It’s been a very philosophical day. Well, reading-wise anyway. So posting some links here that I would like to reflect on later.
1. Is consciousness parasitic?
This is not a new idea for me, since it was the basic idea of his book (Blindsight), but I enjoyed Peter Watt’s talk on trying to understand what biological imperative would drive the creation of consciousness (spoiler: he found none). But more interestingly he explores the idea of multiple consciousnesses in a body (for example in conjoined twins or separated left and right hemispheres of the brain), and concludes that in most such cases, the dominant consciousness supresses the recessive one. As humanity moves towards the possibility of hive minds connected via neural implants, are we risking our individuality?
2. The biggest social scam
Someone on Reddit asked Claude to list the biggest scam ever, and it responded:
Probably the idea that trading the majority of your waking hours for money is the natural order of things, when it is really just one economic arrangement among many that got locked in and dressed up as inevitability. Most people spend their healthiest decades doing work they would not choose, to buy back small slices of the freedom they gave away, and we call this being responsible. Layered on top of it are supporting scams that keep the machine running: manufactured needs sold as happiness, debt marketed as opportunity, busyness worn as a status symbol, and the quiet belief that your productivity is your worth. None of these are laws of nature. They are agreements we renew every day mostly because everyone else seems to be renewing them too, and questioning them feels riskier than complying. The genius of the whole setup is that it convinced billions of people that the cage was the sky.
This does resonate, but maybe because we all want what it is selling: an idea of not spending our best years at work, but maybe thats just sycophancy again. Gemini slightly disagreed:
The true genius—or tragedy—of the current system isn’t that we have to work to survive; it’s that the efficiency gains of automation and technology were never used to buy back our time.
A century ago, economists like John Maynard Keynes predicted that by now, technological progress would allow for a $15\text{-hour}$ workweek. Instead, we used that massive surge in productivity to create more middle-management layers, more administrative bloat, and higher corporate margins, while keeping the standard workweek exactly the same.
I think I agree with Gemini
3. Life and Biological Agency
Quanta, one of my favorite blogs, published a very interesting read on the idea of “biological agency” – that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly. But where does pure biological needs and genetically coded instructions end and true life begin?
In one view, agency is neither more nor less than this ability to set proximal goals — not “Shall I reproduce some day?” but rather, “What action shall I take right now?” — and then act upon oneself and one’s environment to attain them.
But true agency is yet to have an agreed upon definition.
Interesting read, and I discovered my cool word of the day: teleology
Code Zen 