/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11732617]

Are stars conscious? Were the Platonists right?

[Anonymous No.11732618]

>>11732617
We just had this fucking thread. Go away.

[Anonymous No.11732632]

good and on topic thread

[Anonymous No.11732638]

I mean one day you wake up and its like oh shit, we orbit gigantic balls of light that radiate pure light and heat into the void, like lmao wtf

[Anonymous No.11732699]

>>11732617
On my thinking consciousness is either a function of complexity or of structure.

If it's a function of complexity everything conceivable is sufficiently complex given enough time. i.e. rocks turn to dust turn to nutrients for a tree turn to oxygen etc. These transformations like the ones we are familiar with in the human brain between neurons would produce consciousness on the level of that perceived in and by humans, perhaps, over a very long span of time in mostly inert objects (like rocks) and very quickly in objects like stars (owing to the high energy transformations which occur in them constantly).

On the other hand if consciousness is a function of structure then there are objects which demonstrate that structure and objects that don't. In this case stars are unlikely to have consciousness.

Having said that, however, where does one draw the boundary between identities? i.e. we conceive of stars as distinct from human beings, human beings as distinct from rocks etc. but in some senses these boundaries only hold in an artificial way. I mean, when do you conclude that the oxygen you just breathed in has become part of your body little lone your consciousness? The same goes for the light you see. At what point do we cut off the allegedly external world from our internal conscious one? Why do we do that at all? If indeed everything existent shares some part in the identity of everything else, perhaps in the sense of quantum entanglement, then again, everything is conscious specifically because you are a part of everything and demonstrate those characteristics.

[Anonymous No.11732800]

>>11732617
fuck off sheldrake, nobody likes you

[Anonymous No.11732891]

>>11732699
If it's a matter of complexity could I create a brain out of gym towels, a pulley system, some electrodes, etc. you get the idea. If not, I'm afraid stars aren't conscious.

[Anonymous No.11732938]

>>11732617
does it matter?
Do animals really think or are they just mechanistic? Are people for that matter?
Nona dis matters - its basically semantic
Stars are what stars are and stars do what stars do. Whether or not they have some trapped consciousness shouldnt matter to anyone besides that consciousness.

[Anonymous No.11732951]

>>11732617
If you defined consciousness, then you'd know, by that definition, if they were conscious or not. If extensive from scratch discussion is required then you do not have a legitimate definition for consciousness and you're merely spouting empty words.

[Anonymous No.11732954]

Look at a star cluster map and look at a map of human neurons
Coincidence? I don't fucking think so

[Anonymous No.11732988]

>>11732891
and how would you ever be able to verify this?

[Anonymous No.11733037]

>>11732938
Yeah I think it does matter if the lights we see in the sky have an inner life, if nature is living and breathing to its roots

[Anonymous No.11733054]

>>11732951
Relatively easy, an internality where an ordered system is phenomenally present to itself, as itself. The problem is deducing its existence in gray areas/defining gradations of order

[Anonymous No.11733113]

Consciousness is only formed from the dynamic and exponentially looping back-and-forth electric exchange of at least two interconnected fluctuating electromagnetic sources (higher consciousness probably demands millions of interconnected neuron-like sources). You are the most aware when thoughts arise and pass and build of the ones before like the emergency lights of a police vehicle.

So there could be a consciousness (or a simple uniform "will") between the sun and the earth, or from all the planets and sun conjoined.
>Or between two black holes collapsing into each-other; at the moment of fusion, when the two spheres revolve around each-other extraordinarily fast, a self-awareness swells into a hyper-intelligence realizing its immanent end.

[Anonymous No.11733243]

>>11733113
>>Or between two black holes collapsing into each-other; at the moment of fusion, when the two spheres revolve around each-other extraordinarily fast, a self-awareness swells into a hyper-intelligence realizing its immanent end.

Metal af

[Anonymous No.11734250]

bump

[Anonymous No.11734257]

are the stars couscous, were the moroccans right?

[Anonymous No.11734286]

>tfw scientists postulate the existence of dark matter to account for gravitational anomalies that are better explained by just accepting intentionality in stars and the galactic systems they comprise

where were you when you first heard the cosmic symphony?

[Anonymous No.11734309]

>>11732617
>Are stars conscious?
Unironically yes
So are rocks, crowds and cars

[Anonymous No.11734327]

>>11734286

They also proudly say that they toil to invent fudge factors and imagine new ways to think of themselves as wrong only to maintain Newton's diary entries as dogma.

