Two things work for me, either reading on my phone (I have a support thing) with the eye shield to avoid the blue light or listening to music until I feel sleepy enough to stop.
When it comes to bedtime reading, I found that nothing beats an OLED smartphone so long as you can fully control the brightness and the colors; e.g. a reading app that lets you set whatever you want - i.e. not Kindle - or else things like "color calibration" in GrapheneOS. That way, you can set the text to dull orange or red and dial the brightness very low. With OLED, the blacks are basically non-emissive, so the whole thing can be made extremely little light. This works even better if you gradually dial it down as your eyes get accommodated.
I agree with you exactly about the simulation idea of consciousness and the difference between conciousness and self awareness. Here's an interesting question, do you actually remember when you were about 1 year old? Apparently most people don't but I do very clearly. I read something recently that autism is correlated with the ability and I always thought I had a bit of it (like a lot of people that is into computers). For people that don't remember and don't know what he's talking about, being conscious without language (so probably what is like to be a dog) is a world of now, there's no past, or future, no planning, no if this then that, just what you can see and hear and feel at that moment. Emotions come and go like clouds for no reason, you don't have the capacity of wondering about reasons and they are very strong, you don't have the ability to regulate them or to compare them with anything else for perspective.
Given the memory thresholds of the rare few with hyperthymesia, it seems more likely that you hold false memories than that you remember clearly being one year old. Certainly you would be the first person known to have such memories if confirmed.
I've considered that, I'm well aware of how easy is to fabricate memories and think they are real, but I've checked with my parents (without giving them the information, just asking questions), the memories are real. To clarify, I'm not claiming to remember everything about being one year old, just to have a few very clear memories that match with what my parents know happened, the layout of the house etc.
Why are flowers beautiful? For the same reason rainbows, fireworks and a million other things are beautiful: they have symmetry, vivid colors, etc that we evolved to find appealing for our own reasons, selection of mates mostly, healthy fresh food etc. Flowers are beautiful incidentally. That's my guess anyway.
It doesn't. My point is that finding people, healthy food, safe places and so on pleasant and beautiful benefits us. We use things like symmetry and color to decide if those things are beautiful. Flowers, rainbows etc just happen to have symmetry, color, simplicity, etc too so they get considered beautiful, almost by accident if you know what I mean. I believe in biology that concept is called a spandrel after the architectural term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)
I think there's an argument to be made about earthly things being beautiful in that they are signals of a habitable environments thriving ecosystems. What has somewhat mystified me however is that we find extra terrestrial things just as, if not more, beautiful. In all likelihood we should find them absolutely banal and repulsive. There is nothing interesting for life out there. And yet, I think I speak for everyone when I say, there is universal appeal in everything out there in the cosmos. From moons to planets, stars to galaxies, nebula, supernovas, blackholes, the blue planet whatever is out there, is all incredibly visually appealing to humans. We are drawn towards them like few things on earth can. There is absolutely no evolutionary reason for us to do so because life evolved without as much as a sight of outer space. It is a hostile, desolate environment and yet in the words of Buzz Aldrin when he first stepped on the moon, there is something magnificent about that desolation.
My dog has no interest in depictions of the moon or other celestial bodies as near as I can tell. Probably apes would be similar. I think we're more drawn to the (human) story around the exploration than the actual locations themselves. (Source: I watch a lot of space stuff around my dog. Come to think of it, he doesn't show much interest in landscapes around the world either.)
One thing to bear in mind is that dogs devote much more brain power to their sense of smell than we do. To them, it's a fundamental part of how they perceive the world.
... researchers were surprised to see the sheer extent of the smell wiring within dog brains.
Veterinary neuroimaging researcher Erica Andrews of Cornell University and colleagues have just mapped domestic dogs' (Canis familiaris) olfactory brain pathways using diffusion MRI scans. This technique uses differences in the flow of molecules, such as water, to create a complex map of tissue structures.
With the data the team built 3D maps of the dog brain's nerve tracts, and traced extensive white matter linking olfactory brain regions, revealing a huge, previously unknown, information highway between dogs' olfactory and visual systems.
"We've never seen this connection between the nose and the occipital lobe, functionally the visual cortex in dogs, in any species," Cornell University neuroimaging researcher Pip Johnson explains.
"It was really consistent. And size-wise, these tracts were really dramatic compared to what is described in the human olfactory system, more like what you'd see in our visual systems."
This is likely what allows our clever canine friends to function extremely well, even without sight. For example, blind dogs can still play fetch.
In that sense (!), I guess astronomy just isn't that interesting to them.
I think "habitable environments" and "thriving ecosystems" have a lot to do with the answer. I believe it's for the same reason that we instinctively like brooks and rivers – a steady supply of water is essential to survival.
Desolate landscapes used in books and films versus "flowering garden of eden"-type of depictions in these same books and films play on these instincts, as do floral motifs in graphic and architectural design.
Or compare how a bush covered in caterpillar webs makes you feel versus one covered in thousands of unblemished flowers. These are primal responses.
Maybe we are hardcoded to like our environment, you will try to live where you like. Also if you like your environment, food, and other things, you like living. And that is good for life
I once read that singing might have evolved before language proper to enhance group cohesion. If so maybe there's a deep instinctive pull towards it. There might be something to this idea, I'm an atheist but when I saw that titanic scene where they are all singing together in the chapel I felt ... something. Maybe I should find a secular way to sing in a group like the a cappella in the article.
Thanks! That's an interesting angle I hadn't thought about before. I mentioned in the site creating prototypes of real machines, but I was thinking more of you brainstorming your own ideas. Maybe people can create virtual machines, ask other users to use them in the virtual world, work out all the design bugs, then if people really like it (and it is physically feasible) build it in the real world.
Yes, that would be super interesting. Not sure about the specifics but it would be a great place where people could come and collaborate on projects (maybe in future).
It's also such a great teaching tool for kids.
Just curious, is it a personal hobby project? How do you plan to sustain it?
This is definitely one of the most interesting project I have seen. Thanks for building it :)
Thanks, it started as a hobby project that gradually became more and more "the thing I do" as I noticed it's potential, whether it makes money or not. I'm investigating two routes right now, one is to see if I can get support through patreon, youtube ads and things like that and then eventually release it as open source. The other is to release it as a game on steam, maybe get funding first, but not necessarily. I'm leaning more towards the second one at the moment, people have pointed out that the project would have a wider impact that way.
Thanks. Yeah, one of the great inspirations for this project is Emacs, which I love. Emacs is so good because of the different modes that everybody can write. In the future maybe anybody can write a mode for MockMechanics (like the Avatar Mode that I keep talking about), we'll see.
Unless you are talking about the machines themselves? The copier machine for instance can be set to copy in place or not, it has a toggle button for it. So, yeah, people can build library machines with all sorts of toggles, sliders etc to tweak their behaviour, and then you can use those to build even higher machine abstractions.
Hey guys, I'm not sure if I should post this here or create a new post on the main page? I spent the morning implementing the music box that I talked about with @bigiain yesterday. I went even further and created a little submachine to load text file songs from the computer. I hope you like it. If you would like updates like this, follow me as MockMechanics on twitter and Instagram, and if you'd like to support my work I'm now on Patreon too.
