Consciousness Documentary

The following is a transcript from the documentary "What is Consciousness? What is Its Purpose?" found here.

What is Consciousness?

In neuroscience and psychology, the concepts of love and fear are more than just emotions. They relate to how the deepest unconscious regions of our brain operate. How the reptilian brain only craves what it lacks and is unaware of what it takes for granted. And how what we believe we lack ends up defining what we love.

By gaining insight into the realms of our unconscious mind and the reality that it emerges from, we are presented with a choice. "The most important decision that we make, is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe."

While this quote from Albert Einstein sounds relatable, one can wonder why a man of his profound intelligence would specifically claim this is the most important decision we make.

This documentary answers that question.

Tens of thousands of papers are published each year in the field of neuroscience alone. Our knowledge and understanding of the inner workings of our mind and of our universe is expanding at an astounding rate.

If you seek rational answers to fundamental questions about consciousness, this documentary could change your life.

The human brain is by far the most sophisticated phenomenon that we have been able to observe to date in our universe. And after decades of neuroscience, we still have endless questions about this mysterious structure that holds as many neurons as there may be stars in our galaxy. Yet we do not have to veer far into hypotheticals or resort to superstition to answer some of our deepest existential questions.

One of the most baffling observations has been that some experiments seem to reveal two distinct personalities or streams of consciousness present in our brain, one in each hemisphere. And only one of these two can talk. Under the right conditions, neurologists have even been able to ask questions to each hemisphere separately. Resulting in cases where a person would say he is not religious when asked in conversation. While when this person sees the question in writing, the mute hemisphere responds by writing down its own answer. In some cases disagreeing with the other hemisphere.

Many more experiments that reveal similar results indicate that this is more than a random oddity or hallucination, but instead some legitimate form of split or double consciousness taking place in our brain. Fortunately, this strange disagreement between both hemispheres only occurs when the connection between them is broken. As long as they are connected they try to cooperate and create the perception that we are a singular individual.

So where exactly are we located inside the brain?

If science can pinpoint those parts of the brain that are largely responsible for language, mathematics, specific primal emotions and so forth, what does it say about the parts of the brain that make up the core of what we are? Not only have scientists, despite their best efforts, not been able to locate such a region in the brain. But all evidence even points towards this core not existing.

It has become more and more clear that in this miniature universe of the brain, roughly a 100 billion neurons all act by themselves and communicate with each other as if the brain is an astonishingly complex vehicle without a driver. A computer without a CPU.

In our quest for finding some sort of core of what we are, we could look even deeper and zoom in on the basic building blocks of what our brain is made of. But if we peer into the individual molecules that make up our neurons, our findings become even more counter-intuitive. Not only will we not find any mysterious trace of a soul, we will also not bump into any kind of marble-like structures that high school physics taught us are the tiny particles that everything else is made of.

You might have heard that roughly 99.9% of all solid matter is nothing but empty space. This is true. But zooming into the .1% that should consist of the stuff everything is made of only results in showing us a different kind of emptiness. The electrons, the quarks, all the fundamental particles are not solid objects. Thinking of them as somehow tiny spheres is a convenient simplification, but this does not represent the fascinating reality of this strange quantum void.

The only things that exist here are waves. Waves that behave similar to vibrations of sound or ripples in water. But rather than oscillations of matter, the peaks and valleys of these quantum waves are not made of anything tangible, they are waves of probabilities. Their peaks reveal the areas where there is a high probability of detecting the energy of what we may call an electron. Their valleys indicate that the chances there are much lower.

As bizarre as it may sound that all the building blocks of our universe seem to behave according to chance rather than being intuitively predictable, this is not just a theory. It is a simple fact that can be tested and observed with nothing more than a laser pointer and a comb to replicate part of the famous double-slit experiment. The counter-intuitiveness of this discovery has been the root of popular misinterpretations and metaphysical confusion where it's been described as particles being aware and knowing that they're being observed or the universe being influenced by the power of our thinking.

