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comment by orbat
orbat  ·  2261 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 17, 2018

I've been reading about the nature of consciousness today, and I really wanted to share this thought.

So, turns out that our experience of consciousness isn't actually real-time; what we perceive – sensory input, our thoughts, the decisions we make and so on – as happening right now has actually already happened. Everything we perceive is tens to hundreds of milliseconds in the past, and when we become conscious of making a choice, the choice has already been made. It's like our consciousness is the brain's/mind's way of letting "me" know what's going on, and actually being the "me"; it gives us a narrative.

I was sort of blown away by this idea that what I experience as "me, here and now" is in a way only the tip of the iceberg of my mind and what my brain does. Like I'm looking at a movie of my own life