2h 37mNeither does functionalism claim that today’s computers can implement consciousness—functionalism implies that consciousness depends on a system’s functional organization, rather than the material of its substrate. More generally, it can be interpreted as the epistemological position that we construct objects over their observable behavior and functional organization, i.e. how their presence or absence influences the evolution of their environment
Recall the experience of awakening in a dimly lit room full of unrecognized shapes and fragments, and the process of reconstructing which city, hotel and circumstance you may find yourself to be in, who you are, and what objects you are looking at. Starting with a ragged recollection of surreal dreams and a jumble of vague percepts, your conscious attention goes to the task of reconstructing itself, a coherent interpretation of the scene, your personal self model, and how you may have gotten yourself into the scene! Like the conductor of a mental orchestra, with each of the instruments producing its own model of aspects of the current reality, conscious attention is drawn to disharmonies and conflicts, sometimes allocating focus and preference to an individual instrument, sometimes synchronizing a disagreement, sometimes raising the intensity, lowering the pitch or changing the rhythm of one of the players, pushing an instrument off the stage that does not belong and replacing it with another one, sometimes even inventively changing the composition of the music that is being played. What may begin as a cacophony will turn into a harmonic model of perceptual reality, an extending bubble of now that is carefully tuned to explain sensory data and orchestrate our inner life. Let us call the control of a ‘mental orchestra’ by consciousness’ directed attention the conductor theory of consciousness.
While understanding the structure and functionality of consciousness seems daunting to our intuition, discovering it appears to be easier for our brains than building models of self, world and behavioral control without it. It is likely that the same is true for other animals with complex nervous systems, or perhaps for all organisms that build coherent models of self and world in the patterns of communication between their cells. In the same way, philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and generations of Artificial Intelligence researchers after him have thought for decades almost in vain, trying to discover the intricate principles of interpreting and recreating visual images, sound and natural language, but found it to be easier to invent relatively simple learning algorithms (like the transformer algorithm that has become almost synonymous with the successes of Deep Learning models) that discover these principles on their own. Consciousness may turn out to be at the heart of a universal biological learning algorithm, one that runs on self-organizing groups of communicating cells sharing the evolutionary incentives of an organism. Instead of being brought forth by the organized architecture of the mind, it creates it. We call this idea the Genesis Hypothesis.
The first space that the spirit creates is the plane, and it becomes the ground of the world, to be filled with things it can perceive and order. By adding a third dimension, it creates an expanse above (and below) the ground. Solid, liquid and organic materials form the shapes from which consciousness can mold static and animate things.
Capital as you Goods that have been produced for the purposes of assisting in the production of other 00:01:36 Goods in other words produced means of production that was what capital was Robinson Cruisers salvaged fishing gear infection a farmer's plow back in ancient times in futle times today a Smith's furnace or Hummer these were are manufactured goods that help produce a Lar a catch of fish more food shiny stey tools this is what capital has always been capital of course preceded capitalism capitalism is a system a mode of production and distribution of goods and services uh in which the power to compel others to do 00:02:25 things uh is vested in uh those who have ownership over capital goods
There should be a version of ‘earn to give’ that’s something like ‘get pretty to persuade’ I can’t think of a way to say this that doesn’t feel mean, but I think if you have a cause you really care about, and are lacking in basic hygiene practices, you’re leaving money on the table We’re wired to take fitter & more hygienic/presentable people more seriously than someone who eg clearly needs a shower and a hair cut. You may not want the world to work that way, but it just does