The truth is at least equally fascinating. The real principle at work is that if we can not know where a particle is, it exists only as a probability wave that tells us where the particle is more or less likely to be found. And only when we take action to measure where the particle could be, the wave will suddenly cease to exist and the particle reveals itself. The particle has no defined location until we make the measurement. This is why we say that light, for example, is both a wave and a particle.

This quantum weirdness does not just apply to light, it applies to all the particles that everything is made of. It also applies to molecules. If we fire super-tiny rocks instead of photons, they will behave like waves when we're not measuring them.

We intuitively believe our universe consists of solid stuff. But in reality, all of it, from the neurons in our brain to the galaxy we are a part of, is the result of probability waves and particles that pop in and out of existence.

All this weirdness led Einstein to famously say: "Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?". But no matter how weird it is, quantum theory and all experimental evidence reveals that our universe is inherently probabilistic and things within it can not be predicted with 100% certainty.

This doesn't mean that science cannot make accurate estimates as to what is more or less likely. The mathematics and statistics of quantum physics reveal that the seemingly random oscillations that make up our reality are still profoundly consistent patterns. Many of our modern technologies, such as solar panels or microprocessors, would not have been possible if we had not deciphered much of the intricate and unique behavior of quantum mechanics.

But if no specific region of the brain, nor the neurons, nor the building blocks that our neurons consist of can account for the phenomenon of our consciousness, what is the current scientific assessment as to what brings it about?

Over the years, there have been many theories, some of which have since been debunked with modern understandings of neuroscience, others are considered too far-fetched and exotic to be of merit without hard evidence. But there is one general school of thought that most scientists consider to be likely. An idea that is not only logically sound and fits our observations, but that can transform how we think about life. Even though its implications are thus far rarely discussed and explored.

Why Are We Conscious?

This documentary marks the first time all these logical conclusions are brought together to bring into focus what science can really tell us about some of our deepest existential questions. If we look at evolution, it's not so hard to roughly imagine how life started here on earth. 4 billion years ago, a unique series of coincidental probabilities occurred that led to the existence of very simple biological cells that could replicate. These were the first forms of life. And as they replicated, subtle differences between the old cells and the new cells would crop up, mutations would take place. We see it in the genetics of offspring with every lifeform known to us and we can trace it back in the remains and fossils not just of animals and plants, but sometimes even of bacteria of as far as 3.5 billion years ago. Microscopic crystals and fossils provide us a glimpse of life on earth before the first plants or even algae emerged.

Over billions of years of replicating and mutating, these biological mechanisms found more and more sophisticated ways of growing and spreading. The tiniest initial differences such as offspring with a coincidental protein molecule that is sensitive to sunlight would end up with eventually more beneficial mutations over many generations.

4 billion years is a very long time. Enough for extremely sophisticated results such as the human eye to emerge from origins as simplistic as a single light-sensitive protein molecule. As a result, even our most advanced technologies are often still no match for some of the mechanisms that have taken evolution aeons to engineer. But when we begin to contemplate early animal life, and observe its beautiful legacy all around us, wherein we constantly recognize parts of our primal selves, it is tempting to wonder why in the process of evolution there emerged this phenomenon of consciousness that has bewildered and confounded philosophers and mystics since the dawn of humanity's tribal structures.

To approach this scientifically, we can not allow consciousness' elusive nature to be a reason for giving up on trying to understand it. Because if consciousness is not a magical exception and is rather a direct or indirect consequence of evolution, just like every other the scientific conclusion is straight-forward: just like every other feature of the human brain and body, experience or consciousness is a tool that evolution has engineered for us through billions of years of mutations. Conscious forms of life showed a richer capacity for learning and course-correcting.

Evolution favored this development and nurtured it to a point where we became sentient, self-aware and capable of interpreting our own evolutionary drives and our purpose in ways that can even go against our own survival if we so choose.

