Atlantis: Ghost in the Machine

[Frustration]

The brain does not compute swiftly. It beats supercomputers in computations-per-second simply because it is so massively parallelized and its working parts are very small. If you lump enough Apple IIe computers together, they'd do more computations-per-second than a supercomputer, too.

[Swiftbow]

I don't know if your thinking goes QUITE this far, but viewing your body and yourself as separate entities is often considered a psychosis.

I do not consider the "I" or the concious thought as a separate entity to the body in such a way as you seem to describe. The "I" is a part of the overall entity that is the person standing in front of you, if we were speaking eye to eye right now. This person is the "It", is the "I" and is the body/basic bodily functions rolled into one, a kind of consensus in a manner of speaking.

Without the "I", I'd functionally be barely more than an animal. This may happen in certain circumstances, when a situation forces me into a, for lack of a better word, "pure survival mode". Say, when I panic, for example, though even that would be temporary.
Without an "It", I'd have to micromanage everything I do, from more basic tasks like movements to more complex tasks, like say conversations. I'm not quite sure whether I can think of a situation where this would happen. Best I can come up with is a situation where I am entirely unfamiliar with what I am doing, say learning a dance or indulging in a conversation about a topic that I am interested in but have no in-depth knowledge about. But in those situations the "It" isn't absent, it and, well, "It" just defers any kind of control on the topic at hand to the "I" entirely.
Without either an "It" and an "I", I'd be comatose, a vegetable. I may still breath (it stands to reason, that there's a more basic entity controlling these functions, which plays no vital role in any sort of higher task, but that's besides the point) and so on, but that's about it.

Regardless of that... I think you're equating what might be called "muscle memory" or "instinct" as "It." That is, the part of you that can run kind of on "autopilot." However, that isn't a separate "You" so much as the part of you that you've trained to handle the mundane tasks of living.

That's not quite what I mean. I choose the example of a conversation for this exact reason. I feel the "It" is quite capable of performing complex tasks. I probably shouldn't call "It" an "It" and rather use the word "subconciousness", but I feel the prefix "sub-" creates a sort of hierarchy that I do not feel is quite justified.

I can't speak to the conversation part... Thinking and talking are in real-time. Your brain processes FAST. (Faster by orders of magnitude against any supercomputer. Even faster than the number Data quotes for himself in one episode.) You're in control.

"I" can take control, yes. But "I" am not always in control. Basic conversations are one such very prominent moment where "I" percieve this lag between what I do and what "I" think. Maybe you know the expression of "I didn't mean to say that, I was talking faster than I am thinking"? That kind of thing. I feel that what we describe as the "conciousness" may be quite literally an afterthought. A reflection of the "It", a function of the brain that analyzes complex situations in a way the "It" can not. The brain may be fast, but it has limits and we all know that we can decide things before "we" decide things, which implies a situational hierarchy that runs counter to the classic implications of "conciousness" and "subconciousness". That however doesn't mean, that the "subconciousness" is in complete control
Maybe the distinction is more along the lines of "planning conciousness" and "executing conciousness"? But that doesn't seem quite right, as my "It" seems very capable of executing complex tasks without "I's" direct intervention, though I am not entirely sure if this may very well be "trained reflex" in a more complex manner than one usually thinks of it or not. Either way, either can supercede the other, but neither is in absolute control to the detriment of the other and from an outside view, the personality at hand will always be a sort of consensus of "I" and "It", except under extreme circumstances, as described above.

If we're getting metaphysical, I think that the consciousness/soul is formed through the act of living, and, as an energy field, could logically survive the death of the organism. Though, obviously, in a state we don't fully understand.

I do not subscribe to the possibility of a personality being able to exist without a physical hardware to run on, be it mechanoelectrical or biological in nature. I do ceede the possibility however, that on a quantum-level we're more than just these physical entities, for lack of a better word, as ultimately we're only a conglomerate of statistical probabilities on a quantum level.

Sorry for the late reply... I forgot to log on and check my notifications!

I can see your reasoning, even if I don't fully agree with all of it. For myself, misspeaking isn't something that I said accidentally (at least usually), but more akin to writing this reply. Thought and speech/writing are nearly simultaneous, and sound fine as I put them down, but, after review, I change my mind and realize I made an error.

That's less my subconscious taking over than just me trying to edit what I said after the fact. Only, with a written reply, I can actually do that. (Sometimes even after I post!)

In your own case, your brain may be reviewing your own speech so rapidly that you perceive the actual speech as being out of your control. But I imagine that's more that your brain is much faster than your mouth and there can be a motor disconnect there.

I have something of the opposite problem... I usually talk so darned fast that I'll either stutter (because I'm ahead of my brain) or say it just fine but confuse the person I'm talking to because I'm apparently the micro-machine man. (Okay, I don't talk THAT fast. But I think the fact that I'm often trying to explain technology to someone also doesn't help.) I try to consciously slow my speech down, but, for some people, I'm told even my slow speech is fast.

[McAvoy]

The brain does not compute swiftly. It beats supercomputers in computations-per-second simply because it is so massively parallelized and its working parts are very small. If you lump enough Apple IIe computers together, they'd do more computations-per-second than a supercomputer, too.

That is a very very simplistic view of the brain. The problem with comparing a computer with a brain is that a computer is a static machine for the most part.

With a computer you apply electricity and it works. There is no widely varying parts of it that require widely varying elements continuously of varying and random at the moment times of varying degrees and elements that it has to monitor to use, store and dispel.

Human body at all times is using, storing, expelling everything that it enters through eating, absorbing or breathing. And alot of that goes to the brain. And the brain is controlling and monitoring how those organs work all depending on those conditions of what is brought into the body.

[Frustration]

That is a very very simplistic view of the brain.

Yep. Our very best understanding of the brain is vastly simpler than the brain itself. You're getting a watering-down applied to multiple layers of simplification.

There's little point in giving a relatively accurate explanation that readers would need the expected intelligence and definite knowledge of a neuroscientist to comprehend.

[clearspira]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -capacity/

Scientific American puts the memory capacity of the human brain at 2.5 petabytes. And what is interesting is that human beings do not live long enough to get anywhere near that.
This raises the question: What is all of that extra space for and what could we potentially use it for once our understanding of the brain increases?

[Frustration]

That's just not the way information storage works with the brain.

Sufficiently-young humans can lose an entire hemisphere and seem perfectly normal. Older humans have lost enough neural plasticity that their brain is locked-in to its configuration, and losing an entire hemisphere would be utterly devastating. But thinking that we have twice the capacity we need, and wondering what we're using it for, is approaching things the wrong way.