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A comment on Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self After All. Parent comment

Re:Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self... by ptdn on Thursday July 18, 2024 @02:50AM (#40993100)
It may sound absurd, but that doesn't make it so. There are good reasons to believe that at least in many cases (some of them being complex decisions), the conscious thought process is either ineffective or counterproductive.

Obligatory reference to Peter Watts' Blindsight, as well.

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Re:Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self... by pmontra on Thursday July 18, 2024 @05:32AM (#40993927)
And the Echopraxia sequel too. Anyway, consciousness shouldn't be so bad in the real world of we as a species were successful so far despite of it. Of course with the hindsight of the next million years some future species could say that we were doomed by our consciousness, but we can't know that right now.
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Re:Self-Awareness Might Not Have Evolved to Benefit the Self... by lioeters on Thursday July 18, 2024 @07:55AM (#40994757)
> The story follows a crew of astronauts sent to investigate a trans-Neptunian comet that has been found to be transmitting an unidentified radio signal, followed by their subsequent first contact. The novel explores themes of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, and game theory as well as evolution and biology.

> Blindsight is available online under a Creative Commons license.

Here's the novel:

https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm (HTML)

https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight.pd... (PDF)

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight-v1.... (ePUB)

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