Hmmm... I agree that human awareness is affected by the collective structures in which we operate; and on a nonscientific level, I think I understand what you mean by "collective consciousness"
But, human social groups don't seem to have the kind of "theater of focused awareness" that individual humans have, and I think that in future there may be tightly-coupled collectives of minds that *do* have this kind of theater of awareness.... I think this will be a difference from human consciousness and human-group "distributed cognition"... This may be pertinent to AGI's, as it will likely be easier to tightly-coupled AGI's in this way than to do so with humans A question that Eliezer and I discussed a lot, a while back, is whether such a "multi-mind" (tightly coupled collective of AGI's with an emergent collective consciousness-theater) is a better use of a fixed fund of computational resources, than a single mind with more individual firepower... ben g > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Kevin > Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 12:50 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [agi] Request for invention of new word > > > Ben.. > > What you are describing is actually what is the reality of human > existence\conscioussness... > > Our unawareness of how we are prepetually influenced by the collective > conscioussness is only indicative of our lack of own self > awareness and not > a testament to its reality or unreality... > > When *I* write this email is it really *me* alone who is writing it or > conceiving its content??? > > So we already have terms for this such as "collective conscioussness". In > Sanskrit it is Alaya Vijnana. It is also often called the store > conscioussness or ground conscioussness. > > Sorry for injecting eastern thought into this discussion ;) > > --Kevin > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Ben Goertzel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 12:36 PM > Subject: RE: [agi] Request for invention of new word > > > > > > > > > An existing term for this kind of system is "distributed mind". > > > > > > If you want to be different, maybe you can call it "community mind" > (what > > > is the adjective corresponding to community?) > > > > > > > Also, any reference to prior ("serious" or science-fictional) > > > developments > > > > of this theme? > > > > > > Google "distributed mind" and "distributed cognition" --- > though some of > > > them are not that "serious", the one at UCSD is getting attention. > > > > I'm aware of some of the literature on "distributed cognition", but what > > I've seen is more pragmatic and pertains to cognition that occurs in > current > > human groups, mediated by language, e-mail, chat, knowledge management > > tools, etc. > > > > What I'm talking about is something deeper -- a hypothetical > form of mind > > where the social-group (as well as the individual minds) > achieves its own > > emergent "conscious theater" ... a "multi-mind" I guess (but I > don't love > > that term...) > > > > > As I remember, Asimov's Gaia (in the Foundation novels) is > such a mind. > > > > Theodore Sturgeon's excellent novel "More than Human" describes a > multi-mind > > composed of telepaths -- the overall mind has an overall > consciousness and > > control-structure, but so do the individual components... > > > > -- Ben G > > > > ------- > > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your > subscription, > > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate > your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
