<![CDATA[Ostjuden]]>https://nivcohen729112.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G96Q!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fnivcohen729112.substack.com%2Fimg%2Fsubstack.pngOstjudenhttps://nivcohen729112.substack.comSubstackFri, 21 Aug 2026 20:21:24 GMT<![CDATA[Consciousness as Scattering Theory]]>https://nivcohen729112.substack.com/p/consciousness-as-scattering-theoryhttps://nivcohen729112.substack.com/p/consciousness-as-scattering-theoryFri, 21 Aug 2026 14:09:34 GMTRecently, many people have voiced their opinions about whether LLMs might be conscious. Leaving the question of ‘if’ aside, I was trying to imagine the consciousness of a frozen network that is activated only sporadically. How does it feel to feel nothing until some external force pushes you into existence? I think that perhaps we already know.

In his book Mind and Matter, Erwin Schrödinger, to the best of my memory, makes the point that our consciousness is mostly a reaction to external forces. Things feel much more vivid the first time they happen. A constant noise naturally drifts out of our consciousness unless it changes in an interesting manner. What is considered interesting here is unclear, but it has something to do with not being trivially predictable1.

Supporting evidence for consciousness being driven by external signals is that sensory deprivation can drive consciousness to very strange places. While there is no activity in an LLM in the absence of external sensory input, there is in humans. One might argue that this activity, mostly hallucinations it seems, is driven by sensing the activity of the rest of the body. This also supports the ‘we are not only our brain’ view, introduced by Schrödinger in the same book.


1

It is not clear that unpredictability alone makes something more interesting: over long periods, neither pure white noise nor a perfectly constant tone engages my consciousness very much.

]]><![CDATA[On Lenin and the Pharaoh]]>https://nivcohen729112.substack.com/p/on-lenin-and-the-pharaohhttps://nivcohen729112.substack.com/p/on-lenin-and-the-pharaohWed, 05 Aug 2026 19:32:48 GMTFive thousand years ago, in the ancient Near East, there were pharaohs who were gods. They could exile entire nations, kill people through slavery and starvation, and have themselves mummified after death.

Through a long and error-filled process, people created a system of laws intended to prevent this kind of situation. Because people understand only commands of the form “the pharaoh said so”, they decided that there was now a God more powerful than Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, and that He had said that one must not bow down to statues, tear papyrus paper on the Sabbath, and various other things.

Then some very sophisticated people came along and said that this God did not actually exist, because they had torn toilet paper on the Sabbath and nothing had happened to them. They also said that nations and religions did not exist, since no one had ever seen them (or their mummies).

As the only logical conclusion, they brought to power chairmen and general secretaries who were not gods at all. They were people like you and me, except that they could exile vast populations, kill people through slavery and starvation, and have themselves mummified after death.

Lenin's Mausoleum - History and Facts | History Hit
He even got his own little pyramid.

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