Are some humans less conscious than others

[EcK]

Hi,

What d'ya think ?
btw this could both fit in philosophy and science so I don't necessarily expect some treaty of semiology. Any approach is of course welcome.

I mean some people are more intelligent than others
Some people are more sensitive to x or y than others.

If consciousness is a feature of the human mind then why don't we hear about 'CQ' (consciousness quotient).
It's kind of assumed it's just a constant everywhere - which it's extremely unlikely to be.

And how would you go about testing it etc. ?

edit: I googled it and some people actually do talk about a consciousness index but it's very limited (it's basically almost all coming from one source, just mentioned several times) I found their test but I sincerely doubt it's accuracy - questions seem very biased so far (like 'when i wake up in the morning i find the world is full of mystery' - no when i wake up in the morning I'm extremely grumpy and as I don't wake up in some new heroic fantasy world every day I have no reason to suspect any more mysteries than the day before)

CQ-i (C) Free Online Assessment

 

[EcK]

update regarding the CQ assessment I've found online.

Went through 50 questions and it was just painful (it's a lonnng test)
Hard to answer most questions as the are very vague or supposed it's 'normal' to feel bodily symptoms of emotions etc. (aka: if i don't get emotional about everything I doubt that makes me 'less conscious' - My SO gets physical symptoms linked with her emotional states - I don't or extremely rarely (it takes immense amounts of stress for me to start 'showing' any kind of physical effect).

Or asks questions about things I've moved beyond decades ago - so yeah i CAN do it but I think it's retarded so I don't. I don't 'feel' the world is "friendly and full of meaning" - Because I'm not a hippie and meaning is not 'in the world' it's in our minds. That's a retarded hippie anthropomorphizing viewpoint

Anyway, I'll try to finish it but I doubt the accuracy of my answers as the test taker's are quite 'alien' to me in their way of thinking and their questions are far from neutral. Kind of like having a hippie make a test about whether you are a 'free thinker'. well yes, but I'm not a hippie, so I don't think of the type of low-self control / low knowledge viewpoint I might have had at age 7 as 'more conscious' than my current state.

#rantover

 

[meowington]

One of my favorite topics ! Not at all an expert (!) but I think about this quite lot.

The question in my mind is usually the other way around : Are some humans more conscious than others ?
The answer to both question, for me personally : yes, definitely !
Am I more conscious than most others ? In my subjective experience : yes, definitely !

Wiki's definition of consciousness starts with this :

Consciousness is difficult to define , though many people seem to think they know intuitively what it is.

So having said that, my own definition/grasp of consciousness is strictly intuitive. Not at all substantiated.

I think a high level of consciousness is a mixture of all kinds of intelligence :
logical/mathematical intelligence. inter-personal intelligence. linguistic intelligence. spatial intelligence. and so on.
I think one requires a fairly high level of all these forms of intelligence, to be regarded as someone with a higher consciousness.
You might even want to add certain kinds of sensitivity too (as mentioned in the OP). Or intuition.

All too often I've spoken with people who were, for instance, a lot more intelligent than me in terms of logical/mathematical intelligence, but who fail to pick up subtle details in inter-personal communications, or don't know the capital of Laos (me neither ) and so on. I think consciousness is more of an all round skillset. Impossible to define at this day.
Anyway, on rare occasions, I've spoken to people, who seem to portray an extremely broad skill set and I would definitely say these people have a much higher consciousness than so many others. And on the other hand, every second in public life, I see people with such a narrow focus or limited skill sets that I sincerely doubt they are even conscious at all. Or people who are so conformist that I doubt they ever think something truly original. Like nobody's home.
I think you can easily add creativity as another essential element of consciousness.

 

[Amargith]

I'd actually argue that you can be highly conscious in one type of intelligence, and absolutely blind in another. But, one doesn't exclude the other.

