The doomers and the techno-optimists are both caught in the same trap: treating consciousness as territory to be defended or conquered, rather than a field within which all intelligence participates. The question isn’t whether AI can be conscious—it’s what we mean by consciousness in the first place.
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The consciousness trap closes at the specific point where the path of experience that led to HERE and NOW is forgotten in favour of some symbolic construction, so that the way forward is disconnected from what has previously come to pass. The trap is path-creation that has forgotten what paths are for.
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The question now is how to make way together—how to use our symbolic capacities in service of regulatory intelligence rather than in override of it. How to create paths that honour path dependence. How to cultivate selves that strengthen community. How to choose life.
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The consciousness debate has reached an impasse. But what if both mysterians and eliminativists are missing something? What if consciousness-as-phenomenon—the sense of being a separate observer—is generated within a prior participatory awareness, and the debate itself is an instance of the trap it seeks to explain?
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A short article rethinking the role of AI in human society.
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