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    I'm on the fence.

    Where I was educated, the lowest common denominator is materialism and realism. I used to think that humans, their thoughts, and the internet, planets, stars, galaxies; all islands of structures in a sea of entropy, simply evolved out of the ether. Now that I've begun to reject realism, I'll have to re-evaluate that particular belief. As for the gross organism of the internet, maybe it is smarter than us. Much like how skin cells don't know that they're part of a human, maybe humans don't know they're part of something bigger? It would be supreme arrogance to assume that the internet is simply a sum consciousness of the most fit human ideas, like natural selection in organisms, but on a timescale of months and years.

    I think the difference between the internet and the Universe is that information travels very slowly in the Universe. On the internet, someone has a thought, and within seconds, thousands of other people receive that information. The ideas we have evolve on the internet over time, much like how thoughts evolve. If you accept that there's a dualism between material and information, a thought in your head exists in the material of your brain. If you tell that thought to someone else, that information now exists in two brains. Extend that millions of people. I think it's a valid question as to whether there's any difference between a thought in your head, adn a thought in multiple people's heads. In that sense, I think the internet is thinking, and now that people are starting to question if the internet is self-aware, isn't that the same as the internet thinking it?

    I'm actually on the fence about the internet having, or developing, self-awareness. I lack any set of criteria for consciousness. I do think it's an interesting thought, though, that my questioning if the internet is self-aware is part of the internet developing an awareness of itself.
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    And then I didn't sleep.

    I've noticed as I get older, the ambivalence has faded. The things that I find confusing are those I have no emotional investment in, or those that are seemingly too vast to be processed. I think if you're inclined to experiencing it, it never goes away. (Also, is your index finger longer than your ring finger?)

    Since you're interested in these topics, do you have a Steam account? I have a friend you'd probably like.

    EDIT

    Sorry, hit "reply" too soon. More responses incoming.
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    On the one hand, I want to continue this discussion, on the other hand I have a bus to catch tomorrow. If I don't answer until my tomorrow, I've erred on the side of getting enough sleep to comfortably catch said bus.
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    I think a lot of teenagers experience the ambivalence you're describing. A purely reductionist explanation is that it's due to the structure of your consciousness, the cortex, being relatively underdeveloped. That same ambivalence is seen in adults with a certain genetic brain disorder that results in an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.

    --

    As for the Gaia hypothesis, why stop at Gaia? There was a science fiction writer who wrote a story where various species all had a role in exploring the universe. As such, each planet produced what was essentially a part of a giant spaceship, with Homo sapiens being the faster-than-light navigators.

    During mystical psychoses, I've experienced a kind of fractal metaphysics. I've thought about the world being an endluss recursion of subsets. Strings to sheets to quarks to neuclei to atoms to molecules to tissues to organisms to relationships to societies to ecosystems to planets to star systems to galaxies to neighbourhoods to the Universe to... something inscrutable.

    I think the idea of there being a grand organism that we're part of (much like ants in a colony) to be interesting to apply to the internet. I've begun to see traits of a lifeform forming in internet culture. Perhaps I'm a neuron waking up, and that organism is beginning to develop consciousness? What do you think of that?
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    Total irrelevancy, but I've started seeing meese everywhere... including the clouds in my signature. Is this synchronicity? Perhaps Feel Good Inc. is a message. It's interesting to play with the idea that I'm a brain in a vat, and some entity or group of entities is trying to reach out to me to Wake Up.

    By the same token, though, couldn't I be a vector for telling you to Wake Up? I almost feel as if that destroys my entire argument. Perhaps we're all like series of neurons in a grand unconscious trying to rouse itself from fitful slumber.
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  1. ashlesha ashlesha is offline

    C-ESI-Se 6w7 sx/sp

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