[Anonymous No.11734338]

>>11732617

They are not only conscious, they are you.

[Anonymous No.11734346]

>>11732699
Stars aren't complex though, they are made up of very simple elements, however uncountable. Trees are more complex than stars because they have different chemicals combining to form specialized cells, etc. Stars are just massive superhot photon factories.

[Anonymous No.11734507]

I am

[Anonymous No.11735159]

>>11734346
Anything is complex enough given enough time. For instance if the human brain has X neurons which have Y connections that fire at a rate Z, then XYZ=the special number that represents what it takes to be conscious. Now, if you have an object which seems for all intents and purposes 'simple' it really is quite complex but at a different rate of speed. That is its X factor and Y factor will be as high as that of a humans but only over an immensely high Z factor such that the 'complexity coefficient' produced is the same.

[Anonymous No.11735176]

>>11735159
Based stars are actually conscious poster

[Anonymous No.11735199]

>>11735159
imo the consciousness of the brain is the merging of electrical impulses, since this merging occurs distributed in an insanely complex network you get the complex consciousness of the mind

the merging of electrical impulses in other instances will be different, a bolt of lightning for example is much simpler than a brain. idk what goes on in stars but i imagine you have a giant fluctuating system like a storm almost, which would also be a more simple kind of mind

since we are constantly interacting with electrical impulses outside ourselves, the question 'why are we localized as a single mind and not merged with everything' is most parsimoniously answered by positing that both the intensity and complexity of the location of electrical impulses merging isolate the consciousness from its surrounding, like pulling the moment of awareness into itself from its more general interconnectedness- a more complex and intense mind emerging from the general mind field. The constantly changing nature of our minds creates the 'merged hearbeat' sort of quality of our normal experience, moments which are distinct but merged, which sounds paradoxical but is really just continuity arbitrarily divided into 'this's

I say 'electrical impulses' but it could be some other physical relation, i just thought that would be useful for explaining how i see it.

And yes this is just panpsychism, but we have to emphasize that if a stream or a star or something is aware, it is in a very different way than we really understand.

[Anonymous No.11735223]

>>11735199
Good post - yes.

[Anonymous No.11735230]

>>11735199
now the question is then why this field "collapsed" into my brain, instead of yours

[Anonymous No.11735240]

>>11735230
You mean, why don't we have a hive mind? To some extent we do in that we share language.

[Anonymous No.11735260]

>>11735240
No I mean why, out of this entire universal field, I "accompany" my internality and not yours, if human consciousness is something like a self-partitioned "cell" articulated out of its background

[Anonymous No.11735345]

>>11735260
So why do we have isolated perspectives? Why cant we see out of each other's eyes and 'accompany' their perspective? Good question. Im not really sure.

[Anonymous No.11735368]

>>11735260
because that's what being an I is, you couldnt be me because the quality of being me is determined by my characteristics. The background field of mind(the interconnected array of 'merging') has only the commonality of its awareness, it is different in all its locii, and that difference is the identity that you feel you are

I find the question to just not really mean anything, but i dont mean in a rude way, i just dont really understand how it's even a question
>>11735345
because we are physically distinct, the space in between us is a much lower level of intensity and complexity and so the identities are separated in their moments

I personally believe that two minds actually do merge in a certain way, but that is a religious belief and I have no foundation for it because it is 'spooky action at a distance' type shit.

[Anonymous No.11735548]

>>11735368
>because that's what being an I is, you couldnt be me because the quality of being me is determined by my characteristics.

well, yeah, but why am I my this agreement with these qualities and not yours? by what metric are our positionalities differentiated?

[Anonymous No.11735627]

>>11735548
we are both just awareness in the end you and i, and that awareness is the same thing, but we are localized into different entities, so we are aware of different things. I am aware of this here and I am aware of that where you are and so become you there.

think of it as God being divided up into an infinity of little parts, all him, but unaware of their brothers. why did you end up here and not there, well why did one molecule in the river go that way and the other the other way.

unless i dont understand your question

[Anonymous No.11735631]

pseud central itt

[Anonymous No.11735644]

>>11735631
Im sure you have wildly interesting things to say on the subject for some reason will be unable or unwilling to do so

[Anonymous No.11735674]

I'm just gonna leave this here. This sure is something. Jesus Christ the rabbit hole never ends

http://www.starlarvae.org/Star_Larvae_The_Stellar_Organism.html

>The Star Larvae Hypothesis:

>Stars constitute a genus of organism. The stellar life cycle includes a larval phase.

