A New Theory Explains How Consciousness Evolved

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Matt Gregory
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A New Theory Explains How Consciousness Evolved

Post by Matt Gregory »

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... urce=atlfb

I didn't actually read the whole thing because they started talking about all this eye shit, but this sentence I thought was interesting:
The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed.
To me that means much of the brain is used to decide which stimulus is going to be processed next. How would enlightened be understood if consciousness were framed in that way? Truth is kind of a non-stimulus, so does it put consciousness at rest or something?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: A New Theory Explains How Consciousness Evolved

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Thanks, I like the article overall, its breath and scope. Just to grab one bit:
A frog has a pretty good simulation of itself.
It's almost a bit of Zen, if you'd broaden the scope a bit, unfocus your eyes and drop some acid (j/k).
Matt Gregory wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2017 1:26 pm
The theory suggests that consciousness arises as a solution to one of the most fundamental problems facing any nervous system: Too much information constantly flows in to be fully processed.
To me that means much of the brain is used to decide which stimulus is going to be processed next. How would enlightened be understood if consciousness were framed in that way? Truth is kind of a non-stimulus, so does it put consciousness at rest or something?
The way I read it was more about using brain power to model and through that model simplify prediction and processing of the overflow. Enlightenment is often understood as tackling ignorance. And ignorance is linked with taking our fleeting, transitory models as having some kind of self-reality, including the model of our selves. Then the articled ends with:
It gives us our adaptive edge. The inevitable side effect is the detection of false positives, or ghosts.
To end with a question: if such adaptive edge comes together with ghosts, could ignorance be seen at some point as beneficial?
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