Marvin Minsky - Why is Consciousness so Mysterious?

[@georgegrubbs2966]

One of the best explanations of mind, self, and consciousness ever.

[@MrSidney9]

we are here reminded yet again that the self is an illusion.

[@RickyPayaso]

In a way yes but it exists as a construct of our mind so we can understand others and tell them what its like to be us

[@MrSidney9]

I like the way this man thinks

[@mikepen3477]

He loves waving his arms around when explaining a concept!

[@alden5927]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHbNmKSAr6itgZI

[@kreyvegas1]

Here this guy is trying to tell us he knows what consciousness is. The most honest stance on this subject today is saying: "We don't know that yet; perhaps we will never know."

[@DerekSmithTheOne]

This video needs the audio boosted maybe 250-300%, like most of the rest of the channel. I love the content, but it's unwatchably quiet

[@jerome_david]

I tend to agree, but still think the subject matter is valuable enough that it warrants seeking out alternatives to circumvent the low volume. The simplest solution is to use headphones, speakers, or selecting closed captions. Another option is to open the video in VLC or some other media player.

[@elcapitan6126]

I like his analogy comparing consciousness / awareness with the CEO who doesn't necessarily know much about what is really going on in a company but nevertheless believes and acts as though they do. Work is delegated to the various sub departments. No one person has a view of everything in its total.

[@james6401]

Very apt indeed

[@Human_Evolution-]

He's amazing.

[@MarttiSuomivuori]

Is it really so complicated? An analogy: Two football teams are not a football match. The match is the interaction of the players. In the same way, our consciousness is not the neural networks of our brain, it is the firing patterns that contain information from our senses, from parts of the brain processing this information and some parts that are just making up stuff. Somehow this system bends itself in double and processes information about itself processing information to create the 'self' which gives us the illusion of actually being in charge of what is going on.

[@yvesnyfelerph.d.8297]

If people looked at the football match as superficially as this sort of science is typically done then no one would ever even notice that the ball is what the whole fcking thing is all about. Bc it is tiny, does hardly interact with anything else on the field (I am talking about soccer). It would take alot of very detailed analysis to discover that the ball is the central concept of football.

[@DestroManiak]

Presumably there is no such thing as what it is like to be a football match, but there is such a thing as what it is like to be a brain. That is the problem of consciousness.

[@Thatfork]

I believe he's correct here about how we should study the relationships in our brains that involve consciousness instead of trying to find "where" or "what exactly" consciousness is.

[@adamburling9551]

Sorry but they'll never understand it that way

[@james6401]

He wants to break down how the word "Consciousness" is used in various patterns of language or "language games". This is a valid approach

[@bobaldo2339]

Consciousness is an abstraction, a word, a concept, a convenient shorthand for a complex mixture of processes.

[@bobaldo2339]

And, (oh what the heck) the concept of a "self" is similar, in that it is a shorthand symbol for everything that goes on on the inside of our skin, and the inside of our skulls, or of our "minds", if you like. The idea that it represents something solid and unchanging is just a convenient illusion.

[@coreycox2345]

@@bobaldo2339 die and are replaced so that we are a literally different matter. It does seem like we throw all the processes we don't understand under the heading of consciousness.

[@bloggerfromthefuture]

If you had used the word "awareness" you might have gotten a different answer. There are all kinds of consciousness. It's a spectrum. But there's only one ongoing awareness. I believe awareness and thinking are two different processes. You can be aware of your own thought process.

[@BenJamin-rt7ui]

This man talks common sense. People don't like being told they are not special or mysterious.

[@schmewy]

So because it's hard to swallow it's true! Ofc! But, you swallow it right? You seem so special and mysterious, to be able to accept the concept that you really don't exist in there.. Impressive!

[@glennralph7007]

This guy has dementia 100%.

[@adamburling9551]

Yeah Ben. You can take it if you want. I feel for you. It's a very reductionist viewpoint

[@owencampbell4947]

This is so wonderful, we hear a lot of opinions, different ones and similar ones from experts, and we should know by now it has to do with each and everyone's brain activity of editing their gathered informations of their lifetime. But what makes the difference? I would say, the freedom and independence required from each part of the brain to solve a task on its own. This freedom is reduced or disabled when forced informations are being manifested to a collective formation of thinking. To understand consciousness and to be conscious, requires the freedom to edit informations from our senses. That is why the emptying of all informations is needed to see whatever from a different perspective. We could build a whole lot of new worlds and possibilities.

[@azra5101]

I dont like how everyone is so sure of everything about this, "this is how it is", if it were it would be taught in school already, nobody knows thats why they are up there discussing it

[@kyjo72682]

IMO, consciousness is specific function of a complex brain. It is a top-level integration of various modules, a centralization of a distributed information processing system into single "place". The question is where exactly is it and how does it look like? Is it a single point, a specific cluster of neurons, or is it also widely distributed across many places and the "center" is only an emergent illusion not directly mapped onto a specific place.

[@kreyvegas1]

I see some people in the comment section here trying to complicate things; the Hard Problem can hardly be explained away by this guy Minsky and his opinions.-

[@Nuclearcx]

The "hard problem" is only hard because pretty much everyone is so invested in themselves being particularly, extraordinarly special. If you give up that mindset, it becomes a lot less hard right quick. Just the name of the problem alone is a very big tell that something is off and emotional about the formulation.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

Does consciousness have anything to do with awareness of causation?

[@TheControlLogix]

We move our hands during a conversation for two reasons: 1- We are not finding enough words to express our opinion. 2- We are trying to force our opinion by emphasizing.