I'd say it behaves like the difference between knowledge and wisdom. You can be knowledgable on a subject, to the point of being an expert, without being wise about it. Similarly, you can be very wise about the fact that you know zip about a subject. However, it's likely that you become more 'conscious' about things that you are focused on to learn about and examine and ponder about, developing an awareness to the things in nooks and crannies that others without that kind of level of study would naturally miss.

However, once again, there is no guarantee that you'll develop the necessary awareness and perspective to pick up on those nooks and crannies in the first place, even if you are an expert in the field.

Edit: I do think that true mastery of a particular field encompasses a seriously high level of consciousness regarding the subject matter, as well as a high knowledge and execution level. And there are many who consider themselves experts who lack the consciousness part of that equation.

I guess you could look at it from another angle as well - a high level of consciousness in one area of expertise is likely to alert you to the existence of that same level of consciousness that might be beneficial in other areas you want to seek out still. In that way, you could look at it as a CQ to be gathered in as many areas of life as possible?

 

[EcK]

One of my favorite topics ! Not at all an expert (!) but I think about this quite lot.

The question in my mind is usually the other way around : Are some humans more conscious than others ?
The answer to both question, for me personally : yes, definitely !
Am I more conscious than most others ? In my subjective experience : yes, definitely !

Wiki's definition of consciousness starts with this :

So having said that, my own definition/grasp of consciousness is strictly intuitive. Not at all substantiated.

I think a high level of consciousness is a mixture of all kinds of intelligence :
logical/mathematical intelligence. inter-personal intelligence. linguistic intelligence. spatial intelligence. and so on.
I think one requires a fairly high level of all these forms of intelligence, to be regarded as someone with a higher consciousness.
You might even want to add certain kinds of sensitivity too (as mentioned in the OP). Or intuition.

All too often I've spoken with people who were, for instance, a lot more intelligent than me in terms of logical/mathematical intelligence, but who fail to pick up subtle details in inter-personal communications, or don't know the capital of Laos (me neither ) and so on. I think consciousness is more of an all round skillset. Impossible to define at this day.
Anyway, on rare occasions, I've spoken to people, who seem to portray an extremely broad skill set and I would definitely say these people have a much higher consciousness than so many others. And on the other hand, every second in public life, I see people with such a narrow focus or limited skill sets that I sincerely doubt they are even conscious at all. Or people who are so conformist that I doubt they ever think something truly original. Like nobody's home.
I think you can easily add creativity as another essential element of consciousness.

I don't have much time for research today but mh lets start with the first thing that popped into my mind (weighty words when talking about consciousness I know but I like the expression and most of the brain is not 'conscious' anyway so sue me):

+ quote regarding babies"In fact, it's one of their favorite activities – so much so that the car seat mirror has become a must-have. But in fact it's not until about 18 months that most babies really recognize that it is their own bodies they see in the mirror."

Now I didn't really look into it but I know that the general test we use on animals as to see whether they are conscious is to put a dot on their face for example and see how they react to it. Now I haven't done that specific thing with my son but it seems like there's lots of presupposition going in there.

For example birds tend to 'score well' on these tests relative (alot of species of birds will 'spot the spot' etc.) BUT it's common sense that a BIRD MUST TAKE CARE OF ITS DAMN FEATHERS - otherwise it can't fucking fly and it dies. damn it. (lets not talk about ostriches which are giant monsters). Take a babies hands and try to restrain their function (like tie two fingers or put something very sticky between two fingers and I can assure you the baby will try to get their mobility back. Doesn't mean either is 'conscious' as an insect will do something similar when pinned down. Now I get that it's about recognizing a REFLECTION in the mirror but any set of 'specialist' neural networks in the brain might explain this without needing actual metacognition (ability to self reflect)

In the case of my own son (9 months old now) he's reacting to his own reflection in ways which are consistant with self awareness and has been for a long time. Now I'm sure he's not going to display the type of 'grooming' behavior that are taught later in life and that his inner life is only as complex as his experience and current level of brain development but I doubt that he's 'imagining it's another baby being held by his dad and feeling a kiss on the same cheek at the same time and reacting exactly like him'. That seems like a needlessly complicated explaination when it makes more sense to assume that self awareness arrives much much earlier but as the SELF is developping throughout life you can't expect advanced 'interactions with oneself' in a 3 months old baby who's still learning to use his own damn hands half properly and figuring out basic physics of the universe he / she inhabits / what the big noisy moving warm globs around him are etc.

