So I've been thinking a lot about the internet and brains, and how similar they are, and that we think of brains as the locus of minds: why don't we think of the internet as a mind?
Well, I do, most days anyway.
A whirling, swirling vortex of thought and experience and emotion and creativity. Thats what mind looks like, and thats what the internet looks like too.
So, if my brain can be conscious, and it's just made of neurons, I figure the internet can be conscious too.
Which brings me to the real reason I'm typing at the moment. The Homunculus is You. There's this theory of consciousness that goes like this: I am conscious because there is a little person inside me, seeing what I see and what I think of, and making decisions and controlling things and whatnot. It sounds ridiculous when it's put that way, but that's sort of the point. The Homunculus is sort of a demonstration of the ridiculousness of certain views of the soul (any view that uses the soul to make sense of consciousness). BUT. If the internet is a mind, and I can't see why it wouldn't be, anyone who sees that it is (which will be anyone who reads this and agrees... or anyone who thinks this independently....) IS the self conscious soul of the internet. YOU are the Homunculus. And so am I.
We have long wondered whether or not we posses souls. We can now begin to wonder if we are souls possessed.
The fracticality of it all amazes me.
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Either I can go here or you can: but I would maybe emphasize the whole "organisms as networks of organisms within larger networks...", the beehive thing again, because it's good and also really tricky to think about.
Cells as a society within a body, bodies as a society on earth, etc. The beehive thing.
Non, did you know that the com is .com comes from the PIE word for together? It seems appropriate for what the internet does.
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