Who Are You and How Do You Exist? It”s Pretty Simple Really

WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DO YOU EXIST? IT”S PRETTY SIMPLE REALLY

“You” are a stack of hierarchically recursive memory on top of pulsing sensors – each layer increasing the duration of time, detecting changes in the layer beneath, integrating memory at the same level, and passing predictions to the next layer. ‘Slow’ chemistry makes it work.

“You” emerge from this hierarchy, but can only introspect (look backward into) what the competition between predictions in that hierarchy of memory wins your attention by providing the greatest returns on ‘acquisition’ of something – even if it’s just rest.

“You” however, as you most deeply intuit yourself, in your first state of awareness, consists of a tiny rapid cycle of memory in your brain stem ‘feeling’ homeostasis, demanding information from your thalamus – that is absolutely ‘You’ – with only a few seconds of memory itself.

“You” then (and this is important) are a tiny agent in the dark, in silence, ignorant, memoryless, and desperate, trying to survive by maintaining your body’s homeostasis over an increasing radius of time, with just a few levers to work with,

It’s either terrifying or beautiful.

(Unfortunately, this isn’t an analogy, or a theory, but life experience by involuntary ‘scientific’ experimentation because a certain combination of asthma, dehydration, and nervous system during cancer caused me to lose and regain consciousness veeeery slowly and repeatedly.)

So when we say ‘Consciousness Emerges’ it means consciousness emerges from the increasing scope of time produced by the slow electrochemistry of the recursive, cumulative, hierarchy of memory we call our ‘brains’. We differ because of our bodily needs for homeostasis(regulation).