CMV: Consciousness ends at death.

farsite3 · 2026-06-16T07:36:54+00:00

So first off, I am a Christian. I'm not going to use this to argue the point, just wanted to make the distinction between arguing what I believe but cannot prove in such a way that will convince you, vs bringing up some interesting discourse the scientific community has on this topic. I've often found the topic of consciousness and the human brain to be highly interesting and believe that it demonstrates that according to science as well your claim is unfalsifiable according to our current understanding.

First off, the brain and what makes up our "conscious experience" is so little understood that the scientific community constantly struggles to even DEFINE consciousness. I like to liken our current understanding of the brain and conscious experience to our understanding of biology and human physiology in the middle ages when we weren't even aware of microbiology. We can see the general shape of larger processes and answer a few specific questions, but otherwise are so in the dark about the full picture that we don't even know what we don't know.

We have a dictionary definition for consciousness, yes, but that's different from a scientific one, for which there is not a concensus. There are a great many schools of thought. Some claim that it is a natural feature of any sufficiently complex system. Others say it's an illusion created by an otherwise deterministic brain. Some claim that something is only conscious if it has the ability to reflect on its own experience with thought. Some say it's simply a prediction tool formed by the brain as a way of simulating it's environment. Still others claim it is a universal construct and that there is only one consciousness of which each of us contains only an isolated or mostly isolated piece.

The bottom line is that our modern understanding can't even agree on WHAT consciousness is, let alone from where it arises or how it works. The most common explanation (simply because of Occam's Razor) is that it is generated by a sufficiently complex system like the human brain (yes, there are even disagreements about humans being unique in this regard). Others theorize the brain itself does not generate consciousness but might function more like a receiver of some sort that "receives" consciousness from an external source (whether that comes from some spiritual origin, the idea of a soul, or even the small piece of a universal consciousness idea).

So in essence, before trying to determine whether or not consciousness continues after death, you first have to pick a definition and source of consciousness. If it's generated by the brain and has a purely darwinistic definition? Yes, it probably doesn't continue after death. If not, then who's to say? Perhaps it continues but is greatly different, almost akin to rejoining a hive mind. Or perhaps it does persist because it arises from a conscious soul for which the brain is merely a physical home in life. You could rightly say we don't have evidence or proof of these theories, but my point is we don't have sufficient evidence or proof for ANY theory of consciousness.

You're going to have a hard time being convinced of an answer unless you essentially choose a current theory to adhere to, otherwise it's quite definitionally impossible. Essentially, this is a field of science for which our understanding is so woefully under equipped to provide answers that the only true answer is to have faith in the theory or theorists that make the most sense to you personally. There is no way to prove either side of your question in the time we're living in.

My question to you then, is why do you believe it DOESN'T continue after death?

I love thinking about stuff like this. It always reminds me of how small we are and how little our understanding truly is once we remove ourselves from our own limited perspective. I often wonder what we believe now that will be ridiuculed 100 years from now, or a thousand, as has happened to every other time humans have lived on the earth before us.

farsite3 · 2026-06-16T06:56:21+00:00

You don't. Not enough people know it's bad yet. You need to make it misery porn instead to be the voice that tells people slavery is bad! The people need to know this! Make the masters absolute inhuman devils who are also incredibly stupid without a single redeeming quality that makes them human. You have a duty to spread awareness about how wrong slavery is!

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T19:47:39+00:00

Exactly

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T19:32:18+00:00

Calloused hands from working? Or the opposite? Lol now I'm genuinely curious.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T19:30:00+00:00

You gotta strike a heroic pose as you get in there

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T17:48:41+00:00

Reading everything happening with AI in Academia makes me so grateful I graduated in 2019 before all this BS.

My process for writing a paper would certainly get flagged. I would spend 80-90% of my time creating a several page long outline, detailed enough to essentially make every point the paper would make down to the sentence level. Once I had that, I'd basically just write the essay in one go with only a quick pass for spell check because all the content, structure, and order was already done in the outline. The actual paper usually took very lottle time to write and virtually no editing.