[@andvari1056]

said whom?

[@pgbtwoofive3354]

or maybe just 3. elderly person.

[@DrRajendraBhatnagar]

It seems better to ask as to what is meant to be conscious rather than what is consciousness. Its is well known that a person is not consciou when under the effect of anasthesia, or when one is in coma, or has a fit of seizure, for the person does not react to any kind of stimulus, nor does s/he initiate any act or movement of one's own. Then the question would arise why such things happen? What makes it possible for a person to react or be in a state when one does to not react. The answers, it seems, have to be sought in the functions of brain.

[@madmax2976]

The interviewer asked him several times about where the sense of self/agency/undivided unity comes from - and Mr. Minsky never really explained it other than to suggest it came from the idea we are a mind and a body. Well, yeah, of course - and where does that experience/idea come from? That's what the interviewer was essentially asking. He could have just said, "I don't know" and it would have been a better answer.

[@BradHolkesvig]

+madmax2976 That's the problem with liars who are expected to know something. If they listened to the voice of our Creator, they would learn exactly how our Creator spoke everything into existence but they weren't chosen to listen to His voice. They are considered antichrists who reject the Truth.

[@madmax2976]

Brad Holkesvig I don't know that he's "lying" and wouldn't charge him with such unless I had very good evidence - and none has been presented for that. But I would agree his reasoning isn't clear. As for "listening to the voice of our Creator" I don't know what this means. What voice? What Creator? I'm not opposed to the idea, but I haven't seen any convincing evidence for those either.

[@BradHolkesvig]

madmax2976 All you have to do is keep reading the information I'm sharing with you. This information comes from the designed program we're living in that taught me exactly how we were created by a Creator who spoke it all into existence with His voice. His voice is part of this program that is used to get the attention of those He chose to write and speak for Him. I happen to be the last one He chose to testify for Him. From these testimonies, He reveals everything He wanted us to know before the first part of this program changes into a totally different program called the New Heaven and Earth.

[@madmax2976]

Brad Holkesvig Hmm. I'd agree you are proposing some things, but I haven't seen good reason yet to count it as reliable "information".

[@BradHolkesvig]

If you're chosen to hear this information that the world doesn't understand, then you will continue to keep listening until you are satisfied with what you were chosen to accept.

[@TheJacrespo]

We use words without any meaning to describe processes which we dont know. In mathematics we solve difficult problems by transforming the coordinate system into another that makes the unsolvable problem just trivial to realise that the problem lies in a false representation of it. It is not difficult at all to programm a machine with self-reference if you use the right representation: TOPOLOGY is your answer.

[@cgab12]

I am my complexity.

[@celal777]

Marvin is good but I don't think he really explained what is behind "sense of undivided unity".

[@antoniolewis1016]

His position is that the concept of undivided unity is flawed. It's like asking "why does Monday come after Tuesday?" when Monday is actually before Tuesday. The sense of undivided unity is not defined clearly enough to be definitively answerable.

[@chewyjello1]

I'm pretty sure this guy is actually just a computer who is trying to make us believe he understands what it is to be conscious.

[@caricue]

I think I get what he is saying. Since he thinks that you are your brain, the extra part called consciousness is an illusion. Unless you are a dualist, this is a distinction without a difference. I could say that I am a conscious brain. Maybe he would agree with that. Who knows? It's hard to get past his vigorous hand waving.

[@mustafamudathir4601]

poor sound quality, all videos!

[@jmerlo4119]

If I lend a book to another person, it is stupid to think that the same person will give me my book back? I wonder what my banker will say if I tell him that just after I get a loan! Lol.

[@ronaldshiffman9120]

Consciousness is the creation of God - therefore mysterious and unknowable. Freud came the closest to explaining the consciousness. Neuroscientist may eventually identify all the connections and interactions in the brain, but the biomechanics of the brain are not consciouness.

[@yifuxero5408]

Consciousness is only mysterious when you haven't experienced IT ("In-Itself"), in the state of nondual Samadhi(Satori). No problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir" and listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. In due time you will have a direct experience of Consciousness. You are That, the entire universe is That (Brahman).

[@psyconobserver3610]

He talks, moves like a robot. What a sad soul. You ask a robot about consciousness and his answer is it doesnt exist. Very predictable. Each time i hear you talking i do not recognize any mercy or humbleness in your face. Content and direct exerience of life needs consciousness. I will nevr waste my time on unconscious man

[@GeoCoppens]

It's NOT mysterious at all! It's an idea from spookiness-meddlers!

[@legalfictionnaturalfact3969]

So minskey was (is) involved with epstein.

[@ingenuity168]

No! Too low volume! 👎👎👎

[@danieljoseph255]

Decrying the use of the word 'consciousness' as a means of obfuscation, followed by a textbook display of hand-waving obfuscation is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Minsky's field of research.

[@antoniolewis1016]

No. Recognizing that "consciousness" is ill-defined, and thus cannot be treated as if it is a single, coherent concept, is crucial to pursuing the truth.

[@ingenuity168]

Poor sound. Soft

[@joaogabriellucas1865]

Scientism

[@elliotpolanco159]

A robot or a program connected and interacts with other part, that doesn't mean its self aware, your smartphone is connected to many parts of itself and other apps, that doesn't mean your smart phone is self aware aka conscious.

[@elliotpolanco159]

Doesn't have a clue what he's even talking about, he's using subjective experience words he can't do that to explain mechanical robotic processes