Following up on yesterday’s post about the relationship between consciousness and reality — yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to the Satanic, Loch Ness, avant garde, performance artists next week — here’s a piece from Curiosity about modern day philosopher Daniel Dennett’s idea that consciousness — Descartes’ “I” — is just an illusion…

There’s a quote by religion professor Lee Siegel that Dennett use to illustrate his point: “Real magic is the magic that’s not real. While the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.” There’s nobody out there sawing people in half and putting them back together again, only illusionists using various tricks to make it appear that that’s the case. According to Dennett, the same is true of consciousness. The only difference is that our brains are triple-billed as the saw-wielding magician, the lovely assistant trapped in the box, and the mystified audience. What we think of as our consciousness is actually our brains pulling a number of tricks to conjure up the world as we experience it. But in reality, it’s all smoke, mirrors, and rapidly firing neurons.

If that’s a bit heady, then get ready for Dennett’s next metaphor: If our brain is a smartphone, then consciousness is the screen. In other words, consciousness is not how our brain works, it’s only how we interface with it. A screen doesn’t really have much to do with how the phone works, and in fact, the phone could do nearly everything it does without it. It just wouldn’t be useable by humans. According to Dennett, our brains are like smartphones in another way as well: they are basically robots, or thinking machines, and like any robot, they need a medium through which to communicate with their users. But it goes even further than that: if our brains are robots, then our neurons are smaller robots, which are in turn made up of even smaller robots. So even if we lose the concept of consciousness along the way, we’re still pretty incredible “machines.”

Here’s another cool video about philosophy and consciousness, this time dealing with the Problem of Other Minds and Philosophical Zombies. Oh my…

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On Friday we observed the birthday of Roy Batty. What I’m trying to say is that we observed the “inception date” of Roy Batty — the poet laureate of the replicants in the film, Blade Runner. The Guardian has the word…

8 January 2016 marks the inception date of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of a gang of renegade replicants on the run from Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott’s iconic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner.

A product of the Tyrell Corporation, Batty was part of the Nexus-6 line of genetically engineered replicants. Described as “more human than human”, the creations look indistinguishable from humans; but possess superior strength, agility, tolerance to extreme temperatures, and intelligence.

But, boy, was the internet pleased to celebrate his birthday.

The events contained within Blade Runner occur in November 2019, in a technologically advanced Los Angeles which sees Spinners flying above the streets littered with ads promoting tourism in “off-world” colonies throughout the galaxy. By this time, replicants have long existed, though now illegal on Planet Earth after they proved dangerous to humans.

Endgadget added…

…it seems as if we’re edging closer and closer to Blade Runner’s world. The very fact that AI, flying cars, robots and private space travel are hot topics at all is a big deal. Who’d have thought in 1982 that real tech giants would share something in common with Tyrell Corporation? Truly intelligent machines and off-world colonies may still be decades away, but they’re at least on the horizon. Building-scale giant displays have been around for a while, too, and the seemingly physics-defying image enhancer isn’t that far-fetched given the existence of gigapixel cameras. And like it or not, we’re starting to see cities suffocated by pollution. Will we get much closer to Roy Batty’s world by the time he’s supposed to shut off in 2019? Probably (and to some extent, hopefully) not, but it’s fascinating that there are any similarities at all.

Here’s the reason Rutger Hauer became an actor…

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This week: The CCN crew stumbles drunkly into 2014 still a man down, Rest in Peace Al Goldstein you rough and ready diamond, Sex makes you done smarter, Dem robots took our joooobs, I’ve heard of pussy power…but this?, and those wacky DEA boys are at it again.

Personnel – Joe Nolan, Frater Isla, and Ken Eakins

Links

• RIP Mr Goldstein – Link
• How Sex Affects Intelligence, and Vice Versa Link
• The Future Lends a Hand Link
• Cronenberg would be proud! – Link
• Confirmed: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel Link

Interludes

Morphine – Super Sex

The Advisory Circle – Everyday Science (for Ron Geesin)

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Podcast posts.