A World Appears Quotes

“Historically, brain metaphors have often drawn on the impressive machines of the day. For example, brains were once analogized to clocks and mills when those were cutting-edge technologies. More recently, scientists have compared minds with looms, as in one precomputer-era quote comparing a brain to that "enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“It's pretty much what novels do- take us into the minds of characters to satisfy our deep human curiosity to find out what, but also how, other people think.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Life begins with a thermostat, basically" - a homeostasis machine. "Once you're a thermostat, you're in the basement of cognition. You've got memory [of a set point], prediction error [the ability to tell when you've departed from it], and preferences - simple little goals [like returning to a preferred temperature]. But from there, you can ratchet all the way up to complex cognition.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“The avoidance of this fate is the miracle of life (or one of them, anyway): its ability to defy the second law’s entropic tendency so that it might continue to exist. Only upon death, when resistance ceases, does entropy finally have its way with us.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“If I can guide my thoughts to recognizing there is no essence of me, that my self is the unfolding of perceptions and that they're constantly changing," he said, "I think it reduces the existential pain of illness, at least a little bit." When we are suffering, the impermanence of the self can be a comfort.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Literature, philosophy, and religion have been thinking longer and harder about consciousness than the sciences have,”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“One of the roles of the arts, and literature especially, is to ferry us to other islands to learn what—and how—other islanders think. There is one more type of inner experience that Hurlburt has identified, and that is the absence of inner experience, or only traces of it. He has sampled a small number of people who have little or no inner experience at all. It’s not that there’s no one home; these people aren’t zombies. But they live in a world of pure perception and more or less automatic decision-making unruffled by thoughts. Should we feel sorry for them? Hurlburt doesn’t think so. “I think one can make the argument that it’s actually an advantage,” Hurlburt said. “Because it puts you in touch with the world the way the world actually is, as opposed to your own theoretical view.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Humiliation.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Building a rich sense of identity is not something that benefits the current system,” Christoff Hadjiilieva said. “Because if you have people leading meaningful lives and integrating their experiences and realizing what really matters to them, that’s just not going to work with how this society runs. You’re not going to need as much stuff.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Of all the contents (and creations) of consciousness”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“It is one of the paradoxes of computer science that the “higher” capabilities we once thought of as uniquely human—reason, language, intelligence—have proved easier for machines to master than the more elemental capabilities we share with animals, including feelings and emotions.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“To date, poetry written by AIs isn’t much better than doggerel; the absence of consciousness might explain why it lacks even a spark of originality or fresh insight.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that a single psychedelic experience dramatically increases the likelihood that a person will attribute consciousness to other entities, both living and nonliving.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Be wary of the desire for magic.” I knew immediately what he meant,”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“James says that catching a thought is as futile as trying to hold a snowflake or turning on the lights to see the darkness.”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“The more I strove to penetrate the mystery”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“The Buddhists were right about this”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“What we and our fellow animals have in common”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“There’s no reason why meditation”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

“Consciousness is one of the few phenomena that haven’t surrendered to the sovereignty and stern rule of matter”
― Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness