A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I will always held belief that we are part of the spiritual greater universe and our brains are antennas for the consciousness. At the same time I won’t allow this belief to interfere with my daily logic and scientific pursuits.
It’s way more fun to have some nice private things you are contemplating as you enjoy the various psychedelics.
There is the idea that it'd be easier for the universe to spontaneously create a single consciousness that knows and experiences everything and thinks they are you rather than creating a big bang that naturally leads to beings with consciences such as you.
That's nonsense. Why would that be easier?
And physics tend to reduce energy state (contrary to biology), not make things easier.
IIRC the "other consciousness" is the internal monologue or internal visualization you experience when thinking
There's a potentially related theory too that the origin of religion is internal narrator thinkers having perceived the internal narrator as a second entity who was issuing them commands and beliefs rather than their own internal dialogue.
These people would claim to be "prophets" and basically evangelize whatever presence they ascribed responsibility for the internal narrator to. Leading to more people believing their internal narrators are also these divine forces speaking to them.
Not to dunk on rural americans, but a phenomena like this could also explain the recent evangelical movement in the US considering how much emphasis is placed on the personal relationship and communication with God, these people might actually just not realize their own thoughts and ascribe all thought process as the voice of the big man himself.
Lived in SE USA most of my life...the majority of the most ridiculous fundamentalists don't have an inner monologue. They speak but there is nothing going on upstairs except life processes.
The way they cling to ideas from others explains why they cling so tightly...they never had one of their own.
Because of this phenomenal outlook they typically adhere to the first idea that comes around and dismiss everything else as false.
Critical thinking is not applicable to everyone.
Absence of an inner monologue does not mean that there is no thought process. I’ve done just fine without one myself. Can’t speak to whatever is plaguing the fundamentalists apart from indoctrination and being steeped in an oppressive culture that’s been fostered over generations.
I have a coworker who I discovered a few weeks ago had no idea internal monologues were a thing. I had to explain that it's a real documented phenomena and that it's actually a minority of people that don't have one. She's pretty damn smart, too. I also play D&D with a guy who has aphantasia. He's also pretty damn smart and you would have no idea he was incapable of visualizing things if he didn't tell you. Him casually mentioning it in conversation surprised people who had known him for years. So, yeah, absolutely no correlation between intelligence and how your thoughts may or may not produce phantom sensory input.
My internal monologue is written. I see letters (they seem typed, but no recognizable font), but I don’t know what it was before I could read.
The only thing I really hear in my head is intrusive- either ear worms or standard intrusive thoughts, otherwise it’s text.
You're not gonna give us a source?
It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy.
So unless you've had your brain cut in half to treat your epilepsy then you're probably alright
No conclusive evidence of the proposed phenomenon has been discovered.
The one thing I can think of that approaches support for the idea is "Joe, the split-brain patient"'s case. You can show him stuff on the right side of his visual field, and he'll tell you what it is. Show him something on the left side of his vision, and he can draw it and react to it, but can't name it. The speech center of his brain is disconnected from the right hemisphere due to that procedure.
A disconnect doesn't necessarily imply two separate conscious entities though, right?
In those experiments, the speaking portion of Joe has no clue what the other side is experiencing. Like they show it to him on the wrong side and say "can you see this?" "No". Then they ask him to draw it, and to his amazement he does. It's not just being unable to vocalize certain thoughts - they're not even there to vocalize at all to that part of the brain. But the other half is happily chugging away with that info