Mel

“Panpsychism, you’ll recall, is the theory that everything—even a rock or a grain of sand—has some infinitesimal parcel of protoconsciousness, with these parcels combining, somehow, to create the sort of complex mental lives we experience. In the other version, idealism, consciousness comprises a universal field that precedes matter; the function of brains is to tune in to this field, much as a radio picks up and plays signals floating in the electromagnetic field, bringing them into our awareness.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“The internet is not the world so much as it is a shadow cast by the world.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“AIs can easily dupe humans into believing they are conscious when they are not. (It’s probably more accurate to say that we dupe ourselves into this belief, thanks to our weakness for anthropomorphism and magic.)”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“feelings are the body’s way of getting the mind’s attention in order to help keep us alive.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness