From: jimruttshow8596
The concept of consciousness is a central theme in understanding the human mind, often described as the subjective, immediate experience of the world, or more specifically, “being aware that you are aware” [00:05:18]. This definition highlights a distinction between basic awareness and self-consciousness, which is believed to be present in only a limited number of animals, such as humans, chimpanzees, elephants, and orcas [00:05:47]. More widespread in the animal kingdom, potentially since reptiles, is a primary form of consciousness akin to “being in your own movie and dealing with the world in this phenomenological way” [00:06:02].
The User Illusion and Its Evolutionary Purpose
The idea of the “user illusion” provides a framework for understanding consciousness. This term, originating from software development, describes how graphical user interfaces (GUIs) create the “illusion of manipulating objects which are not in any sense true objects but are metaphors for what this guy is doing” [00:09:12]. Examples include folders and desktops, which are not physically present but help users interact with data [00:09:21].
By analogy, our mind’s perception of the world is not a precise mirror or reproduction of reality [00:10:44]. Instead, it creates “a myth, an idea, an illusion that is relevant to the survival of the animal” [00:10:56]. The primary criterion for this mental model is not its exact accuracy, but its utility for survival [00:11:28]. This aligns with a Darwinian perspective, where evolution favors traits that enhance reproduction and survival, rather than perfect cognitive models [00:11:41].
Consciousness as a “Clever Hack”
Consciousness can be seen as a “clever hack” or “trick” that evolution discovered to enable organisms to make high-quality decisions at a relatively low cost [00:12:09]. Despite the brain being a metabolically expensive organ, consuming about 20% of the body’s energy [00:12:23], consciousness — which might account for 20-30% of that brain energy [00:12:36] — must offer significant survival advantages. Its preservation over hundreds of millions of years suggests it has consistently paid off in terms of survival [00:12:53]. The development of symbols and language in humans further elevated this “trick” to a new level [00:13:12].
The Cost of Information Processing
A surprising aspect of consciousness is the radical reduction in information bandwidth from perception to conscious awareness [00:14:15]. While the human brain takes in approximately 11 million bits per second from the environment (mostly visual) [00:16:13], conscious awareness processes only about 16 bits per second [00:16:44]. This represents a compression factor of a million to one [00:16:48].
This massive reduction is crucial: “Consciousness is about … throwing away most of the information that we take in, reducing down to something that it’s meaningful to be aware of” [00:17:49]. Most incoming information (e.g., the ceiling not falling) is irrelevant [00:17:21]. The physical act of forgetting or erasing information, as shown by Rolf Landauer and Charlie Bennett, is actually energetically expensive [00:19:55]. This principle was key to solving Maxwell’s Demon paradox, illustrating that processing information involves a cost, particularly in discarding it [00:20:50].
The “I” and “Me” Distinction
A significant contribution to consciousness theories is the distinction between the “I” (the conscious awareness) and the “me” (the person or underlying self) [00:29:10]. This concept is particularly relevant when examining Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments [00:25:56]. Libet’s work demonstrated that the brain begins preparing for an action (e.g., flicking a finger) about one second before the action occurs [00:27:26]. However, conscious awareness of the decision to act only arises approximately half a second before the action is performed [00:28:21].
This suggests that the “I” (conscious awareness) does not initiate the action, but rather becomes aware of it mid-process [00:28:40]. The “me” or the underlying person is responsible for initiating the action, even if the “I” only observes it later [00:29:52]. This challenges traditional notions of free will, suggesting that “the company is running without the CEO really knowing what’s going on” [00:31:19]. Most complex human activities like walking, talking, or dancing are performed largely without conscious oversight [00:30:26]; in fact, conscious self-surveillance can hinder performance [00:30:40].
Free Will and Emergence
The Libet findings and the “I” vs. “me” distinction have significant implications for the concept of free will [00:32:24]. While the conscious “I” may not initiate actions, the “me” (the person) still possesses free will [00:39:49]. The idea that everything is determined by fundamental physical laws, as some argue, doesn’t negate the reality of emergent phenomena [00:40:42]. Complex systems demonstrate that while causality exists at the lowest levels, it’s computationally impossible to deduce higher-level behaviors from fundamental particles [00:41:43]. Just as a map doesn’t fully predict the terrain [00:43:37], and the text of Shakespeare doesn’t fully create a theater performance [00:46:44], the emergent properties of complex systems, including consciousness, are real and cannot be fully predicted by their underlying components [00:44:56].
Exformation: The Unspoken Context
Communication is also subject to this principle of information reduction, relying heavily on “exformation” — the information implicitly understood from shared context rather than explicitly stated [00:50:41]. The anecdote of Victor Hugo’s one-character correspondence (a question mark and an exclamation mark) illustrates that meaningful communication often involves a small amount of explicit information and a large amount of implicit, contextual understanding [00:48:36]. This highlights how communication is not just about transferred bits, but about the rich mental states provoked in the recipient and condensed by the sender [00:49:49]. Literary fiction, for instance, evokes vast amounts of “exformation” in the reader’s mind, assuming their understanding of complex human experiences [00:51:22].
The Historical Emergence of Self-Consciousness
Julian Jaynes’s theory posits that consciousness, particularly self-consciousness, is a relatively recent development in human history, arising around the time of ancient civilizations like Babylon and Homeric Greece [00:56:57]. Jaynes suggested that before this emergence of the “conscious eye,” people might have experienced a “parliament of voices in their heads” (interpreted as gods) guiding their actions, without an inner space for conscious decision-making [00:57:54]. Individuals exhibiting such behavior today might be diagnosed with schizophrenia [00:58:31]. While Bronze Age people were undoubtedly “conscious” in the sense of experiencing life, they may have lacked the “I” concept or self-awareness common today [00:59:58].
Implications for Modern Life
The modern “Information Society” paradoxically suffers from too little, rather than too much, information in our lived environments [01:03:55]. Natural environments like wilderness are rich in information and complexity, while human-engineered spaces like cornfields, roads, or suburbs are significantly simplified and “devoid of information” [01:04:31]. This simplification, driven by a desire to remove “annoying things” and control our surroundings, paradoxically leads to unease and a craving for the information that smartphones fail to satisfy [01:04:00].
To find joy and happiness, we need to embrace “more wilderness and more otherness,” interacting with unpredictable elements and other human beings and species, rather than solely focusing on what we can control [01:05:58]. The relentless reduction of life’s dimensionality, while removing unhappiness, does not inherently create happiness [01:07:05]. True fulfillment comes from engaging with the rich, unpredictable, and high-dimensional aspects of existence [01:07:17].