this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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How do you define consciousness?
If it's any kind of complex system, then of course it can be permanently destroyed. The same way that a computer or a building or a car can be destroyed and not exist anymore, even if its physical components still do.
And if consciousness is a material or an energy or something real, what's the evidence that it even exists? Why do you believe it exists?
I believe it is something simple we do not yet have the capacity to measure and that which can not be recreated as an AI.
Why do I believe it exists? Because I experience it constantly.
I am going to tell you something based on a true story about a spring in Rome believed to cure disease. For centuries even after the fall of the Empire fell people flocked to it believing the Gods blessed it with healing properties.
The scientific minded said bad to the whole thing and assumed it nothing but a legend that fools took stock in. However people continued to come and be healed, no one could explain it.
Until the invention of the Geiger Counter and the discovery of radiation.
The legend had been true all along. The spring had been mildly radioactive! It was killing off what was killing the patrons!
No one had anyway of knowing until suddenly they did.
I believe conciousness to be a similar story that we haven't seen the end of. Perhaps free will is one as well.