Counting Pinecones: A Look at Consciousness

It was a bumper year for pinecones on a path I walk often. How many pinecones am I conscious of as I walk that path? As you may suspect, my interest in here is more a matter of consciousness, than of pinecones.

Why Aren’t We Afraid to Go to Sleep?

Some people, of course, are afraid of going to sleep, and for good reason: sufferers from sleep terrors, nightmares, sleep walking, apnea, and other maladies of sleep. Then there is the aversion to bedtime of small and not so small children. Maybe some of this is fear of sleep; more is probably because being awake is more fun. Eventually, it is outgrown. In any event, I am not addressing these groups. I also exclude from the “We” people who never remember their dreams.

My question is why those of us who are beyond childhood, not subject to sleep maladies, and remember some of our dreams are so blasé about going to sleep, indeed often positively relishing the prospect.

“Her” Computer Consciousness: Can an Artificial Intelligence Be In Love?

The 2013 movie Her, for which Spike Jonze, won an Oscar for best screenplay, raises the question whether one day soon there could be artificial, machine based, consciousness.