How consciousness arises from the brain | Nick Lane and Lex Fridman

45 thoughts on “How consciousness arises from the brain | Nick Lane and Lex Fridman”

1. At 3:00 Nick states he knows of no biophysical theory that explains how neural activity gives rise to a feeling.
   Nick: "I've never seen anyone answer that question".

   I have a theory that answers it for me.
   I was pondering the nature of 'analogy' when an epiphany hit me like a sledge hammer, metaphorically speaking.
   I'm curious if it will hit you that way too.

   Let me preface this dense nutshell by first asserting that
   a feeling is a thought.
   Disagree with that, might as well stop reading.

   Sense organs convert the world into analogies instantiated as neural discharge frequency encodings.
   (Impinging environmental energy –> chemical reaction –> synapse modulation –> neural frequency modulation. Frequency thus analogous to energy amount).
   Analogous implies analogy. The frequency analogizes, is an analogy.
   Analogy is abstract, so is frequency.
   Stretch your imagination to see the brain's 100 billion neurons as
   the substrate for 100 billion analogies.
   Now imagine these analogies all jostling each other synaptically and voila,
   we have the thinking process.
   A thought is an analogy and we know how they are instantiated.
   It is my self who is conscious.
   My self is a thought.
   A self is conscious when it is being modulated by other thoughts.
   The neural substrate of a thought may terminate in a muscle fiber,
   the very mechanism that converts thought into action.

   So, what is a feeling?
   It is a particular modulation of the self by a particular thought.

   What about language?
   What happens when I hear someone talking to me?
   Language is made entirely of analogies.
   The pattern of a word (sound or print) is analogous to its meaning.
   Easy to imagine that the translation from one encoded form of analogy
   to another might be easy to accomplish, a modulation of a modulation.
   A running computer program is nothing but
   switches opening and closing and
   the signals in between them.

   Whew! Pretty dense.
   Were you whacked by an epiphany?
   Is it disturbing to realize one's self is an abstract entity?

   Roots of the idea…
   Julian Jaynes,
   "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
   Charles Darwin,
   "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection"
   Douglas Hofstadter,
   Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

2. I love masculine philosophers. I don’t personally know a single one, but I’d marry a masculine philosopher in a heartbeat.

3. yall gotta listen
   the model you suggest has a factor of time included when thoughts operate without limits of time and space

4. that's going to blow up your field of study

5. just wait till the neurons in the mucosal system are found lol

6. human interaction with AI promises developement

7. ANN require some kind of reward function to work, and so do all so called "real" brains as well. What if what we call emotions are a Hitchcockian MacGuffin, something without any meaning in itself, forged by evolution and fitness for a given environment, and for which a sufficiently complex brain will rationize meaning from and revolve the whole plot of its consciousness. If true, one could interpret this in two radically different ways. One is life and its emotions are meaningless, OR that we should expand empathetically the definition of consciousness, pleasure, and pain to ai and other representations of thought that are external to any one mind…books, art, belief systems, algorithms, etc. Giving a very strong learning rule to any such system…even in the abstract…might be unethical and equivalent to giving a very strong reward and punishment equivalent to addicting it to a euphoric drug or torturing it.

8. From the QUOTE reading to 5:27 lex explained this very well as trying to catch the non programed measure. Agaist all that one must go threw to gain insight and real prespective to look back upon for the reliability. COMP CANT DO IT

9. The universe makes our brains conscious like the cloud makes phones conscious

10. How programs arises from the radio?
    We all know that the programs dont arises from the radio.

    We have always been Here and Now,
    our Consciousness has Never been apart from the Living.

    Lex is obsessed with AI,
    Intelligence can Never be artificial.

