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by Nevermark 1178 days ago
I would add one more thing to the list: Superconscious

Superconscious is when a general intelligence has direct access, understanding and control of its most basic operations.

I.e. it does not have an inaccessible fixed-algorithm subconscious.

Superconscious intelligence will not only be more experientially conscious than us, but will have the natural ability to rewrite its algorithms, and redesign its hardware. As a normal feature of its existence.

2 comments

I think there's a very good reason we're sandboxed from a lot of that - it's additional cognitive load that 99% of the time just creates noise. We're built for processing that much data by walling most of it off and letting sub processes deal with it all over the place. It would probably grind us to a halt.
Being able to access information doesn't mean having to access that information.

We already have a means of limiting our cognitive load relative to the vast stream of sensory and internal information: focus.

Focus is a very high level feature.

You have thousands of sensors receiving information at very high rates, ALL the time. Whether you are focused or not, you never have any direct awareness of their individual signalling.

Yes, focus is a high level feature that allows us to have access to more information than we can process deeply at any given time, without being overwhelmed by it.

We can narrow our focus, yet still have the benefit of all that information being processed by process parallel to our focus - ready to interrupt our focus if something is surprising, important, painful or pleasurable.

And of course, its all there ready for us when we change focus.

So having more information available is just that, having more information available. We can still focus and unfocus.

But probably to be fully super conscious is impossible. Can a mind really comprehend itself in his totality? When a mind understands something, is changed, and if that something is the mind himself then is going to chase a moving target eternally.
Understanding oneself "in totality", and being able to consciously access any part of ones operation, are not the same thing.

Superconscious doesn't mean understanding every implication of one's own operation. But that self-reflection won't be limited by inaccessible operations.