“Celene’s thoughts on consciousness” by ToasterLightning

contra scott alexander (?) Yesterday, I went to the Berkeley ACX Meetup. Scott Alexander was there, and ran a Q&A session where participants could ask him questions and he would respond to them unless the questions were about eulogies, in which case he would pause to think for a few seconds before kindly passing. At one point or another, the questions drifted to theories of consciousness. As a kind-of-illusionist, I worked up the courage to raise my hand and ask him what I should do if I wasn’t sure if I was conscious. Everybody laughed at this question, and while I expected Scott to respond to the philosophical point, he instead said (paraphrased from memory, may not be accurate), I actually don’t think that's a funny question. I know of one historical example of someone who got into a traumatic accident, and afterwards claimed that he stopped being conscious. He behaved fully normally otherwise, except for the part where he was like, “It's really messed up how I’m not conscious now.” And so, I think it's kind of like aphantasia, right, where some people have a harder time visualizing things, or [I don’t remember if the other example he [...] ---Outline:(00:09) contra scott alexander (?)(02:44) What is consciousness?(03:38) Consciousness as subjective experience(07:39) Mary's Room(10:43) Molyneux's Puzzle(11:51) Consciousness as self awareness(12:45) Computational consciousness(13:33) Against Epiphenomenalism(15:20) Fully Homomorphic Encryption(20:30) Just feel it, man(23:52) The Zombie Preacher of Somerset(25:49) Final thoughts(27:14) Possible responses from readers The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 11th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z8oE6Bdr6zB3MFDFP/celene-s-thoughts-on-consciousness --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.