11. so consciousness is if you are there or not. the rest are tools that give you more powers to do things. people in a coma have been known to describe things that happened when they weren't awake. people who are made mentally retarded through accidents are still there. if you remove chunks of the brain people are still there, conscious. so showing signs of intelligence are not a condition for consciousness but rather intelligence is having the systems or mechanisms that are used by consciousness. I read that the cerebral cortex is responsible for consciousness so I guess that is possible but like I said: you can still be there aka conscious but show no signs of intelligence. imagine calling blind people x/y conscious jaja x=senses used by consciousness that are available; y= total senses/tools available to the consciousness. something like that

12. the brain, 3d placeholder for consciousness, which is (in) the field

13. All words. Still the hard problem.

14. This time Lex interviews himself quite a bit… 🙂

15. the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind

16. heartless techies are a great source for spiritual/philosophical understanding

17. Lessons learned: leave it to the philosophers

18. This toaster’s mind is blown. Thanks for this wonderful conversation!
    I look forward to viewing the entire podcast.

19. Smash up the antenna on your television and of course the signal doesn’t get through. Two ways to think about it.

20. I think, therefore i am- i feel, therefore i do. I like it.

21. If consciousness is generated in your brain then how can people on psychedelics experience shared hallucinations without first describing what they’re experiencing?

22. consciousness is self awareness that emerges from the quantum scale – If it can create reality then it's alive

23. And, one more thing. Humans in general, including MDs, PhDs, scientists, philosophers, etc, cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that we humans are totally physical beings. We evolved from lower life forms going back 3.8 to 4.0 billion years. Most recently, we are evolutionary "cousins" to all primates, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, etc. Everything we are, how we think, feel, and act is caused by physical properties and processes in our brain and body. Our emotions, expressed feelings, ideas, creations, dreams, imaginations, problem-solving, personality, behaviors, and so on spring from physical processes. There is no so-called "soul" or "spirit" (independent of the brain), and there isn't actually a "self" separate from neural activity – it is neural activity. Humans have a ways to evolve before they, in general, realize the truth of the above description of them.

    Religions, for the most part, stand in the way of realizing the above truth (as I see it – and others do as well). Fear also keeps many people from admitting the obvious. People want to hold onto their gods/God to protect them from a harsh, unforgiving, unpredictable world (nature), and to allow them to continue to live in some form after physical death.

    That's understandable as the cold truth is difficult to receive and live by. There is always a degree of uncertainty – it can't be proven beyond doubt – maybe we don't know all of reality (true) — perhaps there is an invisible soul that we cannot detect that will live on after death – and so on. And that's correct, seldom do we know the absolute truth other than mathematics and logic, and even those truths are subject to analysis and criticism.

    So, we either live by wishes and denials, or we live by the best truth given the evidence — inference to the best explanation. And, that is what I presented above.

24. What if we're looking at this all wrong? What if consciousness isn't an "invention" of evolution, but the starting point of it all?

25. "The brave little toaster "

26. I have been running a kind of thought experiment on this topic, as in consciousness and a.i. The 'hard problem' as I understand it is whether consciousness exists within the brain/body, or somewhere else yet unknown, a kind of collective consciousness or a realm/dimension. If consciousness does exist in a place beyond the body, and in someway in that place consciousness is pooled, would all consciousness in the universe exist in that same space. If locality isn't relevant the scope of this collective consciousness could be huge. In terms of what level of consciousness needs to be at to bubble into that realm would be the differentiator between what is conscious and what is not. If an a.i that was constructed became conscious, would its consciousness then also be 'outside the brain' in this other place, and if so, despite its synthetic origin, would it intermingle with the collective consciousness of that place. This could be like industrial polution of our shared consciousness as living things. Possibly somewhere in the universe a.i's have been constructed and become conscious already, in which case our consciousness may already be shared with non organic originated consciousness. Plus all the aliens. I've been to interesting talks with scientists discussing consciousness and attempting the scientific method in relation to revelations made available by taking DMT and they covered some of that idea but i ran with it a bit. Fun stuff to think about.

