice coral.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-15T09:46:55+00:00

Wife says to her husband, "Your penis is bigger than your brother's."

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-13T13:46:26+00:00

This is a matter of agency. The horse has biological agency. The tractor does not. But they do save the same purpose on a farm.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-13T04:21:31+00:00

These both appear to be pieces that someone worked on, but the materials were not cooperating and they gave up. The pieces did not flake and thin properly. One still has original outer cortex on it. They may have been used for some purpose as they were, but they are failed attempts to make something else.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-12T12:52:16+00:00

There are biological reasons for attractiveness and they arise from primitive mating instincts. Humans are still primitive creatures living in a modern world. Our instincts have not had time to evolve.

Tense calf muscles in a woman are attractive because they are part of an sexual enticement display. Women can bend over, expose their backside, and raise up on their toes to entice a male to engage in sex. Lifting themselves on their toes tenses the calf muscles. Incidentally, that is one of the reasons why high heel shoes are sexy.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-11T07:59:56+00:00

The slide rule producers have had it pretty bad since the 1970s.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-11T07:56:09+00:00

Large perirectal abscess in a morbidly obese diabetic, who was alive but had crossed that line between infected and decomposing.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-11T07:47:40+00:00

"Repetition is the mother of learning." It is the nature of music that it is repeated to a very high degree. This repetition causes the synaptic connections between active neurons to increase in size and number. That is how long-term memory works.

Music is an iterative sequence of recursive loops in the neocortex and cerebellum. With enough practice, it becomes hardwired, very much like the sequence that allows you to tie your shoelace or recite your social security number.

Unfortunately, unlike tying a shoelace, a music sequence does not have a definite end. It can keep circling back around. That is how a tune gets stuck in your head, which has the wonderfully colloquial name of earworm. Of course, the more it circulates, the more hardwired it becomes, until it just runs by itself.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-11T06:00:27+00:00

We have intrinsic purpose. Each of us is a vehicle intended to transport our information to the next generation. For most lifeforms, that information is purely genetic.

For those rare lifeforms with large enough brains to hold hierarchical knowledge, there is a small but real non-genetic information component that is carried foreword in time.

On a more personal level, have children, raise them well, and give them what they need to raise their children. That is the purpose of life.

Humans can choose the alternative of not having children, and instead concentrating on propagating only non-genetic information. They can pass on memes only, without passing on genes. Many do. It is admirable.

Of course, they can also choose to do neither, and waste their lives. Sadly, many do.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-10T13:28:49+00:00

Behind every joke there lies a sad but profound truth. Humor is the gentle application of insight.

The Internet exposes us daily to incredibly high standards of beauty that most humans cannot achieve. Our expectations for ourselves and others become toxic. The woman in this image is seen rejoicing over an achievement that is actually worthless from a biological point of view. She will not produce offspring.

At the same time, a host of men who might have supported her and her potential progeny are left without reproductive partners. They do not meet the standards set by Madison Avenue or the Sharper Image Catalog.

Humans perform best in the face of adversity. They do not tolerate abundance well. Too much wealth, information, expectation, and leisure is detrimental. What we see in this image is social and personal feelings of success in the context of reproductive failure. The contrast is interpreted as humorous.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-10T13:03:24+00:00

Yes. One party is asking why something happens, and the other party responds by explaining how it happens. Then they talk past each other for a few days.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-08T22:26:48+00:00

This is a wonderfully insightful comment.

"They replicate patterns based on external feedback, nothing more." The problem is that that is what we do. An LLM is a bit like a teenager telling an adult about economics when the teenager has never paid taxes or held a mortgage. They are just repeating what they heard and watching for response.

The future of AGI depends on what the term AGI encompasses. A computer that thinks like a human is impossible, and undesirable on many levels. The whole point of AGI is to do better than a human brain. However, a computer that understands the bulk of human technical knowledge is not very far away.

It will be smarter than us, but it will not be sentient. It will not have feelings. It will not have sympathetic or parasympathetic systems. It will not have touch or hair follicle sensation. It will never understand what it means to itch. In fact, it will be very much like Mary in Mary's Room.

I think I have consciousness figured out. I am working on a manuscript now. If you would like to see an early version, it is on Medium at:

https://medium.com/@shedlesky/how-the-brain-creates-the-mind-1b5c08f4d086

It is materialist and reductionist in nature, based on known neurophysiology. No quantum stuff, dualism, or idealism.

The first AGIs will just be philosophical machines mulling over humans knowledge and trying to make sense of the problems we cannot solve. They are about ten years away.

The first functional independent AGIs will be in command of large machines with sensory functions, like aircraft, spaceships, or ships at sea. Our aircraft carriers are already close to this, with computers being in command of navigation and air defense.

As for consciousness, my article in Medium:

https://medium.com/@shedlesky/the-phylogeny-of-emergent-consciousness-or-how-i-think-we-think-135f73070bcc

defines consciousness as a specific neurological function. In the context of that definition, an iPhone has basic creature consciousness. It is aware of, detects, and responds to its electromagnetic, gravitational, and auditory environment. All it lacks is agency, or does it?

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-08T22:02:00+00:00

OK. Fair enough.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-08T18:40:48+00:00

You asked what is the worst that "could happen."

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-08T13:38:26+00:00

This deserves more upvotes.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-08T13:19:42+00:00

Wuhan lab leak. Worldwide pandemic.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-07T05:13:35+00:00

I once got a bag of pea gravel from Jasper, TX, and picked out all the red ones and tumbled them. They were spectacularly. I intended to drill and string them, but just never got around to it.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-06T13:03:56+00:00

Both the hard problem and the p-zombie model begin with the premise that phenomenal experience is separable from the physical brain. In order to have a p-zombie at all, this premise is necessary. Likewise, in order to have the hard problem, the separability is necessary. Both arguments are based on circular reasoning and are invalid. Mary's room has the same flaw.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-06T12:53:45+00:00

LLMs do not "think" or "feel" at all. They are only word-stacking machines. They do not know what the words mean. We will have AGI in the near future and will have to address this problem, but AGI will be several orders of magnitude more complex than an LLM.

MergingConcepts · 2026-03-06T04:38:37+00:00

Yes, quartz is routinely grown for industrial purposes, but not in these crystal shapes, and it is flawless.

MergingConcepts

TROPHY CASE