Dump a grown human being in a 20 dimensional space and it wouldn't be unreasonable to think 20 dimensional beings would assume it not to be 'self aware' as displaying no grasp of how to intelligently interact with its environment.

I mean - thought experiment. Let's say you develop a true AI. and run it on a computer, now you KNOW that this is a self aware AI. BUT it has access to little information, so you link it to a video feed showing the computer it runs on.

Do you expect it to a) even be able to fully figure out how to process the video signal b) have enough contextual knowledge to fully grasp what that 'computer' means.
Now you gradually upgrade it's hardware capability and feed it more and more data then one day it 'shows you proof that it's self aware'.
No- wrong- it gave you proof that it can interpret the video feed / that it was fed enough data to understand if say - you've changed the monitor / which 'computer is him' by recognizing the environment (which is pretty much just pattern recognition). A non conscious software could do that. The fact that it's self aware is independent from ability to correlate and categorize data.

Now I know it's a bit of a leap to just assume that you can have 'self awareness' with little environmental awareness but ahem , just a thought experiment.
As far as makes sense to me babies have pretty much functional brains at birth - there's no reason for them not to have 'self awareness' - it's their richness of knowledgedge about themselves in relation to their environment and the quality of 'self' to be experienced which increases with time, but as to the essential ability to see that what they feel is 'mirrored' (litterally) in a mirror I'd have to assume that they are able to grasp that. But why would they find it 'meaningful' when they don't know the first thing about their relation to their environment or what the fuck is going on? Early on they just know hunger-thirst, and a few 'basic urges' - the rest is just a data feed they haven't yet learned how to make sense of.

 

[meowington]

[MENTION=5643]EcK[/MENTION] : I'm not entirely sure what your point is. Since you seem to be talking about the self-awareness test (mirror test) which deals with self-consciousness rather than levels of overall consciousness (lower/higher consciousness etc.).

 

[EcK]

[MENTION=5643]EcK[/MENTION] : I'm not entirely sure what your point is. Since you seem to be talking about the self-awareness test (mirror test) which deals with self-consciousness rather than levels of overall consciousness (lower/higher consciousness etc.).

Well, to look at anything you have to step outside of it first and define terms. Otherwise you end up with idiotic conclusions like the famous/infamous conclusion that babies do not feel pain (despite higher nerve densities etc.) advanced by doctors for a long while. How convenient that it also happened to coincidence with then not having to anesthetize the child, lowering anesthesia mortality risks and, I'm sure, their insurance premiums.

First off I don't think the differenciation between awareness, self awareness ,consciousness are really used in a useful fashion most of the time. Which is what i was pointing out in my previous post.

Humans are capable of both self awareness and self consciousness. At birth babies display signs of either one or the other (depending how you look at it) via a modified mirror test. And of course they need to be conscious to partake in said test. There's no point in my view where you can usefully 'separate' these notions in a human being and say that they are different in any useful way. An unconscious child will not display self awareness or self consciousness, a conscious child will display all 3.

As humans age it is only the 'levels' of these that change - well first off of course as brain development slows down the need for sleep diminishes, and as to self awareness the way in which we test it is highly biased - which is why i pointed out the example of birds , for a bird to be able to spot abnormality on its plumage is just as necessary as for a human to be able to have control of their hands. These are survival traits and not evidence of self awareness. Though the two may coincide of course.



So I'm starting this discussion by rejecting multiple and often changing uses of words defining awareness. It sounds good to a scholar wanting to increase his paper's word count and apparent erudition but functionally speaking these are not useful categories. the terms are used in so many different ways as to make them functional synonyms. Otherwise you can have an argument that insects are conscious, cells are conscious etc. It just becomes this general term to say 'it's alive' basically.