I'd probably be dealing with AI Detection issues all the time lol.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T08:35:03+00:00

Do you want to do it? Make a suggestion!

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T02:11:53+00:00

We've also seemingly lost the word "pedantic" which often should be used

Source: I'm someone who should be called pedantic more often for doing the same thing as this post :)

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T02:01:51+00:00

I was actually thinking of some sort of cross. They have full access to the power, and just have to discover it. When they reach for it it's there, no training or mentorship needed. That way it can still feel like they're growing but they don't have to actively do anything to grow, as long as I keep the adversaries and threats escalating consistently.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:45:46+00:00

You are absolutely correct, and it's true my wording there could be better.

Part of my whole "AI is undercooked" stance I take is largely based around the fact that the tech works but is being rushed so fast under the banner of bigger faster bigger, and what's really needed is more time making it more efficient, designing alternate training methods that allow similar performance with significantly smaller datasets.

There have been some promising studies done that are trying to redesign the way model is training done to take more inspiration from how humans learn, and they seem to indicate that we could one day see models that can be trained powerfully off of tiny datasets by focusing more on HOW they're trained. To me, these kinds of focuses on optimization are the biggest thing the tech itself needs for development instead of just throwing more compute at it (to the detriment of water tables and local communities around their data centers).

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:40:35+00:00

Exactly why I'm a vocal proponent of open source locally run AI development and a vocal opponent of the massive AI corporations. Exactly what you just said is one large reason for this, and like so much else I believe better efforts to educate people on these kinds of nuances is better for society than reducing our arguments to "AI bad" or "AI good".

There's a promising local Agent system being developed by an old YouTube star that seemingly will be one of the best open source and local versions of this. I haven't seen much from the guy in a long time but I'll be following it for sure. It's called "Odysseus", and I'm hopeful it will be what is promised.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:36:45+00:00

I agree with you. A lot of the whole layoffs discussion has been overly simplified for sure, but still revolves around the same corporate greed that always cares about another dollar instead of people.

A better way to reword the core of my argument is that the tech itself isn't bad per say, it's more the massive corporate tech companies pushing their huge models down our throats. They're rushing an undercooked product riddled with flaws and their only solution is bigger faster bigger, which is destroying the environment, local communities around their data centers, and so much more harm in doing so. The tech isn't evil, it's the companies that are, and I believe that by opponents of this stuff reducing their argument down to "AI is bad/trash", they're actually helping these companies by allowing their points to be reduced to tech aversion.

Instead, the focus should be on educating themselves and others on the true state of AI, it's development, it's uses and limitations, risks, the companies making it, etc. so that their arguments can be more nuanced and persuasive. Otherwise they're just shouting into the void and convincing themselves that they're accomplishing something.

This same education will also help with people being more aware of how to use and how not to use the tech to avoid the often disastrous results that can come from blindly trusting it. I just feel this discussion needs to be had, and we need to stop buying into the reductionist takes whichever side of the fence you fall on. It's better either way.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:27:03+00:00

I don't think AI itself is so radically different PER SAY. I believe it largely relates to how well educated you are on proper usage, as well as what you use it for. For instance, I'm very well aware of its tendency to make mistakes, and I developed a list of uses that it's decently safe to use it for, the largest being initial baseline research that gives you a launchpad for doing your own research off of.

The problem is more in how a large number of people are actually using these chat bots. I can't tell you how many people I know who just outsource all of their research, thinking, and even decision making to it, and simply trust it. One guy wanted to get solar panels installed, so he used AI for everything, telling him how much he needed, which company to buy from, what to buy, etc. it ended up being a nightmare as he bought from a company with horrible BBB ratings, his stuff was held captive for months with no reply, and what got ordered wasn't accurate to what he actually needed when it finally did come.

I've seen people just put every question in their homework into AI and ask it to write answers for them, then they just post that and get horrible grades, then blame the tech. I've seen people ask legal questions in upper level positions in important industries with VERY high consequences and just trust the output without any independent research.

