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0 pointse12e10y ago0 comments

There are many interesting lines of reasoning around this. The idea of Gaia as a concious system is one. If the earth thinks at the speed of one thought every year, or 100 years -- and perhaps communicates with other such beings -- how would we know? (I don't have strong feelings about concrete ideas about Gaia as a concious system, one way or the other -- other than that I find it an interesting idea, and a good storytelling tool)

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meric10y ago· 3 in thread

A pair of conjoined twins can read each other's thoughts and see through each other's eyes. Are they two people, or one?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331769/Doctors-stun...

A person has left and right hemispheres in their brain. Under some circumstances, losing one of these hemispheres will result in an almost normal functional human being. Imagine, with advances in biology and medicine, one day we can separate one person's brain, and place one half in one body, and the other half in another (artificial body or one whose original owner became brain dead), and both functioning as people. Are they two people, or one?

I think it depends on the observer. Some people would choose to see (one or both cases) as two people, and some would choose to see them as one.

But let us go back into history. The universe started from the big bang, as a big expanding cloud of hot gases. It was one point, and then it became one cloud. Billions of years and lots of things happening later, bits of that cloud grew eyes, legs and started to think for themselves. Are those individual bits of the universe, many individuals, or one universe?

I think, both. It's like asking a network of neurons, are you one, or many?

The universe is a conscious system. It can see itself through many eyes. It sees different parts of itself. It is having many thoughts.

I, a shard of the universe, have replied to you, another shard of the universe, by typing this on yet another shard of the same universe, at the same time as my own neurons are communicating to each other.

e12eOP10y ago

When I was talking about part and whole, I was more thinking about a person really can become concious alone, or if being concious is also partially at least influenced by being part of a culture and group communication and so on. This also goes into if or how language is connected to thinking. Can we have language without having someone to communicate with (ever)? Can we become concious without communication and language? (I'm not saying we cannot, but that these are interesting questions to ask).

Also related to part and whole, and emergent systems, I was thinking about things like ant colonies - and how they might (or might not) relate to big organism that happens to be made out of cells with the same DNA, like us.

language10y ago

I think the metaphor I would point to here is "whirlpools in a river." Movements of movements of movements ... ad infinitum.

Another interesting way of articulating this might be: "The universe splits itself into two parts - an observer and an observed."

arethuza10y ago

As an aside, in the Xeelee novels there is an intelligent species that are formed from vortices in liquids...

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