Cloudscape

There can be two reasons why we slip into unconsciousness: either because we lack the will to direct our consciousness, or because we lack the gentleness to enjoy it. Whenever you slip into unconsciousness, analyze which of both it is most, so that you can know in what direction to evolve.

The killing of a human, even humans of exceptionally low intelligence and therefore of proportionally low sentience, is considered the worst possible crime, yet the killing of other animals which scientists have confirmed to be highly intelligent, and certainly appear to be more sentient than many humans (such as those that are mentally retarded), deserve no trial. Mental retardation can sometimes reduce IQ to below 20. If people who are profoundly mentally retarded are protected by law, it only seems reasonable that dolphins, as well as elephants and some primates, should also be protected by law, yet there is no international law that protects them.

This has nothing to do with ethics. This distinction is made purely out of our instinctive urges to preserve the human race. Animals of near-human sentience should have the same rights as humans, all the more as there are many people whose intelligence is barely above that of some animals. Our need to preserve our own race is so strong that we will keep even people in permanent vegetative state alive, yet most people see the killing of sentient animals as being as innocent as a sport.

We have invented law at least partly to protect ourselves, and not just out of respect for others. Someone who kills humans is a threat to humans and may therefore also be a threat to ourselves, but if someone kills animals, even highly sentient animals, this does not pose a threat to us.

We have no instinct for the preservation of nature as we have an instinct to preserve our own species, and any respect we do show for nature comes forth from our own sentience. A respect, as has been shown, that dolphins, one of the most sentient species in the world, actually share, as evinced in the risk they are willing to take to save humans. The only other species that is known to possess such levels of empathy, high enough to spontaneously save a being of another species, are humans.

We are inclined to underestimate other sentients because, unlike ourselves, they have no civilization. This is not because of their lack of intelligence, however, but rather because of their lack of efficient manipulatory appendages — that is, hands. Aside from our intelligence, our hands are the most important thing that set us apart from other animals, and while they may seem to be less significant than our intelligence, this is actually quite misleading.

One is inclined to assume that our civilization proves our intelligence, but it is important to remember that our neocortex has no longer changed in morphology in the past hundred thousand years, as our civilization, rather than furthering its evolution, made it unnecessary to our survival.

It would not be fair to compare the complexity of dolphins' lives to that of our own, as dolphins have never had the chance of achieving the complexity of environment as that in our civilization. Rather, because our brain as it is now isn't very different from what it was before civilization was formed, we should compare it to how complex our lives were before we formed civilizations. Comparing our own way of hunting with theirs, it would seem that theirs is more complex. It is our ability to use tools that at this point really distinguishes us from dolphins.

Consider how dolphins organize their hunting, surrounding gigantic shoals, dispersing them and driving them to the surface. This isn't as simple as doing the same with a herd of terrestrial animals, a feat that any pack of wolves can manage. The fish in shoals are enormous in number, and in shoals of Atlantic herrons can number up to 3 billion. As a result, shoals act as very complex systems, and it isn't possible to pick fish out of the shoals until they have been dispersed numerous times, neither is a single fish enough. The shoal has to be of just the right size so that it is enough for the entire group, but not so large that it becomes impossible to catch any. If a smaller group escapes, it is lost.

To disperse a shoal as a singleton predator is one thing, but to surround a large shoal in a group is another entirely. Hunting in this way is comparable in complexity (though not in danger) to a high-profile military operation, the significant difference between the two being that this particular operation is in 3D.

This seems like a minor detail, but it multiplies the level of complexity involved. For a pack of hunting wolves, the only directions from which to choose are left and right. To a group of dolphins, it is far more complicated. Every move has to be carefully coordinated, and this requires a high degree of cooperative and language abilities.

Because of the disparity in brain morphology, it is hard to compare dolphin to human intelligence, but the most relevant finding is probably the number of synapses in dolphin cortices: dolphins have 0,87 · 10¹⁴ cortical synapses, compared to 1,3 · 10¹⁴ in the human cortices (Encyclopedia of Marine Animals, page 147). The estimates of the latter cipher vary, however, and the estimates of the cortical synapses in dolphins would likely also vary if more research went into it. However, based on these ciphers, dolphins would have 67% the number of synapses humans have. This does not mean that they would have 67% of our intelligence, but rudimentary as it is, this would probably be the best approximation we have so far.

We seem to be biassed against animal intelligence because out of instinct we want to be special, despite ever more research pointing to the contrary. If our image of the intelligence of animals changes, however, so should our ethics about deciding about their lives. Ethically, the killing of animals of near-human sentience is tantamount to homicide.

