James Burke is a great man. I have a personal policy that when I write a white each paragraph has a "layperson's" explanation beneath it, which was inspired by the first and the last episode of his BBC show Connections
Ignorance is bliss. Q.E.D. IMO, the more brain cells one has, the more neurotic one can be because the added bandwidth, compounded with being highly educated, gives one's imagination the horsepower to predict plenty of negative consequences. YMMV (be kind to me)
Back to qualia: in my opinion, and your mileage obviously varies, it’s not even a wild goose chase — it’s more like The Hunting of the Snark.
Consciousness isn’t just a spotlight, it’s the forced arbitration of billions of cellular demands. Each of our ~40 trillion cells has a survival stake and pushes its signals upward until the mind must take notice. That’s why certain experiences intrude on us whether we like it or not: grief that overwhelms reason, sexual arousal that derails attention, the impossibility of not laughing at an inappropriate moment, or the heat of embarrassment that turns thought itself into a hostage.
In that sense, qualia aren’t mystical paint on top of neural function — they’re the felt residue of our cells voting, insisting their needs be weighed in the conscious workspace. The Predictive Timeline Simulation framework is my attempt to make that arbitration explicit — testable in neuroscience, relevant to psychiatry, and useful for AI models.
Perhaps read the paper instead of skimming or running it through an AI. I believe that your complete understanding would either sharpen your criticisms or perhaps improve the paper.
Fair critique — and I’ll own that the paper emphasizes reframing more than exhaustive exposition. To be precise:
• I am not claiming to solve the Hard Problem of qualia. I position qualia as an evolved data format, a functional necessity for navigating a deterministic universe — not as metaphysical mystery.
• What the paper does aim to explain is the predictive, timeline-simulating function of consciousness, and how errors in this function (e.g. Simulation Misfiling) may map to psychiatric conditions.
• The “implications” section is deliberately forward-looking, but I agree the exposition could be expanded. That’s the next step — this is a framework, not the final word.
If nothing else, I hope the paper makes explicit that reframing consciousness as a predictive timeline simulator is testable, bridges physics + neuroscience, and invites experiments rather than mysticism.
You’re closer than you think. Replace “hallway of pictures” with “predictive coding across the common core network,” and you’ve got 80% of my framework. The other 20% is what makes it falsifiable.
I’ve written a white paper proposing the Predictive Timeline Simulation (PTS) Framework, which treats consciousness as an evolved simulation engine. It connects neuroscience, physics, and philosophy, and suggests both a testable schizophrenia hypothesis and a design principle for AGI. I’d welcome critical feedback from the HN community.
When I read posts like this, or watch introverts doing comedy skits about their introversion, such as KallMeKris saying she needs 10 days in advance just to schedule a phone call. As an extrovert, I don't want to inflict angst upon an introvert just by striking up a conversation or inviting them to lunch. I cut off two "friends" who were introverts, and I don't think they noticed. Human kind is a social animal that expects reciprocation and teamwork.
Does anyone truly believe Musk had benevolent intentions? But before we even evaluate the substance of that claim, we must ask whether he has standing to make it. In his court filing, Musk uses the word "nonprofit" 111 times, yet fails to explain how reverting OpenAI to a nonprofit structure would save humanity, elevate the public interest, or mitigate AI’s risks. The legal brief offers no humanitarian roadmap, no governance proposal, and no evidence that Musk has the authority to dictate the trajectory of an organization he holds no equity in. It reads like a bait and switch — full of virtue-signaling, devoid of actionable virtue. And he never had a contract or an agreement for with OpenAI to keep it a non-profit.
Musk claimed Fraud, but never asked for his money back in the brief. Could it be his intentions were to limit OpenAI to donations thereby sucking the oxygen out of the venture capital space to fund Xai's Grok?
Musk claimed he donated $100mil, later in a CNBC interview, he said $50-mil. TechCrunch suggests it was way less.
Speakingof humanitarian, how about this 600lbs Oxymoron in the room: A Boston University mathematician has now tracked an estimated 10,000 deaths linked to the Musk's destruction of USAID programs, many of which provided basic health services to vulnerable populations. He may have a death count on his reume in the coming year.
Non profits has regulation than publicly traded companies. Each quarterly filings is like a colonoscopy with Sorbonne Oxley rules etc. Non profits just file a tax statement. Did you know the Chirch of Scientology is a non-profit.
I investigated Musk’s legal brief against OpenAI.
It mentions “nonprofit” 111 times but never explains how the structure would help humanity. Also, a contract was never signed to solidify any agreement as such.
Meanwhile, Musk’s role in the collapse of USAID has already been linked to tens of thousands of preventable deaths. It also includes a motive for why Musk need OpenAI to be a nonprofit.
I find Anthropic's Claude the most gentle, polite, and consistent in tone and delivery. It's slower than ChatGPT but more thorough, to the point of saturated reporting, which I like. Posting a "Responsibility Policy makes me like the product and the company more.
Apple's "Monopoly Sentinels" won't let me open it. To wit, “Pinnacle a Sentinel remake” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software." • This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was charged with 18 Counts of disseminating classified information on July 12, 2007. If Assange had surrendered to US authorities circa 2007 (He wasn't indicted till 2019), he would have been sentenced to no more than 15 years if he was found guilty on all counts and had no parole.
Their economy is still not doing well. The sole reason that the NIKKEI is storming it is that banks only offer negative interest rates on bank deposits. Thus, the NIKKEI is the only real option left.