That would make the God in this comic a huge asshole because he made them like that.
You have literally not even touched on the hard problem of consciousness, damn. The question wasn’t “why can I speak?”
Consciousness is the agent who receives the judgement of the brain parliament, is what the comic is saying, the speaking part (or even subvocalisation) is optional.
This is well studied with split brain experiments in humans.
Sure, that could be a totally autonomous process though, that doesn’t explain why I feel like I’m experiencing things
It doesn’t explain it, it just is so. https://youtu.be/_TYuTid9a6k
Tldr, split brains continue working normally, but you only consciously experiencing the things that reach the left hemisphere.
Thoughts big, words small, I am sad. :(
Even if we define consciousness as a mechanism for information compression, there’s no reason why telepathic individuals wouldn’t use it as well. Larger bandwidth doesn’t mean individuals would just waste it all by sending through whatever noise goes through their brain, they would still filter out their thoughts, they’d just be able to send out more at once.
Why? There would need to be some kind of pressure one way or another unless it is totally inconsequential. One pressure would be that organisms would be fitter with the ability to conceal and deceive. That would lend credence to what you’re suggesting; process and compress locally, filter locally, send only when advantageous.
But the opposite pressure might be social exclusion which makes individual members of a cohort weaker.
The real question is: what does an organism gain one way or the other? There’s only tradeoffs in evolution. Is the mental and physical tax of local processing worth it, or is the hive-mind style survival benefits more beneficial to reproduction and expansion?
Deception isn’t the only reason to filter information, it’s just wasteful and redundant to constantly be transmitting the entirety of all of the input processes of an individual. If individuals are similar within a species to a certain point, they don’t all need to constantly be reporting to eachother all of the similarities. We also don’t only make use of our own consciousness or filter for language purposes, there’s a million different processes that exist subconsciously not because we’ve blocked them out but just because there’s no reason for our self to be aware of them.
My comment was saying that telepathics could still benefit from local processing and compression. Not that they must use those processes. I’m refuting the comic’s implication that telepathics would not have “consciousness”. Though your comment was interesting nonetheless!
But they wouldn’t have to compress it all into one signal. Even having two signals is disastrous for humans, cause they have to compete. It doesn’t fit our theory of mind. A telepathic species can live instinctually combining signals of all agents that are close enough.
Why do it yourself when you can offload it?
Telepathic species might get away with just re-ranking and lossy compression. Doesn’t require consciousness if the re-rank and compression are cheap enough. Eg: jpeg images
then that compression would be their “consciousness”
Yes and it is very annoying because I am held accountable for what the brain parliament decides and I get like half a vote and there are 4000 of them :(
It gets extra fun if part tries to break away and elect a new spokesperson.
Mine is usually too busy fighting and there’s a rogue idiot process that takes over
So they’re saying the cause/purpose of consciousness is to reduce all the input data into a way to communicate with other humans via speech? Weird. That also makes the strange assumption that only humans, or beings that need to communicate, would have consciousness.
It seems fairly reasonable to suppose that any organism with sensory inputs that can act independently (perceive its environment and interact with it) would have to have some kind of consciousness to operate through. IOW to interpret the input signals and form a kind of mental model out of them. Regardless of how simple or complex that consciousness may be or whether communication might be involved.
There’s just no actual reason behind that except taking your own conscious thought process as a prime example.
And you’re ignoring the reality that a ton of stuff going on in your mind isn’t conscious at all, it’s not a part of any mental model, your heart just keeps beating for example. And plenty of non-repetitive actions you can take without thinking, knee reflex jerk for example, the signals don’t even hit your brain stem before your leg kicks out reflexisively.
First and foremost, consciousness requires a model of self, but that’s not required at all, trees and other plants are clear examples of living beings that have no mental model at all. But, they have sensory input and reactions.
“And you’re ignoring the reality that a ton of stuff going on in your mind isn’t conscious at all, …”
Yes, I was ignoring that aspect because the subject was about consciousness. Of course that doesn’t mean the the subconscious isn’t also operating from a mental model or process, just because we’re not consciously aware of it.
“First and foremost, consciousness requires a model of self, but that’s not required at all, …”
I didn’t say a model of self was required, but just some kind of mental model–which is probably not the best way of putting it but I don’t know all the proper scientific terminology. Maybe it is, if you define consciousness as being aware of what is “self” vs. what is “not-self”. I’m not sure it is, at least in the simplest cases.
“… trees and other plants are clear examples of living beings that have no mental model at all. But, they have sensory input and reactions.”
Plants (or at least the part of the plant being affected) can react to a stimulus, but I think that can easily be explained as happening through a mechanical and/or chemical reaction locally. I wouldn’t call that kind of stimulus a “sensory input”. If it was, then what would the sense organ or means of receiving or transmitting the sensory input be, and what would it be that receives or processes the input? There’s no nervous system or comparable structure.
Anyway no one can even define what consciousness really is. I just thought the comic’s view of consciousness was oddly specific and highly unlikely.
Yes, you’re ignoring subconscious processes, but their existence directly contradicts the assertion that, “It seems fairly reasonable to suppose that any organism with sensory inputs that can act independently (perceive its environment and interact with it) would have to have some kind of consciousness to operate through”
that can easily be explained as happening through a mechanical and/or chemical reaction locally. I wouldn’t call that kind of stimulus a “sensory input”. If it was, then what would the sense organ or means of receiving or transmitting the sensory input be, and what would it be that receives or processes the input? There’s no nervous system or comparable structure.
The sense organs are the plants’ exterior/bark, just like we have skin. And what is the nervous system if not mechanical and/or chemical reactions? Sure, we fire calcium ions along chains of nerves, and plants fire calcium ions along chains mechanoreceptors. Again, i challenge you to think outside your human experience – the way you think, the way i think, those are just tiny examples in the potential universe of the ways any living being could sense, calculate and act.
…So telepathic creatures just blast out thousands of concurrent sensor outputs? That seems bad. Being telepathic sounds like a mess…but I guess they aren’t conscious, so they just react to whatever the fuck happens.
They could just blast out the evolutionary most important signals for living in group. Most of the data from the light receptors in your eyes doesn’t even leave your eyeball, it’s already processed a whole lot. It doesn’t impact seeing, it’s even necessary for it. Same thing I suppose.
I guess natural selection could produce that. Individuals that send out too many irrelevant signals get avoided and those that pare down outgoings reproduce more.
Hmm, but that doesn’t mesh with the original comic about telepaths lacking consciousness. Maybe I need a refresher on the word, but that seems like each sensor is making decisions on its own. So it’s a coaltion of independent cells acting in concert via telepathy?
Yes, you also just react to whatever the fuck happens. The only difference is that you don’t perfectly understand why you did what you did.
Speak for yourself. I’m a Stoic with full command over all my reactions, and also an overinflated sense of my own importance because of it.
![Consciousness [SMBC]](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1780787893-20260607.png){kind=link}