[euccastro]

Metaesthesia (3/3)

[This is a multi-part post. Read it before I'm killed from the site! :P Search for Metaesthesia to find the other parts.]

Bandwidth?

Yeah. If you have a connection as dense (or more) as your hemispheres have with each other, you can get some pretty strong integration, to the point the two selves dissolve into a new one. With a narrower link, like the one you have with your feet, each brain will still metafeel mostly autonomously, with a small window of empathy and ultra fast communication to the other end.

How would brains make sense of each other, if the wiring in each of us is unique?

Just as we make sense of the world in general: by rewiring until it 'works'. It would take some time until each brain makes sense of the other, and in the case of hardcore brain mergers, it would take some more time until some supra-consciousness emerges from both.

For low bandwidth-- if this technology became casual enough, conventional wirings could emerge. As we try more peer brains, our own brains pick patterns and get better at negotiating this kind of stuff. I don't rule out computer assisted training either. This would allow good old neural rigging.

In the case of high-bandwidth brain merges, would the emerging new consciousness replace both original consciousnesses?

I think it depends mainly on bandwidth. Time and plasticity of the brain also matter. If you merge brains in unborn children, I'm pretty sure they'll grow to have an unified consciousness. The older the subjects are, the longer it will take, in principle, to dissolve the old selves. But we have to assume that there is some medical way to stimulate and assist brain rewiring. It's part of the required technology, lest both brains go nuts before they can integrate.

But do you see both the original selves and the supra-self coexisting at some point?

The rewiring takes time. It doesn't just click and voila, you're merged. It's more of a cross-fade.

Do they metafeel each other?

Yes, but not necessarily in any meaningful way. Most of the time it will feel like a terrible LSD trip.

If my city metafeels, why doesn't it talk to me?

Why don't I talk to my mythocondria?

I bet you do.

That was uncalled for.

Let's continue this in private, shall we?

Sure, my email is in my profile.

[And thus, there is no Metaesthesia (4/x).]

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[1] And seriously, folks, if this was all that important to you, metaesthesia.com would be taken.

[rms]

Do you think stars metafeel? The universe as a whole?

[euccastro]

How do you even think about this stuff? It's almost orthogonal to reason. The only useful engagement point I can find is observing the characteristics, especially the limits, of my own experience.

I think there is some 'metafeeling tone' everywhere, and that the intensity of it is somehow associated to our concept of complex dynamic order. Although it is a continuum, in parts of the universe that sport a dramatically greater amount of complex order than their surroundings, the feeling of such surroundings is lost as imperceptible line noise. Thus, isolated selves.

I think stars feel, although I can't see how their feelings could be much more interesting that those of a pot of boiling water.

The universe is more interesting. Since it is 'everything', it holds all the complexity, all the order, all the chaos, all the information flow, everything that you could relate to consciousness, or to interesting consciousness.

Yet, at a macro level, and at any timescale that can be humanly grasped, I suspect the universe is a rather dumb thing. AFAIK, there is not a terribly complex interplay going on between the top level parts, and I imagine interesting subparts have independent consciousnesses of their own, that the universe is essentially blind to: I don't think the universe is more aware of us than we are of the neutrons in our bloodcells.