Michael Pollan is the author of The world appears: A journey into consciousness.
Christopher Michel/Penguin Random House
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Christopher Michel/Penguin Random House
What is consciousness?
It’s a question that journalist Michael Pollan found himself struggling to answer after writing a book about how consciousness is altered when using psychedelics in a therapeutic setting.
“There’s nothing we know with more certainty than the fact that we’re conscious. We know that right away. It’s the voices inside our heads,” he says. Still, Pollan added, “How does putting three pounds of this tofu-like substance between your ears create a subjective experience? No one knows the answer to that question.”
his new book, The World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, Explores consciousness on both a personal and technical level. Pollan, who lives near Silicon Valley, said some people believe that artificial intelligence is conscious.
“They base this on the premise that basically the brain is a computer and consciousness is software,” he says. “And if they can do it in the brain, which in their view is essentially a ‘meat-based computer,’ then it should be possible to do it in other kinds of machines.”
Mr. Pollan disagrees with this assessment. He acknowledges that computers can simulate thinking, but adds that “real thinking” is based on emotion.
“If you think about it, your emotions are very tied to your weakness, your vulnerability, your suffering, and perhaps your mortality,” he says. “So I think any emotions that chatbots report will be weightless and meaningless, because chatbots don’t have physical bodies. They can’t suffer.”. ”
Interview highlights
On the idea that people have a moral obligation to chatbots
This is a very lively conversation here. This means that if they are conscious, we have moral obligations to them and should think about giving them personality, for example, in the same way that we have given personality to corporations. I think that’s insane. If we give them rights, we lose control of them completely. But I find this whole kind consideration of the possibility of chatbot consciousness really strange. Because we don’t extend moral consideration to billions of people, let alone the animals we eat that we know are conscious. So do you start worrying about computers? It’s like our priorities are messed up.
About the sensitivity of plants
Plants can see, which is a strange idea. There are certain vines that can actually change the shape of their leaves to mimic a coiling plant. How do we know what its leaf shape is? Plants can hear. Playing the sound of caterpillars munching on leaves produces chemicals that repel the caterpillars and alert other plants nearby. Plants have memories. If you teach them something, they remember it for 28 days.
And plants can be anesthetized. I found this particularly shocking. So I’m thinking of plants like Mimosa pudica, a sensitive plant whose leaves crumble when touched, and carnivorous plants that feed on insects that cross the threshold. Anesthesia doesn’t do anything. So the fact that they have two states of being is very suggestive of something like consciousness.
About losing time to let your mind wander
I also worry that media and technology are reducing the space for spontaneous thought to occur. And this…spontaneous thought space is something valuable that we’re offering companies that essentially want to monetize our attention, and in the case of chatbots, our attachments, our deep human attachments. So consciousness, and I think this is the urgency of the issue for me, consciousness is under siege. I think this is the last frontier for some companies who want to sell our time.
On paradoxical ideas about self
What is interesting and paradoxical about the self is that we preach the values of self-confidence, confidence, and a strong sense of self. We want our children to learn this too. On the other hand, we spend a lot of time trying to escape and transcend ourselves through sports, art experiences, movies, psychedelics, meditation, etc. Therefore, we have very mixed feelings about ourselves. I think it’s because the self separates us. The ego is a defensive structure. It builds walls. And even when those walls come down, or just break down, [are] Being low allows us to connect with others, art, nature, and sometimes God.
About writing books that address unanswered questions
There were many moments of despair during the research and writing process for this book. It took 5 years and I failed many times. [I told my wife] “I’ve dug a hole here and I don’t know how to get out of it.” And part of that had to do with my growing frustration with science, and part of it had to do with the fact that I had a Western framework of classical male problems and solutions, which is, there’s a problem and I’m going to find a solution.
Although it took some of my wife to do it, [Zen Buddhist teacher] Joan Halifax and some others made me question that. [they] “Yes, there’s the problem of consciousness, but there’s also the fact. That fact is amazing. That fact is miraculous. And you’ve put so much energy into this narrow beam of attention, and you’ve expanded that beam even further to see what’s going on inside your head. Why not explore the phenomenon of being there? It’s so precious and so beautiful.’ And that’s kind of where I came out — and it certainly wasn’t where I expected to come out.
Anna Baumann and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper, and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
