Why “Consciousness” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
That is wild. I strongly believe that any definition of consciousness that excludes all animals is unusable BS (but people love to argue about consciousness without defining it…
by myrmidon · Sep 17, 2026
>There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, One reason I can think of is if we consider that some regularity in the physical behavior is require…
by lolakutty · Sep 17, 2026
Why? People have created machines that can, at their core, regurgitate human knowledge. They do not have long-term memory, self-direction, self-improvement, emotion, etc. At the…
by anon7000 · Sep 17, 2026
My issue is that I've seen some bad takes in rationalist circles that believe in functionalism, and consciousness as an emergent property of a sufficiently complex computation.…
by myaccountonhn · Sep 17, 2026
> very alien sort of consciousness that is not faithfully narrated by what the tokens say it is experiencing. IIRC it's been shown that reasoning tokens don't actually explain w…
by mitxela · Sep 17, 2026
Consciousness is to our universe as a video game player is to the in-game universe. Some games even call player connections "souls" or "minds" - a character belonging to a playe…
by mitxela · Sep 17, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "consciousness" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "consciousness" over time.
Consciousness is being aware of something internal to one's self, or of states or objects in one's external environment. It has been the topic of extensive explanations, analyses, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians for millennia. There is no consensus on what exactly needs to be studied, or whether consciousness can be considered a scientific concept. In some explanations it is synonymous with mind, while in others it is considered an aspect of it. Read more on Wikipedia