"You" Do Not Exist

So how would science then describe the mechanism of consciousness? Surprisingly, most scientists do theorize that consciousness is not simply inside our brain.

Consciousness is generally considered to be an emergent phenomenon of the brain. Meaning that consciousness happens when enough activity takes place in the brain in a way in a way that can be compared to how music emerges from a record player. The music is not anywhere to be found inside the record player. Intuitively, we tend to say the music is on the record, but even there we really only find a circular vinyl disk with peculiar grooves, it does not produce any sound or music at all. It is only when the mechanisms of the record player are activated in a certain way that that all its activity produces an emergent phenomenon that we call music.

Consciousness is somewhat similar. We can't physically locate it at one point or in one area. And if we zoom in on the grey matter of our brain, we find as much evidence for consciousness as we find tiny marbles inside a molecule. None at all. Yet when billions of neurons fire and communicate with each other, the combination of this enormous amount of activity creates the phenomenon of consciousness.

But it would seem that this is far from a complete summary of what brings it about. Because there is an inevitable consequence that complicates things to an incredible degree. The more this emergent feature evolved in ways that allow it to course-correct and significantly reprogram the brain, the more it became a feedback loop of incredible complexity. When we point a webcam at a screen that displays its input we see a seemingly infinite pattern, the brain does something similar with the activity from its billions of firing neurons, resulting in an unimaginable depth of iterations and permutations that gives rise to what we call consciousness or experience.

Consciousness is a Tool

This experience is not a goal, it is simply the ultimate tool that our brain has for finding its way and coming to grips with the consistent patterns of reality.

We are the unfathomably intricate interplay of what seems like infinite loops of neural processes. Our essence may have had humble beginnings, but it exponentially grew on its voyage down the rabbit hole of boundlessly mirroring itself and learning from each mirror image. Our brain waves ripple and reverberate, creating constant feedback loops of wildly varying degrees of complexity before even a single emotion, let alone a conscious thought can emerge, which then in itself inevitably brings about feedback loops of higher levels of abstraction where it is no longer about the interaction and cascade of neurochemical processes, but also of language, ideas and concepts that then allow such magnitudes of recursive thinking that we become capable of observing and dissecting the patterns of our own existence.

We are incomparably more than the sum of our parts. Which is why our evolution so greatly favored this extraordinary capacity for reasoning and intuition and why it promoted us from biological machines to sentient architects of our own future, tasked with making the right decisions for ourselves and for our species.

We are a feedback loop that is, depending on how we choose to live, to greater or lesser extent aware of its own mechanisms.

The Purpose of Consciousness

We must factor in the brain's remarkable ability for changing itself. This is called neuroplasticity.

Whatever it is that we are doing at any point in time, we are training our brain to become better at performing those actions, for better or for worse. While more pronounced at early age, neuroplasticity and even neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells, continues to take place throughout our lives, shaping and reshaping the hardware of our consciousness every step of the way.

While human beings have a remarkable capacity for rationality, enabling us to fly rockets to the moon and build incredible machinery that allows us to dissect the fabric of the universe, we are also very emotional creatures. As we grow up, we for a big part learn and shape our behavior through basic Pavlovian conditioning. In the famous psychological experiment by Ivan Pavlov, a basic observation was that a dog tends to salivate as soon as he recognizes learned indicators hinting that he may be rewarded with a treat. Same mechanisms are present in the reward system of the human brain.

As children, we innocently want to understand the world. But if trying to understand things is not rewarding enough, our brain adopts other strategies. An unfortunate phenomenon often observed in psychology and also once famously described by Carl Sagan is that kindergartners or first-grade kids tend to be sincere science enthusiasts with a genuine sense of wonder as they question everything around them. But talk to children in the 12th grade and much of this curiosity has become extinguished.

If our natural tendency to logically question things is discouraged and we are instead rewarded for actions that we often don't see the meaning of, the brain adapts to this and gradually gives up on independent logical inquiry.