Some futurists predict that, just as evolution was able to create conscious brains, we might, by emulating evolution, be able to create conscious computers. Since evolution has already done this, there seems no reason to assume that we can't. Evolution has no intelligence. We do, and because of this, we are able to evolve billions of times faster than anything else in nature. Moreover, since there are already conscious computers, all we need to do is to reverse-engineer it.

It may seem far too much work for us to decode every signal in our brain, but we must remember that our computers can already do a lot of work for us. The USNO-B1.0 catalog, for instance, cataloged a billion stars in 3 billion observations — far too much for a human, but not for a computer. Likewise, we might one day be able to program a computer that will decode the signals of the brain for us.

Some futurists go so far as to say that we will be able to build computers that  will be similar enough to our brain that we might be able to transfer our consciousness into it, a process called "uploading" or "mind transfer." The most important issues with this today, however, are philosophical: what causes consciousness, and therefore, how can we know how to transfer it?

It seems, somehow, that our consciousness is spread across all our neurons, and the continuity of that consciousness seems to be formed through the connections between them. Somehow, it therefore has to be possible through some technology to channel consciousness from one conscious computer (such as the brain) into another, since our own brain possesses this very technology. Somehow, our brain can channel our consciousness through a great number of neurons at the same time, even though those neurons are wide apart, so that our consciousness can be present in a great number of neurons at the same time.

Yet, if we connected a computer to our brain, like one neuron is connected to another, our consciousness would apparently be left behind in our own brain: while we could be conscious of information the computer would interchange with our brain, we could not be conscious of any information in the computer itself. Thus, if we would connect a billion computers with our brain, it would apparently not be possible to be conscious of all information being processed in all these computers, since not all this information could be contained in our brain. Or would it?

We are ourselves little more than this, billions of computers which are our neurons, connected to form our brain. How can we be conscious of the information processed in all those computers at once? How can we be conscious of our entire brain? If our brain could not be conscious of a billion computers connected to it, how does our brain manage to be conscious of the billions of computers within itself? How is one neuron conscious of the information being processed in other neurons? Most of these neurons aren't even directly connected. It appears that an indirect connection is enough.

If an indirect connection is enough, then if our brain would be connected to a network of billions of computers, like one neuron is connected to a network of billions of other neurons, would that also be enough to become aware of those billions of computers and every bit of information being processed in them, even though our own brain would have no direct connection with them, nor contain that information?

When two conscious computers (such as brains) are connected and then disconnected, what determines which way the consciousness of the two computers goes anyway? Or does it remain in both? If consciousness is determined by connections, then what determines when there is a connection anyway? As said, most neurons are not directly connected. Why is an indirect connection enough? Does consciousness permanently spread to another computer as soon as it connects with it, even if the connection is itself not permanent, and will the consciousness remain in both computers even when the two are disconnected (though neither of both can still be self-conscious of the part of their consciousness ? And if not, then in which of the computers will it end up, and why?

Either how, if our brain were connected to a computer which imitates our brain, then whatever is connecting the consciousness between our neurons will also connect the consciousness between the brain and computer, even though we don't understand how it works.

The only thing we therefore need to do to is to make a computer similar enough to our own brain; how similar it needs to be is hard to say, but suppose that we made a computer more and more similar to the brain step by step, and tried to connect it to our consciousness all the while, we might eventually make the right step.

The irony is, however, that even if our consciousness would flow into the network of computers, our brain would itself still believe that this would not be the case, and because of this, there could be no objective way of knowing whether it would work; the only way you could find out would be to try it for yourself.

Once connected to the network, it is unlikely that the brain would still have a consciousness of itself, because that would mean that, by analogy, our neurons would also have a consciousness of their own, and, what is more, so would any combination of neurons. Yet, of the infinitely many possible combinations of neurons I could be, I happen to be conscious of the entire brain, or, more accurately, I am the entire consciousness of the brain. This apparently proves that consciousness automatically spreads across the entire computer it is in, like gas spreads over the entire space it is in.

Also, as soon as the brain would connect to a network, any information it would process would be part of a greater processing of information, so that it would have little or no meaning of itself. Because of this, the brain would cease to be an individual, as it would be part of something greater.

Again, note that by the word "computer," I may also refer to the brain, and the network of computers with which the brain would connect could include other brains plugged in to the network. In fact, through this network, all brains in the world could be connected.