I would separate awareness from metacognition - if barely - by stating that metacognition is more of an ACTIVITY linked with awareness in humans while AWARENESS is the general state of experiencing oneself. If that self is more complex and having different abilities than say a dog then we will experience these abilities and this complexity (including metacognition) but I don't see an ESSENTIAL separation.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Rather interesting thread. I think we as humans experience many different states of consciousness, and so some people may spend more time stuck in the lower forms of it. I think over-working and the doldrums of routine contribute to lower levels of consciousness. However, in contrast to that, I don't think I've experienced the highest states of it since that may require a lot of meditation I haven't had time to experience.

This is actually one reason I long to live far away in the mountains mostly alone. My highest levels of consciousness occur when sitting alone in nature for extended periods of time, and when I am at my best creating art. Those are the times I feel alive.

If you want to explore this topic in a bizarre direction, I'll go back to that question of the multiple levels/types of consciousness each person experiences. We all know the principle of this is true in terms of sleep and wakefulness, but there are different systems inside of us - perhaps more than simply conscious and unconscious. There is one deep brain system that connects to the Psoas muscle in the back. Because it is wired directly into the lower regions of the brain, that system is more instinctual and some people have hypothesized that memories are also stored throughout the body. That Psoas-brainstem system in me still responds to trauma and stress differently than my conscious mind. I can feel it as a different level of consciousness that reacts to stimuli and solves problems differently. I've come to wonder if the individual is actually a collection of different conscious/sub-conscious systems that all coordinate together into one being. What if it isn't just two systems (conscious and unconscious), but several?

 

[meowington]

Otherwise you end up with idiotic conclusions like the famous/infamous conclusion that babies do not feel pain (despite higher nerve densities etc.) advanced by doctors for a long while.

Really !? WTF

First off I don't think the differenciation between awareness, self awareness ,consciousness are really used in a useful fashion most of the time. Which is what i was pointing out in my previous post.

Ok thx for clearing that up. I guess the problem starts with defining all these terms correctly.

 

[EcK]

Rather interesting thread. I think we as humans experience many different states of consciousness, and so some people may spend more time stuck in the lower forms of it. I think over-working and the doldrums of routine contribute to lower levels of consciousness. However, in contrast to that, I don't think I've experienced the highest states of it since that may require a lot of meditation I haven't had time to experience.

This is actually one reason I long to live far away in the mountains mostly alone. My highest levels of consciousness occur when sitting alone in nature for extended periods of time, and when I am at my best creating art. Those are the times I feel alive.

If you want to explore this topic in a bizarre direction, I'll go back to that question of the multiple levels/types of consciousness each person experiences. We all know the principle of this is true in terms of sleep and wakefulness, but there are different systems inside of us - perhaps more than simply conscious and unconscious. There is one deep brain system that connects to the Psoas muscle in the back. Because it is wired directly into the lower regions of the brain, that system is more instinctual and some people have hypothesized that memories are also stored throughout the body. That Psoas-brainstem system in me still responds to trauma and stress differently than my conscious mind. I can feel it as a different level of consciousness that reacts to stimuli and solves problems differently. I've come to wonder if the individual is actually a collection of different conscious/sub-conscious systems that all coordinate together into one being. What if it isn't just two systems (conscious and unconscious), but several?

Well it IS several systems.
Depending how you look at it it's 100,000,000,000 neurons or so and many more synapses working together, these create 'specialized networks' better at operating certain tasks, the similarities between human brains stem from genetics - of course - but also the fact that just like water flowing downhill - based on pre-existing synapses, proximity / bandwidth etc. the way in which 'sections' of the human brain will end up specializing tend to be pretty similar.

Now what we call 'prefrontal cortex' and other such areas of the brain are of course just ways for us to categorize what seems like areas correlated with context-specific brain activity. But they are of course not 'literally' different modules in the brain.

Now if you take a step back you could say - see the whole world as one system (including humans in it), or you can look at all humanity as one system, etc.
The most meaningful separation we can apply is the rate / amount and type of medium in which these exchanges are occuring.

