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A comment on How working memory could give rise to consciousness. Parent comment

Re:How working memory could give rise to consciousness by thansz on Saturday July 04, 2026 @12:17PM (#48786516)
Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works.

Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the phenomena, but creation can definitely happen before we can explain it.

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Re:How working memory could give rise to consciousness by evilduck on Saturday July 04, 2026 @01:18PM (#48787059)
Seems like the entire field of alchemy and later chemistry was precluded by a "oh wow" or "that's interesting" or "help, I can't breath", not derivations from first principals. Throwing stuff together just to see what happens and then working backwards from interesting outcomes to recreate and understand those interesting outcomes seems like a perfectly valid if not chaotic approach for happening upon artificial consciousness.
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Re:How working memory could give rise to consciousness by estearum on Saturday July 04, 2026 @04:10PM (#48788530)
The entire field of modern pharmaceuticals is still not too far from what you're describing. Lots of drugs people use every day (with established clinical effect) we still don't know how they actually work.
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