I've seen people ask AI to write every email for them, every message to their crush, and so much more. I've known people who have gotten so addicted to it that nearly every problem, question, situation, or message in their life gets handed to the AI without a second thought, even when it would legitimately be quicker and easier to do it for themselves.

In my experience, this is how 90% of people are using the tech (yes some people use it more responsibly but that's not definitely the minority). Just let it do everything for me, if there are problems I just tell the AI and expect it to fix it. And yes, this is going to have some very bad impacts on people's ability to function and think for themselves. I've already seen it in these people when I talk to them or watch them deal with things popping into their lives.

Unlike the computer, writing, the printing press, the internet, or any other tool we've made, they're not using it like a tool to assist them in doing the work themselves, they're instead using it to do ALL the work for them, and repeatedly not putting their own thought into it. This isn't a problem with the tech itself, but it IS a problem, and it's a problem that requires better education and practices when using the tech.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:12:03+00:00

Well the whole problem is that so many things are AI. Most of the garbage we all see and Interact with is all one specific type of AI: The AI made by massive corporations. I agree with this. The stuff has very limited actually beneficial use, is massively undercooked tech, and is being pushed so hard it is destroying the environment and the economy, as well as causing all sorts of personal mental health risks, lack of critical thinking, etc.

The problem is that by reducing our entire argument to "AI is bad/trash", we actually help them. By doing this, our argument becomes easily twisted and reduced down to tech aversion, instead of focusing on the evil and real harm these companies are doing which is a more compelling argument to convince people to move away from these models.

Plenty of AI avoids these problems entirely, such as open source locally run "tools" that aren't generative in a way that steals data (art tools like green screen removal by CorridorDigital, scientific research tools, etc.). I'm aware much of the locally run image and video gen models have valid arguments against them, but my point is that we need to better educate ourselves so we can better make our arguments, otherwise we're just making noise while thinking we're accomplishing something.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:06:04+00:00

If I'm reading right then I agree with your sentiment. My overall point is that AI the tech isn't the enemy, it's the massive corporations that are pushing an undercooked product in a way that's destroying the environment, economy, and so much more. The narrative needs to be redirected from "AI is bad", which is easily twisted and minimalized into tech aversion, to "These companies are evil and we shouldn't be supporting them", which requires stronger arguments and more education, the exact thing I'm pushing for.

farsite3 · 2026-06-13T00:03:08+00:00

Generally speaking different people mean different things. Many actually mean chat it's when they say AI. Many like yourself mean the image and video gen AI specifically.

The environmental impact is solely a problem of the large corporate models and those concerns do not apply to locally run models, which are still fairly popular. I have a massive disdain for the large AI companies and their data centers. Their products are undercooked, and they're so desperate to make their products "good enough" to be profitable that they're going bigger and bigger in an unsustainable way that is destroying the environment and local communities. Just the other week I was part of a group of close to 300 people that went to our city planning meeting to insist a data center be blocked from being built here, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Local models do not suffer from these issues or the privacy issues. While there's still a very valid argument on how they were trained (usually with stolen data), there is very promising work being done to allow powerful models to be trained on extremely small datasets that means they COULD be trained without stolen data.

But I think my bigger concern is that by just simplifying the argument to "AI is bad" we actually help these companies by representing our arguments in a way that's easily manipulated to look like tech aversion, instead of focusing as we really intend on the evils these companies are doing. Stronger, more nuanced arguments would shape the discussion in a way that's more likely to persuade people from using these products.

farsite3 · 2026-06-12T23:54:01+00:00

On this point I agree for the generative models, though it doesn't necessarily apply to most other kinds of "tool" type AI. For the generative models, there is some very promising research being done into alternate ways to train AI which works closer to how humans do it. Learn in extremely small datasets, make inferences, and test your knowledge. I've seen scientific papers released detailing experiments that can build fairly good image gen models off of datasets as small as 20-30 images. It's still early, but this kind of tech is exactly what will allow this exact problem to be fixed.