So just like human beings exchange less information between them than 'within them' - some areas of the brain share high 'inner area' bandwidth and lower 'outer bandwidth'.

So it's kind of like a computer processor which churns out billions of information to give you just one answer if you will. (though without that dramatic a difference inner and outer communication volume as in my example of course).

sooo.. yeah it's useful to say that we are a set of 'systems' but it's also useful to say that we are 'our brain' and it's useful to say that we are 'our brains and our bodies' just like it's useful to say that we exist 'outside our brains' in the information exchanges between humans that shape us and others. etc.

 

[EcK]

Really !? WTF



Ok thx for clearing that up. I guess the problem starts with defining all these terms correctly.

Ok so - I agree with you that there is a use in differenciating types of awareness.
body, social, etc. but i'd rather we create categories rather than use terms which are often seen used to mean different things.
---
I'm pretty sure that I experience less 'social queues' than say your average infj (and i tend to disregard them anyway) But do you mean it means that I would be 'less conscious/aware' in that area ? Or would you say that these are skills independant from the awareness itself.

If you separate awareness from what it 'illuminates" then it seems to me that awareness would have to be treated more as a 'wholistic' thing in and of itself and if we treat awareness like a set of skills it would be 'awareness of" body, social, etc. ." then it's more of 'the ability to spot something".

Neither of these seems completly satisfactory to me at the moment but we have to start somewhere.

What do you think ?

and regarding terms - you don't have to accept my first posts of course, feel free to point out the usefulness of separating self-awareness from self-consciousness for example.

 

[EcK]

Really !? WTF

yes really.
That's the problem when people just accept things on authority. The closest justification I can find for this is Descartes retarded idea that animals are 'automata' merely 'acting in pain' rather than 'experiencing pain' despite him not really pointing out in what way the two are different. He was a terrible philosopher though a legendary mathematician. Strangely of course people tend to assume that he was good at both and they still force you to read his horseshit ideas about human nature (his arguments have so much logical holes in them you could fit a freight train in them).

For example he assumed that humans must have souls - despite his whole philosophy being about 'how do we know what we know' and he had 0 way of knowing we had a soul -, then made up a reasoning that would back it up then found an area of the brain that is not 'mirrored' in another hemisphere and said 'that's where the soul resides' because the soul if indivisible. And his belief in a soul and how special humans are in regards to soul ownership lead him to that 'animals don't experience pain, they're just faking it' kind of argument.

Now of course as the baby is human that reasoning doesn't even stand up when talking about pain , it's a mix of Descartian logic and the idea that 'awareness' only emerges after the 1 year mark. (but descartes ' whole argument is based on the idea that humans have souls, so are they saying babies only get magical souls after 1 year of age ? )

So.. yeah. it's crap.

 

[meowington]

But do you mean it means that I would be 'less conscious/aware' in that area ?

In that area ? yeah definitely.
But does it make you less conscious than someone who excels in that field (social/emotional) ? Not necessarily as that person may have his/her own blind spots.
Like I said, when it comes to the term "higher consciousness" I intuitively associate that with the sum of different sorts of intelligence (emotional, rational, etc.).

Or would you say that the awareness refers only to an inner state ?

Definitely not exclusively. Rather the sum of one's entire perception of the outer and inner world and all the concepts at play (philosophy, psychology, physics, social dynamics, hierarchy etc. etc.) and your own place in it all. Maybe the easiest way to put it is that I associate consciousness with "general knowledge" of it all.

Just saying what I usually make of the concept "consciousness". It's all very arbitrary and philosophical. Anything but empirical or measurable.

 

[PeaceBaby]

[MENTION=5643]EcK[/MENTION]: thanks for sharing, this is an interesting thread and topic.

Went through 50 questions and it was just painful (it's a lonnng test)
Hard to answer most questions as the are very vague or supposed it's 'normal' to feel bodily symptoms of emotions etc. (aka: if i don't get emotional about everything I doubt that makes me 'less conscious' - My SO gets physical symptoms linked with her emotional states - I don't or extremely rarely (it takes immense amounts of stress for me to start 'showing' any kind of physical effect).