>Biological life constitutes the larval phase of the stellar life cycle.

>Elaboration: The hypothesis presents a teleological model of nature, in which
Stellar nebula manufacture bacteria and viruses in their interiors as they cool.

>Biology evolves within an ontogenetic program that in its entirety, on- and off-planet, constitutes a generational life cycle of the stellar organism.

>Technology plays a necessary role in evolution. It enables biological life to emigrate from planets to weightless space.

>Postplanetary life manufactures the protons needed to create, then metamorphoses into, new stars.

>A prescient complex of celestial religious motifs expresses humankind’s stellar calling.

>The star is the human imago.

>Nature's metabolism encompasses the organic and the inorganic in a continuum of anabolic and catabolic exchanges.

[Anonymous No.11736043]

>>11735674
"Let there be light"

[Anonymous No.11736151]

>>11733113
>Consciousness is only formed from the dynamic and exponentially looping back-and-forth electric exchange of at least two interconnected fluctuating electromagnetic sources (higher consciousness probably demands millions of interconnected neuron-like sources). You are the most aware when thoughts arise and pass and build of the ones before like the emergency lights of a police vehicle.
proofs?

[Anonymous No.11736427]

>>11732617
What would a star desire? To burn bright? It's impossible to imagine the mind of a star.

[Anonymous No.11736652]

All the possible quantum states of one cubic meter can be expressed as a number 10^70 in magnitude. In an infinite universe, by space or time or multiverse, 10^70 is a very small number.
The vacuum of space is constantly producing and destroying virtual particles in random states. Giving an infinite time or space, all finite possibilities will be created and destroyed, over and over.
You are about a meter^3.

[Anonymous No.11737031]

>>11732617
in Frank Herbert's Consentiency books, some of the stars are sentient. one of them, named Fanny Mae, is a major character.

> what the FUCK are connectives god damn it

[Anonymous No.11737042]

>>11732617
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.11737051]

>>11735199
>idk what goes on in stars
just fucking lol at this whole thread

[Anonymous No.11737082]

>>11732617
Whether it were or were not it wouldn't behave any differently. We behave as we do because our awareness is attached to a complicated sensory and motor apparatus capable of self-reference. Stars behave the way they do because they are hyperdense hydrogen and helium.

[Anonymous No.11737156]

I am conscious, and I a star so yes

[Anonymous No.11738745]

>>11732617
Did the platonists say anything about this at all?

[Anonymous No.11738818]

>>11732617
No but they do have some intelligence.

[Anonymous No.11738824]

>>11738818
Do you have any evidence to back up this outlandish claim though?

[Anonymous No.11738828]

>>11738824
Yeah, but not anything that would be admissible in this court.

[Anonymous No.11738960]

>>11732699
It is definitely about structure, and not complexity. Even though we don't understand the brain yet, its structure points the way to something "strange" going - it is composed of a seemingly infinite array of feedback loops, and perception and action are tied together at their root.

If we are asking questions like "is the sun conscious?" or better yet "are their conscious entities in/on the sun?" What we really need to examine is how conscious structures arose on Earth.

First there was self-replication, then after billions of years of evolution of those self-replicators, they produced the structures necessary for consciousness. It may of not taken that long, for all we know even bacteria could have a simple degree of conscious. At the very least, we know we are conscious.

So the question is, could self-replicating entities arise on the sun? Clearly the sun is too hot and atomically homogenous to produce carbon-based self-replicators like us. Could a system in plasma exhibit self-replication? Some scientific evidence suggests so (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/9/8/263)) but there is still more research required.

Then, could a plasma-based self-replicator evolve to form a conscious entity? There are computer-based models of self-replication and they don't have the evolvability life on our planet does. They find a stable form and don't go past it. Is that the fate of a solar lifeform?

So, there are quite a few contingencies for conscious solar beings to exist. Maybe we will find them some day, but at this point there is little evidence to deny or affirm their existence.

[Anonymous No.11738984]

>>11732617
Yes.

[Anonymous No.11738989]

>>11738960
Great post, that article looks really interesting thanks

[Anonymous No.11739023]

>>11732617
yes,just like in Narnia.

[Anonymous No.11739024]

>>11738828
Anything goes in this thread friend. Have at it I say.