Debbie Foster

Meditative practice reveals that we are most fundamentally the opening of consciousness that watches thoughts coming and going, rather than the center of thought and intention with which we normally identify.

I count myself among a growing number of scientists who believe that the construction of self identity is not much better than the Lo-fi representations of other people we hold in our heads.

The human mind perceives, forms concepts, learns, makes judgements, feels emotions, uses language, remembers, invents, dreams, desires. How can so much complexity be captured in a single image? Clearly, some aspects of mental life must be prioritised at the expense of others. But which ones? And after those choices have been made, does the

Experiences that fundamentally change the way we see the world provide clues about consciousness. I learned that the experience of self is optional. Even the feeling of having a body is not necessary for subjectivity. Transformative experiences are deeply personal and can profoundly impact lives. They are living proof that nervous tissue, under

Meanings create boxes, and we put ourselves into those boxes every time we believe stories about who we are.

… to build AI systems with social cognition, so that they can interact meaningfully with the user over the long term, we first need to solve two foundational problems in how memory systems work. These problems, called oneshot learning and continual learningare currently (as of early 2024) missing in publicly available LLMs.

Augustine asks us to imagine a Janus-faced self: a conscious one with eyes looking in one direction, with an unavowed one laminated to its back, looking behind. Other people can see that Augustine is self-divided, but he cannot; he is not blind, yet he cannot see his own misery. And so it takes a divine force to reveal him to himself. God peels off

We're drawn to artwork that subtly deviates from our predictions of the world—“Too much prediction error is unpleasant or even disturbing; none or too little is boring"--and new art movements may emerge as our predictions adjust to (and get bored with) the new images around us. (We initially reject cutting-edge art because it's too far afield from