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I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat is a fantastic exploration of this idea, focusing on people who have lost specific parts of their brains due to tumors or strokes. The human mind is very much like a complex modern website- take Amazon for example, if everything is working, it’s the website where you buy stuff, but if certain specific systems are offline, you lose specific features, like your order history, or your cart, or your recommended products, etc… Missing one or two of of those components diminishes the site somewhat, but it’s still more or less Amazon. Your brain works the same way!
And the underlying animal is still there too. It’s fully in control at birth, and gets drowned out as we mature (for some people, less than others).
Small children are little more than animals, which is why they’re so unreasonable.
It’s my belief that the reason the written word or things like clocks are usually unreadable in dreams, is because the animal is both illiterate and innumerate. Dreams are the animals understanding of our waking experience. It knows these patterns are important and how they relate to other things, but it has no fucking idea what any of it actually means.I do find myself reading and writing words in dreams quite a lot. I’ve never seen a clock though, not as far as I can remember.
But sometimes I can even remember signs with street names or banners / short paragraphs.
Dynamic lighting sadly doesn’t work tho. Light switches do nothing. For example if I turn on the lights in my bathroom in a dream, I can even hear the bathroom fan turn on, but the room remains dark. Ive heard thst this is apparently quite common though.
No there’s no need to posit cutesy sounding things, that’s how misinformation starts :) If you have any sources or can cite stuff you’ve read which may point to it, that’s cool though
No, people are allowed to speculate and throw out ideas they have without needing some “expert” or paper to back up what they are saying. The mistake is treating such as if it’s a fact. Sure, there’s always going to be idiots out there that will take ideas like that and run with them, but I reject the idea that we should censor those speculations and random thoughts because idiots might believe them.
The real problem are the con artists who work those idiots up into a frenzy of fear and distrust by deliberately presenting shit they can’t back up as a fact and threat to drive donations or sell snake oil to “protect” from it.
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think.
I agree that hypotheticals and thought experiments are fun, but I disagree that any random speculation is a good idea. Everything should have a kernel of originating known fact, or some reasonable foundation. You can’t do science without starting with some known facts, or stating your assumptions based on such facts.
Edit to say:
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think
Is this speculation harmless? I am not sure we can qualify that, so it’s wrong to assume that it’s harmless.
Anywho, anyone and everyone should be able to participate in a discussion! I just think it’s nice to ground hypotheticals with some kind of known or observed phenomena. The funny thing is that science validates itself, so maybe this person is accurately describing an unknown cognitive model.
To me, good conversation hygiene in science or related fields is rooted in observations 🤷
I agree that science involves more rigor, but we’re not doing science in here, it’s just an online discussion forum. And OP qualified their comment with “I posit” and didn’t present it like an established fact.
Only the Baron Harkonnen speaks in my head, so hah!
Kill the Abomination!
I love the way that’s said in the audiobook. Cheers!
Fear is the mind killer.
I’m aware of my other consciousness. She’s cool. I try to be more like her.
I call it my customer service face.
I’m pretty sure mine hates me and makes me so stupid stuff whenever I’m distracted.
oh there’s way more than two minds in your brain.
Can vouch for that. Ive always been of two minds on any given subject
Its what I tell people are the voices in my head
So that’s why my constant inner-monologue is verbose and meaningful, but I can’t communicate for shit?
make us whole
This hypothesis is bullshit. There are far more than just two consciousnesses.
Check out- Thinking, Fast and Slow By: Daniel Kahneman
It deals with the concepts of two minds in one. System one and system two
Inside you there are 2 wolves
And neither one has access to speech
Mine share the same lonely neuron.
Dual consciousness is not exactly proven though, so idk what to think. Hope researchers shed more light down the road
Split brain experiment
I think this has been proven, kinda.
The only thing I can think of that this could refer to is split brain patients who have undergone a specific medial procedure once used to treat epilepsy. It’s possible, although not well understood, that the two halves of their brain operate sort of independently, and only one has access to speech.
It’s a very interesting topic, well worth diving into! But it’s also very muddy, there is contrasting evidence for and against the “two mind” theory.
Anyway, I’m fairly certain this “theory” does not apply to healthy brains which have not undergone this procedure.
" We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe." — von Goethe