Or asks questions about things I've moved beyond decades ago - so yeah i CAN do it but I think it's retarded so I don't. I don't 'feel' the world is "friendly and full of meaning" - Because I'm not a hippie and meaning is not 'in the world' it's in our minds. That's a retarded hippie anthropomorphizing viewpoint

Anyway, I'll try to finish it but I doubt the accuracy of my answers as the test taker's are quite 'alien' to me in their way of thinking and their questions are far from neutral. Kind of like having a hippie make a test about whether you are a 'free thinker'. well yes, but I'm not a hippie, so I don't think of the type of low-self control / low knowledge viewpoint I might have had at age 7 as 'more conscious' than my current state.

Yes, that was long. I hear what you're saying about some of the question constructs. The body awareness ones were the questions that I answered very quickly [Almost always (definitely yes)]. That body awareness thing about emotions is very high for me and sensing where others are at on the fly and adapting. I am wondering how thinking patterns would affect scores on this test too. I can't spend much time on this atm since I have so much work to get done, but a few preliminary thoughts.

Some of the questions I objected to:

Example 1:

When I meet a person, after a few minutes I know whether or not I’m going to like them, even before talking directly to them.

How arrogant! You have to at least talk to people before judging them to be a weenie-tot!

---------------

Example 2:

I realize that my identity (personality) is just a system of patterns that has developed over the course of my life.

But I entered with a physiological template, not a blank slate, thus I am more than the patterns yet still only the patterns that include things outside of my control.

---------------

Example 3:

I notice my emotions as they come, paying attention to them without blocking my mind, and let them go without a trace.

Yes and yes but no, letting them go without a trace? Silly. You have to discern purpose or else they just come back over and over and over again.

---------------

Example 4:

I notice the emotions transmitted by a movie, a story or its characters, and I am able to decide if I empathize with them or not.

Yes and yes but choice, manipulating, making decisions on this? Again silly. When you feel resistance to empathizing, THAT's something to pay attention to just as strongly.

---------------

At the end, I estimated my CQ to be 8/10 and the test scored me at 83.73% overall so does that mean since I guessed close to reality that my awareness of my awareness is close to reality? Or does it mean that I was able to estimate the level of awareness the test was capable of discerning and scored myself relative to the efficacy of the instrument?

I say yes

Good thread.

 

[EcK]

[MENTION=5643]EcK[/MENTION]: thanks for sharing, this is an interesting thread and topic.



Yes, that was long. I hear what you're saying about some of the question constructs. The body awareness ones were the questions that I answered very quickly [Almost always (definitely yes)]. That body awareness thing about emotions is very high for me and sensing where others are at on the fly and adapting. I am wondering how thinking patterns would affect scores on this test too. I can't spend much time on this atm since I have so much work to get done, but a few preliminary thoughts.

Some of the questions I objected to:

Example 1:

When I meet a person, after a few minutes I know whether or not I’m going to like them, even before talking directly to them.

How arrogant! You have to at least talk to people before judging them to be a weenie-tot!

---------------

Example 2:

I realize that my identity (personality) is just a system of patterns that has developed over the course of my life.

But I entered with a physiological template, not a blank slate, thus I am more than the patterns yet still only the patterns that include things outside of my control.

---------------

Example 3:

I notice my emotions as they come, paying attention to them without blocking my mind, and let them go without a trace.

Yes and yes but no, letting them go without a trace? Silly. You have to discern purpose or else they just come back over and over and over again.

---------------

Example 4:

I notice the emotions transmitted by a movie, a story or its characters, and I am able to decide if I empathize with them or not.

Yes and yes but choice, manipulating, making decisions on this? Again silly. When you feel resistance to empathizing, THAT's something to pay attention to just as strongly.