If a brain were then disconnected from the network, the same thing would happen as there would happen if a neuron was disconnected from the rest of the brain: a separate consciousness would form in the brain, but the original consciousness, which had once been in the brain, would now remain in the network, as the network is far greater. After all, we do lose neurons from time to time, yet our consciousness remains in our brain, rather than being lost with the neuron. The question remains what happens to the consciousness of people with split brain, in whom the corpus callosum has been severed. Probably, the consciousness of these people ends up in the dominant brain half, and a separate consciousness is formed in the other. It can be seen as an extreme case of dissociation.

Once connected to the network, the body would still be valuable and should not be disposed of, so that issues such as those met in "uploading" are avoided: if the brain's consciousness were simply duplicated into another computer, then the consciousness would not be transferred into the computer because the two are not connected.

The idea of uploading goes from the principle that consciousness is caused by patterns, but this principle (by some called "patternism") causes problems. For instance, suppose that rather than one, two duplicates of the pattern are made, upon which the original is destroyed. According to patternism, the consciousness should now transfer into the duplicate — but which of the two? The consciousness cannot be transferred into both duplicates, since the two cannot interact, much as the consciousnesses in people with split brain cannot interact, thus the consciousness should be transferred into one of the two. But if consciousness is determined by patterns, then the transfer cannot be random, as this would mean that it would be determined by randomness and not patterns, and in that case, the consciousness might as well be transferred to an entirely different brain. There must be something which determines to which of the two duplicates the consciousness is transferred, as the determination of consciousness would otherwise be acausal. If it would have no cause, it would have no reason to be what it is, rather than something else, which is unscientific.

Consciousness is caused by patterns, but location is one aspect of those patterns. Producing a copy of one's brain elsewhere does not produce a complete copy of its patterns.

Another problem would be that this would mean that consciousness is not bound to anything physical, as it would automatically be transferred across the distance between the the original and duplicate, which once more poses the problem of acausality. Also, being non-physical, the consciousness could then also instantaneously travel an infinite distance. However, if the universe is infinite, there should already be an infinite number of duplicates in the universe because of ergodicity, meaning that we should already be transferred from one duplicate to another at random. Since there are an infinite number of duplicates, probabilities would break down (every probability would be infinity by infinity, therefore, undefined), and since everything still happens according to well-defined probabilities, this cannot be the case, unless the universe is finite.

Whatever causes consciousness, it cannot be patterns. However, it does seem that consciousness, although not caused by it, is determined by connections. But why can only the connection between one neuron and another make use conscious, and not the connection between one atom and another? In other words, why can only the patterns of our neurons produce consciousness, and not the patterns of random atoms? Why does consciousness attribute a specific meaning to those patterns, rather than one entirely different?

Perhaps consciousness could be compared to the interpretation of a book, the book we are reading being our brain. Though it is possible to write a book out of random strings of letters, such books could not have any meaning, even if a meaning were attributed to every string of letters. In order for it to be possible for a meaning to be attributed to it, there has to be a pattern in it.

If, in trying to decipher a book written in an unknown language, we would attribute a meaning to every string of letters, there would only be one, or at most a few, possibilities for most words, since most words will be repeated throughout the book in different contexts, each of which eliminates certain meanings. The longer the book is, the more words and phrases will be repeated, and so the fewer possible interpretations there are. If the book is of virtually infinite length, then only one interpretation makes sense.

Perhaps consciousness is an interpretation of patterns, and not so much the patterns themselves; ie, consciousness is the translator, the pattern is the language. If consciousness were patterns, after all, there would have to be a universal language for consciousness, as there would otherwise still be infinitely many ways in which the same patterns could cause different consciousnesses.

But if consciousness is the interpretation, then this should actually be the case: every pattern would be interpreted by consciousness in infinitely many ways, and therefore there should be infinitely many consciousnesses beside those of living beings, as there are, after all, infinitely many patterns in nature. Most of these consciousnesses, however, would be simple, random, meaningless, and irrelevant. Many of these patterns could also overlap, and almost all of these patterns could have multiple meanings.

Either how, these consciousnesses would be irrelevant to us, as we could never observe them. Moreover, they would have no connection to reality, nor a will of their own. They would be just like the dead matter that causes their consciousness.

Most patterns would produce a very chaotic kind of consciousnesses, and any pattern that would produce consciousness that has any order would have been organized for this purpose (through evolution), possibly with the exception of very rare coincidences. Therefore, the only consciousnesses with a will of their own would be consciousnesses that would have been organized with a goal (such as keeping the organism alive). All the rest would be little more than a whirling soup of random qualia.

