Annaka Harris

No, no, so I said an experience of being a self is due to memory.

It seems that consciousness and time are inextricably linked, but I think that may be an illusion also.

And when I think about consciousness being fundamental,

And, you know, someone like Max Tegmark, I don't know if there are other mathematicians, I'm sure there are, he's the only one I know of who will talk about mathematical forms and shapes as not just being, he talks about them as being actual shapes.

objects in nature that exist that are not just mathematical structures that we can think about, but any mathematical structure that comes out of the math actually exists in reality.

And so when I think about consciousness being fundamental,

I think about physics and mathematics being a description of the structure of it.

And that when mathematicians say things like that, or physicists say things like that, it makes sense if we're talking about a conscious experience of some sort.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, currently.

I mean, maybe permanently, but I remain optimistic.

Oh, I see.

So, I mean, this answer is slightly different or very different depending on whether I kind of follow the assumption that consciousness emerges at some point in physical processing or whether it's fundamental since I've just chosen to stay on the fundamental channel.

I mean, then it's kind of a silly answer because if consciousness is fundamental in the way I currently think about it, the only way I imagine it working, every physical thing we perceive is a representation of a conscious experience.

So, I mean, yes, it's true of everything in the world.

However, I would say if that's the case,

Even though there's a way in which it's behaving in similar ways to a human being, the way it's constructed, what it is actually made of, and the physics of it is so different that I would expect it to have an entirely, completely non-human conscious experience.

And whether it even feels like a self, I think, would be a big question mark.

It's the only way you can suffer is in a consciousness.