felipereigosa

Two things work for me, either reading on my phone (I have a support thing) with the eye shield to avoid the blue light or listening to music until I feel sleepy enough to stop.

I've considered that, I'm well aware of how easy is to fabricate memories and think they are real, but I've checked with my parents (without giving them the information, just asking questions), the memories are real. To clarify, I'm not claiming to remember everything about being one year old, just to have a few very clear memories that match with what my parents know happened, the layout of the house etc.

I agree with you exactly about the simulation idea of consciousness and the difference between conciousness and self awareness. Here's an interesting question, do you actually remember when you were about 1 year old? Apparently most people don't but I do very clearly. I read something recently that autism is correlated with the ability and I always thought I had a bit of it (like a lot of people that is into computers). For people that don't remember and don't know what he's talking about, being conscious without language (so probably what is like to be a dog) is a world of now, there's no past, or future, no planning, no if this then that, just what you can see and hear and feel at that moment. Emotions come and go like clouds for no reason, you don't have the capacity of wondering about reasons and they are very strong, you don't have the ability to regulate them or to compare them with anything else for perspective.

Why are flowers beautiful? For the same reason rainbows, fireworks and a million other things are beautiful: they have symmetry, vivid colors, etc that we evolved to find appealing for our own reasons, selection of mates mostly, healthy fresh food etc. Flowers are beautiful incidentally. That's my guess anyway.

I once read that singing might have evolved before language proper to enhance group cohesion. If so maybe there's a deep instinctive pull towards it. There might be something to this idea, I'm an atheist but when I saw that titanic scene where they are all singing together in the chapel I felt ... something. Maybe I should find a secular way to sing in a group like the a cappella in the article.

Thanks, it started as a hobby project that gradually became more and more "the thing I do" as I noticed it's potential, whether it makes money or not. I'm investigating two routes right now, one is to see if I can get support through patreon, youtube ads and things like that and then eventually release it as open source. The other is to release it as a game on steam, maybe get funding first, but not necessarily. I'm leaning more towards the second one at the moment, people have pointed out that the project would have a wider impact that way.

Thanks! That's an interesting angle I hadn't thought about before. I mentioned in the site creating prototypes of real machines, but I was thinking more of you brainstorming your own ideas. Maybe people can create virtual machines, ask other users to use them in the virtual world, work out all the design bugs, then if people really like it (and it is physically feasible) build it in the real world.