Consciousness and technology

Greetings Dhamma friends,

I recently watched this short youtube video on consciousness and technology. Even though there is no buddhist perspective offered, there is a Hindu speaker, Sadguru, who raises the issues about consciousness and it’s importance with regards to current and future developments in things like robotics and neural implants.

Since it not about specifics but general issues regarding consciousness, I felt that others might find it as interesting as I did.

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Great video. Conciousness and technology, or if sentience could arise in an artificial system, is a topic I’ve been interested in for some time. Previously I had considered memory to be an integral component of sentience, but Sadhguru presents a convincing argument to the contrary here. I still haven’t found the answer to this question.

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What a bright explanation by this samkhya-ish teacher. Interesting that he is a techno-optimist. I couldn’t really say that the spoiled rich-kids I’ve encountered bother so much to ask ‘who they essentially are’ or to develop their citta. Sure, wealth has the potential, but people seem to use it a lot for hedonism, decadence and frustration. I agree with the lady who expressed her doubt that robot-technology will not stop people to fight about a piece of land…

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Yes, his optimism struck me too. Particularly when he was talking about redundancy due to automation and a possible model for post-scarcity societies. Hope his predictions can occur.

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I liked his point about how societies invest in specific things, ie in the past the ‘east’ invested heavily in the infrastructure and systems to promote development of higher human consciousness. That the ‘west’ has/is investing in promoting intelligence. I’d love to see the ‘west’ see the need for some investment in higher consciousness - not in an intellectual (analysing) sense, but to enable to space and time to let people practice.

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