What would we learn if we could merge parts of the human brain with those of other species? Might we hear the sounds of the past? Live in naked troops, swapping intimate experiences without words? Or build a new social network? A fun and wide-ranging conversation with two smart friends – Lori Marino and Ben Goertzel – published in the Christmas 2011 issue of New Scientist.
“They have no future without us, the chimps, the elephant, the whales and the rest. None. The question that we, the keepers, are facing is whether we’d mind a future without them ” – “whether we’d be bothered by an Earth with no living vestiges of our own differently shaped selves.” – Charles Siebert
Wrote this for The New Scientist . It summarizes some of the different states of consciousness we pass through over the day and night.
Can we know what it’s like to be a non-human animal? Most scientists and philosophers say we cannot. Others disagree. A talk on whales, kinship in nature, and the limits of human empathy and imagination.
How well do you know your own mind? The Wheel of Consciousness is an audio-visual journey through twelve distinct states of waking, sleeping and dreaming consciousness. Although informed by science, the show’s primarily focus is first-person experience, what it feels like to be aware at different times of day and night…