Qualia Computing: How Conscious States Are Used For Efficient And Non-Trivial Information Processing

Building a Science of Consciousness

In this episode, we explore the question of why we are conscious. The short answer is that consciousness allows us to recruit self-organizing principles that can run on a massively parallel fashion in order to find solutions to problems at wave propagation speed. However, this answer raises more questions than it answers. In order to fully understand the role of consciousness, we need to enrich our conceptions of computation and intelligence. Once we do this, we can see that consciousness plays a vital role in our ability to quickly solve problems.