I wrote my hypothesis of a brain connecting to a network as though I expect that people will do this overnight, but I actually think this will be a gradual process, in which people will gradually expand their consciousness both through informatics and neurology. As this happens, both elements will continue to grow, and we will keep having use of both.

I do not expect there will be a world in which we all be computers, as some say, but I do expect that computers will be part of us — as will our organisms — and that, through computers, we may all become part of one another, united into one superorganism. This does not, however, mean that we should lose our individuality to do so, as the fact that we could connect with one another fully does not mean that we would have to do so.

When you are too distracted by thoughts during meditation while being still, try to meditate more while moving, for instance, in yoga, tai chi, dancing, walking, exercise, work, or another activity. If you are too distracted by thoughts during active meditation, try a more passive meditation, like insight meditation, mantric meditation, prayer or hypnosis.

Since meditation is merely mindful experience, meditation can be both active or passive. There must be a balance between active and passive meditation, and if this balance is not respected, then the meditation may cease to be effective or even become harmful. People have slipped into psychosis from too much passive and too little active meditation. On the other hand, too much active and too little passive meditation will only lead to an obsessive concentration.

In any case, however it is very important that any activity during meditation can be more or less automatized, that is to say, that it can happen without much thought, as it is not concentration, but experience, that matters in meditation. It is impossible to experience if one is forced to concentrate on thought.

People who have too little yang might focus more on active meditation, lest they only lose focus in passive meditation. People who have too little yin might instead focus more on passive meditation.

To be mindful of every experience can uplift one to such state of bliss that, ironically, there is soon the danger that one becomes attached to it, which, once you are no longer in a state of mindfulness, causes negative emotions which prevent us from becoming mindful again. In order not to become attached to the state of being mindful of your experiences of every moment, try to see the transience of every moment, which, after all, lasts only for a moment before it is replaced with the next.

Do not regret when you have allowed an experience to pass you by without you having thankfully enjoyed it, for every experience lasts only an infinitely short time. It does not matter to have lost it, for in doing so, you have lost nearly nothing. In the awareness that every moment fades after an infinitely short time, you may better be able to detach from it.

Whether you were mindful or not at some time in the past does not change your chance of being mindful now, for if at a given moment you wish to be mindful merely for the experience of mindfulness at this moment, and not for its effect on long term, then you certainly will be at that given moment. You may no longer be so the next moment, but that does not matter, for if you do not, it is because you no longer wish to be mindful for that moment, and that, at most, you wish to be mindful merely for the long-term effect of it.

If you try to be mindful but fail, it is because you have forgotten why you want to be mindful. At this point, you no longer truly want to mindful to experience, but merely to be in a state you can call mindful.

Whenever you fail to be fully mindful in whatever you do, stop doing it for a few seconds to become mindful again.

Attention is as much a place in one's mind as one's location is a place in one's world. One must therefore remember to accept not only where one is in the world but also where one is in one's mind. Accept where your attention is as long as it is there where it is, as you should accept where your location is as long as you are there.

If your senses are focussed on sensations you experience as negative, learn to love them, and so too if your mind is focussed on emotions you experience as negative, accept them as well.

Conceive of all reality as impossible, and it will stand out in all the clearer reality. Say to yourself at everything you perceive that for all the mysteries of its wonders, it simply cannot possibly exist — when this thought then collides with the undeniable fact of its existence, it will stare you in the face and defiantly stand out in all the sharper contrast.

Whatever happens to you, it will have a positive as well as a negative influence. By being aware of its positive influence, one can make it stronger by thus opening oneself to it; by being aware of its negative influence, one may avoid it by closing oneself to it. It is important to be aware of both, but remain detached, remain objective.

When you have the intention to become conscious, remember thereafter now and then to renew that intention, so that you do not become unconscious again. Do this as often as is needed to remain conscious continuously, at least every minute; to do this, you might use a mantra, such as "I am aware" or "I live" to remember your intention quickly. Repeat your mantra whenever you catch yourself becoming les conscious than you want to be, and resolve at that moment to remain conscious for as long as you are able.

Similarly, oneironauts have made use of the mantra "I am dreaming" to prolong lucidity when finding their dreams to become less vivid. Analogously, one can use the mantra "I am living" to prolong mindfulness when finding one's awareness to become less vivid.

When you focus on our experience, you may sometimes feel anxieties as soon as you do so. If so, note that they are there, accept them as part of your experience, and do not give up.