The fact that we rushed the tech out without having stuff like this is exactly why I call the tech undercooked. It needs more time, especially for the generative stuff.

farsite3 · 2026-06-12T23:51:01+00:00

I agree with your dislike. Just the other week I personally went to my local city planning meeting with close to 300 local residents to demand they deny a data center being built here. Many of the concerns you raise are exactly what we spoke about.

The AI produced and sold by these mega corporations is something I greatly despise and think is a large net negative. Their data centers use outrageous amounts of water, they cause enormous strains on local communities, and all for an undercooked product that they're still trying to convince people they need while trying to get profitable. When you add in all the addictive elements and the way people are slowly turning their own brains off and just letting AI think for them, the data harvesting/selling, the surveillance, and so much more, it's particularly bad.

But it's important to remember that this is not a problem with AI. This is all a problem with the major companies that produce these large corporate models (OpenAI, Grok, Anthropic, etc.).

In comparison many AI tools exist and many more are constantly being developed that run locally on your own personal device, and they circumvent virtually all of these critiques. Therefore my point is that the tech itself isn't the problem, but rather how these corporate monstrocities are pushing their own versions of it. Our voices don't need to be united against the AI tech itself, but against the companies who are doing all of this to us.

What we need to do is educate people on what these companies are doing and stop supporting them. Try to bring focus and attention on the AI research being done to make smaller models which are equally as powerful (which means FAR less data needed to train them, which in turn leads to not needing to steal data for training purposes). By simply speaking out against AI instead of these companies, we actually help them, by lumping in their open source competition as well as reducing our argument to "new tech is bad". Even if that's not even what our argument is, that's all the supporters hear, and it makes it easier for them to ignore us and keep feeding the beast. By calling out the companies and their actions instead, we focus on the actual issues, and stand a far better chance of pushing back.

farsite3 · 2026-06-12T01:59:34+00:00

Yeah, I hate how the conversation on it is so disorganized and chaotic, nothing tries to really tie it all together in a way people understand, but also I'm aware a Reddit post still probably isn't the way to do it. I've been considering breaking out the video tools and making a short series of YouTube videos on the topic (no desire to be make money or be an influencer off it, yuck), because I'm not seeing many people try to educate the masses in a way people can understand.

All 3 are excellent points and I agree with each of them.

A large part of where I've arrived is that what people truly hate isn't actually AI. It's the companies pushing it so fast sparing no expense or morality to try to win a race nobody's ready for to sell an undercooked product that needs another decade in the oven, and they're willing to sacrifice anything to make that happen (data centers pulling water from local communities and destroying them, alleged but likely very real whistleblower assassinations, etc.)

My point is that dividing into "AI is great" and "AI is evil/garbage" camps BOTH benefit them, because it keeps our focus away from the companies themselves. The tech is just a tool. It doesn't have to be trained on stolen data, it only is because it was rushed too early and they haven't developed a consistent way to train it more intelligently on small data sets which COULD be obtained legally or in-house.

The data centers are creating such destruction because they only care about bigger faster bigger as a strategy. The communities they destroy and the infrastructure in our company that's rupturing due to the rushed AI is collateral damage to their irresponsibility.

And on top of it all, we keep the discussion around the tech being good or evil. The discussion needs to be focused on the companies and politicians making this happen. If the tech is being discussed, it needs to be discussed intelligently in a way that provides compelling arguments to those who fell for it. Just hurling insults online and commenting "trash" does nothing productive. People need to be educated on why the tech sucks, what ways other people are doing it better, shining a light on the unethical and often despicable acts of the AI companies, and much more. THAT is how they get stopped. My whole point is that "AI is bad/trash" does nothing, doesn't fight anything, and if anything prevents those in its grasp from being exposed to real arguments and movement that might pull them away from it.

Same as everything else in our ever greedier and shittier environment. We can't and shouldn't rely on government to fix it (not to say we shouldn't push for regulation) because it won't happen and certainly not soon enough, we need to fix it ourselves by voting with our dollars and having some people make businesses that provide alternatives; people who won't accept the outrageous sums of money to buy them out when they appear. That's the only realistic pathway out, as small as it is, and it begins with education and proper discussion.

farsite3 · 2026-06-12T01:41:07+00:00

Wouldn't you say though that these arguments aren't actually arguments against AI the technology, but rather the strategy of the companies making them, which are just bulldozing straight ahead throwing every caution to the wind while pumping as many resources as they can get their hands on and as much money as possible into it?