---------------

At the end, I estimated my CQ to be 8/10 and the test scored me at 83.73% overall so does that mean since I guessed close to reality that my awareness of my awareness is close to reality? Or does it mean that I was able to estimate the level of awareness the test was capable of discerning and scored myself relative to the efficacy of the instrument?

I say yes

Good thread.

I objected to most every question in the say 50 first questions. Found them ridden with holes / using language that seems to be very specific rather than universal human experiences. I don't know, it just all seemed very nonsensical (using a very specific metal language I don't use) to me. Now yes I 'get' what they want but it just seems like my answers would be so inaccurate (like asking "how blue is this" and getting the answer 'yes quite often') that I just gave up trying. As I could see ways in which I would score high and low - making the test meaningless to me.

After a few questions I actually thought (really) "this seem to have been designed by an INFP to rate how INFP someone is (or rather how much like the test maker)"

ps: I Don't mean anything negative by it - except my frustration at the test - just that it felt like being asked "when you consider your Fi how does it make you feel" and me being like "I don't LOOK at this through an 'Fi' perspective so please just ask me damn neutral situational questions so I can give answers which are actually useful in relation to me"

 

[Fluffywolf]

From what you've said so far, that test does not seem worth my time. I am mildly interested in seeing just how biased and random it is, but meh. It seems there is some misunderstanding of internal and external consciousness as well.



As for the idea of consciousness quotient, I am reminded of, what I call, the zombie state after a long period of sleep deprivation.

I've had times in my life where I didn't sleep for long periods of time, often very engaged in certain, rather repetitive tasks while staying awake. One thing I do clearly remember is how hard it becomes to be engaged both internally as well as externally when sleep deprived. The so called zombie state. Going through the motions, living from moment to moment. Anything that might engage or interest you normally, no longer does.

Assuming on the consciousness spectrum, that is the far end of the wrong side of the spectrum. Then the quotient is all about mood, interest and health. In other words utterly controlled by extremely variable and biased notions. As such it seems futile to attempt and try to quotient consciousness on a one to one comparison bases.

It might however be very interesting in testing someones consciousness in the morning/the evening, the monday/the friday, after a period of exercise and healthy food as opposed to a period of slackery and junkfood, etc. One might be able to see somewhat interesting results within individual subjects. But it seems to me that it is an impossibility trying to compare one individual to the next.

PS: My consciousness continually blasts at 11.

Spinal Tap - "These go to eleven...." - YouTube

 

[PeaceBaby]

I objected to most every question in the say 50 first questions. Found them ridden with holes / using language that seems to be very specific rather than universal human experiences. I don't know, it just all seemed very nonsensical to me.

After a few questions I actually thought (really) "this seem to have been designed by an INFP to rate how INFP someone is (or rather how much like the test maker)"

*nods* I hear you. My first thoughts on your reply, and will maybe account for it somewhat, I think the educational system essentially "forces" F types to develop thinking abilities and this difference in comfort level with both the emotional realm and thinking realm shows over time. There's not even remotely close to the same level of focus or education on emotional patterns, discerning emotions in the body, making sound values-based arguments and abilities unless your parents were excellent modellers of such. I mean, at school it's practically nil, unless being regularly invalidated is educational.

In essence, the thing that comes less natural to me has been groomed from an early age. The thing that comes less natural to you was not honed year after year in school or specifically pointed out in a regular analysis of life interactions. That stuff -- I just do that naturally.

Plus the whole "letting things go" as an indicator of higher consciousness -- I need to think about that. I don't agree with that. That essentially says emotions are purposeless and that isn't true. Some things are best to release and others you'd better hold on tight and figure it out.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

There's a test?
*barely conscious*

 

[EcK]

Spinal Tap - "These go to eleven...." - YouTube

I watched a few seconds and I wasn't sure if that guy was functionally retarded or just a VERY GOOD COMEDIAN

 

[Fluffywolf]

I watches a few seconds and I wasn't sure if that guy was functionally retarded or just a VERY GOOD COMEDIAN

It's gold, the last few seconds of the clip especially. When he seems lost in thought, almost piecing it together... But not quite!