Instead, we become disproportionately dedicated to seeking approval of others. Our opinions, our identity, our way of life ends up depending on how we are judged by our social circle and by society at large.

At the time of recording this documentary, fake news, post-truth and so-called 'alternative facts' are much discussed topics. But these are mere symptoms of a much deeper problem. One that goes beyond misinformation and imperfect social media algorithms.

While we may not be aware of it, the Pavlovian conditioning from our contemporary culture deeply defines how we look at life and by extension how we intuitively perceive consciousness. To understand just how much culture constantly evolves while it shapes our behaviors and beliefs, it can be helpful to look at how much has changed even in recent history. Only around 15 years ago it was controversial to ban smoking and cellphones were considered inappropriate for teenagers or for use on public transport. Ten years ago we could barely imagine why anyone would want to put random thoughts along with personal pictures on the Internet for everyone to see. Now just about everyone including parents and grandparents have active Facebook accounts. And in only a few years, taking selfies went from a strange and narcissistic habit to a cultural norm.

Keeping this in mind may then make it less surprising when we consider that up until around 300 years back, people would brand a great deal of our most commonplace routines as selfish, decadent and morally corrupt. As trivial and innocent of an act like buying a box of our favorite cereals would fall into this category. While society gradually improves and evolves over large periods of time, our culture takes many twists and turns along the way, some of which move us closer to valuing facts over fiction, some of which do not.

Nevertheless, our conditioning lays much of the groundwork for the operating system of our brain. In a constellation of brain regions known as the Default Mode Network, information is constantly being processed even when we are seemingly at rest. This is partially why social conditioning can have a profound impact on us while we are unaware of it.

Our current mainstream culture is generally defined as individualism, which finds its origins in the industrial revolution not long ago. And just as in previous eras, we go as far as to sometimes rewrite history to fit our current narrative and we repurpose ancient sayings such as "Carpe Diem" to support our beliefs.

The complete sentence of the old Latin poem roughly translates to "do what you can today, to make tomorrow better" and it had no connection with indulging in personal desires.

We've Been Lied To

While our scientific progress can tell us a lot about the brain and even to significant extent about consciousness, our culture is currently not so much geared towards trying to understand what we are. It is instead more focused on celebrating the pursuit of fashionable personal interests. Ranging from material possessions to impressing our social circle, from momentary thrills to romantic adventures.

The individual's desire and its freedom to pursue it is currently our most cherished ideal. Many aspects of our society, most of all our economy, rely on our pursuit of these popularized objectives. Aside from rare exceptions like a futuristic tv series about a unified humanity working to advance the species, culture has a way of submerging us in signals that make us believe, without question, that the way we currently perceive things is simply the way it has always been or at least the way it's meant to be. Not so long ago, we believed people of color were always inferior, the world was always flat and the gods always controlled the skies.

In a cultural setting such as this, the brain's reward system becomes, in a sense, disconnected from its purpose. Throughout evolution, the ways in which our DNA has mutated and our brain has expanded have all been part of the same process: all these mechanisms simply try to overcome the obstacles in their path.

Life fundamentally tries to align itself with reality, genetically and biologically, instinctively and intellectually. As children, the way we try to align ourselves with reality is by imitating others, parents, friends, teachers and various cultural influences. The older and the more aware we become, the more capable our brain becomes at independently recognizing patterns and making abstractions. A duality arises.

We possess the intelligence to grasp the consequences of our actions and of our inaction. Yet our Pavlovian reward-seeking urges pull us in other directions, such as living up to the expectations of society and family. We feel fragile and dependent on the judgment of others because our reward system values their approval more than logical deduction. We feel little satisfaction or even discouragement when acting upon our own independent rational judgment. This confusing duality is a natural consequence of a society wherein we never really grow up.

We seek the approval of our guardians when we are young. And we continue to seek approval of whichever forces take over as we grow older. We become eternal validation-seekers.