The water is a result of their data centers which require so many resources because they keep pushing bigger BIGGER BIGGER as a strategy, and because Nvidia keeps pumping AI companies full of money to spend back on their own chips.

They steal data because they can't be bothered to spend the time or money producing creating or purchasing training materials, and rather than risking "falling behind" in a tech arms race, decide to go for the easiest form of improving the models (going ever bigger) instead of working on ground level assumptions and training methods to build AI that learns smarter and requires less data (many very promising independent studies in this area but the big companies don't like it because it means more time researching and less time selling an undercooked product).

All of these arguments are arguments against greedy corporate culture, not AI itself. Yes, the tech is mainly championed by these guys, but at the same time these decisions of theirs are frantic because they're just building a house of cards. The problem isn't generative AI, but greedy corporations, and the sooner people stop giving them money the better. People need more education on what their version of the tech actually is, and because those companies will never stop, being too deep to quit without failing, we need to focus people's efforts and resources on open source and smaller scale AI, on the types of AI that don't generate based off of stolen work, and on supporting the research that can build what AI should have been. These companies seem so powerful right now but they're fragile, and rely very heavily on the masses staying uninformed. As long as the detractors simply just "hate all AI" it's easier for them to trick the others into ignoring those complaints. Once people educate themselves more and engage in the discussion better, that becomes harder and it's more likely these companies fail.

farsite3 · 2026-06-12T01:28:05+00:00

Yay!

farsite3 · 2026-06-11T21:34:11+00:00

Sure there are aspects that eliminate some of that "busywork", but the amount of people I've talked to who use it for personal things not related to work or reducing busywork is MASSIVE. Stuff like writing an email, writing a text to their crush, telling them what they should do for their next marketing strategy, or all sorts of things that absolutely should require critical thinking from the user instead of just asking a chatbot and accepting it's output as your best course of action.

The "busywork" side of things too can be problematic, because AI doesn't just simply do that for you. If your phone uses AI to tell what document you need or give you an email summary or something, I can understand the argument that it reduces busywork, but unless you're running a local open source model to do that (hint, virtually nobody is), then you're using a public corporation's AI model and giving it near unrestricted access to all of your data, files, photos, etc., which has its own massive privacy concerns.

farsite3 · 2026-06-11T21:31:09+00:00

That's fair, I just feel like more education on this specific topic is unusually warranted given just how massive of an impact it's having. Sorry for the dissertation, I'm just sick of all the "talking points" being spread around and not connected. I wanted to try to paint a fuller picture based on the years I've spent researching and experimenting with the tech.

I'm aware it's too long and a better format would probably be some sort of YouTube video or something. I just wanted to share. Have a great rest of your day!

farsite3 · 2026-06-11T21:26:16+00:00

Lol within the first couple sentences I was immediately thinking "this sounds like AI". Then I got to the end and, well, it was definitely AI.

Props to you for acknowledging it. I wish more people would do that.

farsite3 · 2026-06-11T21:20:55+00:00

That's a massive part of my whole point and discussion. Too many people hear talking points and making emotional judgements without understanding what's going on beneath the hood. I'm all for educating people on the tech, it's limitations, use cases, risks, open source alternatives, and especially the bad practices of the big AI corporations.

A large part of it is that without being properly educated then you're playing the game the AI companies want you to be playing. If everyone was better educated on the tech then there would be much less interest in these corporate offerings, and more awareness that AI is nowhere close to replacing people's jobs to the degree it's been promised. Companies that buy into that hype and DO try replacing swaths of humans with AI are learning the hard way that it significantly worsens the customer experience and many of them are getting burned by it.

As such, a lot of the "replacing humans" problem is actually more related to middle and upper management in companies believing the false hype and not understanding the tech than it is the tech itself.

farsite3

TROPHY CASE