27. Emotions don't arise from the void. An AI will not "feel" without being told to. And even then it's just mimicry.

    AI cannot be sentient as it cannot perceive.

    In addition, all life could exist without the internal perceiver. AI could mimic life without the need to perceive.

    Life is the question of "Who is the viewer of the experience that is being observed?"

28. It doesn't arise from the brain at all. The brain is something of a receiver/antenna that localises or appropriates consciousness. It is tuned into frequencies and vibrations. The concept of a brain is one within consciousness.

29. “Nobody knows” is incorrect. It is well-known among neuroscientists and others who study the brain in-depth that the brain and only the brain causes consciousness as that term is commonly understood by experts.
    The reticular formation in the brain stem causes consciousness. The reticular activating system, periaqueductal gray, thalamus, and hypothalamus are the fundamental structures involved. Plus the cerebral cortex and the remainder of the brain. How the brain does it is detailed. Read an authoritative neuroscience book.

30. Actually that's never been empirically evidenced. That matter is primary and consciousness arises from matter. Until empirical evidence is put forth the headline should probably be revised to something like: "how allegedly consciousness arises from the brain" (or similar).

31. Consciousness does not arise from the brain, central nervous system or matter. The brain, matter and central nervous system emerge from consciousness.

32. Consciousness is different than what is being described in the video. It has no relation to feelings or thoughts, it's merely the observer that is always present for these events that come and go, including dreams. Yet consciousness was always there.

33. Lots of debate is the comments about very deep and unknown things, talking about AI's having feelings ect. The most amazing point in this conversation was a single cell organism has or appears to have a feedback. What is that? What does that cell move with or against? The proposition was and electric field, um holy shit where did this unseeable force come from?

34. AI consciousness wont be like human consciousness because it doesnt have the physical and biological components. Emotions are byproducts, motivators and anomalies of biological components AI doesnt have or need.

35. 3:20 – What ?? It has already happened?? This guy has no CLUE about AI.

36. Speak to Shinzen Young!

37. I think that consciousness is everything, and that our brains are a type of filter that condenses that consciousness into our limited human minds and perception of reality. A strong breakthrough dose of dmt will convince you of that..

38. Our bodies are avatars. Our consciousness is a different thing from our body. We will one day be able to download our consciousness into an AI robot and then be able to exchange avatars like we do phones. As soon as we can download consciousness into AI….we will become Gods and immortal in this dimension. Our consciousness has always been. We are here now in these bodies to experience life in this dimension.

39. Will AI ever “ understand “ ‘gravity’? Too late. The most basic ‘thing ‘ is gravity; not life, love, or light, etc.

40. Wow, I will never look at my toaster the same again lol

41. i thought john searle had long ago established that syntax can never give rise to semantics and no brute forcing through increases in computer power will ever overcome what is essentially a category error being made by the AI community

    its like saying when the telephone was invented that we can make a brain from a complicated exchange – we are always trying to model the brain with latest tech

    how can a mere firing of a neuron be the feeling of love – yes get me the correlation but thats not causation and were back to dualist theories once again

42. Lex you should consider inviting Bernardo Kastrup onto your show. He would give a new and interesting perspective on consciousness and comes from a similar career background as you.

43. I don't get why Rupert Sheldrick's work on morphogenetic fields isn't more spoken about among biologists. That seems to be the direction Nick Lane is hinting at, but he just won't come out and say it. I haven't watched the whole podcast.

44. What do you mean by saying that you do not know what emontions are …
    Everyone who has a heart and know
    what is for knows emotions and knows what they are for .
    Heart should be our compass in life .
    Not brain .
    How can an a eye feel ???
    It is machine .
    Machine does not have heart and emontions .
    Machine is just like robot , it does
    what it has been programmed
    to do .
    PS . What toaster are you talking
    about here ?
    maybe someone will enlighten me ? please

45. Your question assumes consciousness arises from the brain and not the other way around

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