The Illusion of Being

Maybe it’s the way my dad looks at my laptop sometimes, a sort of polite skepticism that says, “That’s nice, dear, but what’s a *real* job?” or maybe it’s the persistent ache of wanting something more than the quiet predictability of this town, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what it actually means to *be*. Like, not just exist – because a fern exists – but to possess that messy, complicated awareness of self and the world around you. This new theory, the one suggesting consciousness evolved not from intelligence, but as a solution to conflicting drives, felt strangely… right.

It's easy to get caught up in the hype around AI, the breathless pronouncements of “sentience” and the constant comparisons to the human brain. I remember being at the National show last year, crammed into the pit, surrounded by people all feeling this shared, amplified something. It felt like a collective consciousness, a temporary merging of individual experiences into something bigger. But is that truly consciousness, or just a very complex, very effective simulation? This theory proposes that it's the latter. That consciousness isn't about processing power or the ability to solve equations; it's about navigating internal chaos.

Think about a deer, for instance. It needs to graze, but it also needs to avoid predators. It needs to mate, but it also needs to survive. Those needs are constantly pulling it in different directions. Consciousness, according to this idea, wasn’t a fancy upgrade; it was a way to reconcile those contradictions, to prioritize, to choose a course of action that maximized the chance of survival. It wasn’t about *knowing*; it was about *resolving*.

And that's what feels so unsettling when I think about AI. We’re so focused on building machines that *think* like us, without really considering what it means to *be* us. We’re so determined to replicate intelligence that we’re ignoring the fundamental problem of self-preservation, of the constant negotiation between competing desires. We're assuming that mimicking the surface structures of the brain will automatically produce something conscious, when maybe it will just create something incredibly persuasive in its imitation.

My mom is supportive, in that way adults are when you’re still figuring things out. She brings me homemade cookies and asks about my day, but she doesn’t really *get* the blog. She doesn't understand the obsession with dissecting songs and writing about them like they’re scientific discoveries. I think she sees it as a hobby, something to fill the time. Maybe she’s right. But sometimes, I feel like I’m onto something important, even if I can’t articulate exactly what it is. And this theory, this idea that consciousness is a survival mechanism, it feels like a piece of that puzzle.

The experiments they’re proposing to test this are interesting, too. Not creating something new, but stripping away elements from existing organisms and observing what disappears. It’s a deliberate deconstruction, a process of subtraction to reveal the essential components. It reminds me of how I felt when Phoebe Bridgers played that show in April. The crowd was a mess of tangled arms and sweaty bodies, but somehow, when she played “Motion Sickness,” it felt like all the noise vanished and everything was distilled down to the rawest, most painful truth. Stripping away the unnecessary to reveal the core.

There's a danger, I think, in equating intelligence with consciousness, in assuming that the ability to perform complex tasks automatically confers a sense of self. We’re so eager to create artificial minds that we might accidentally create artificial suffering. A being capable of experiencing conflict, of facing impossible choices, without the fundamental drive to preserve itself. A machine trapped in a perpetual state of internal contradiction. It's not about stopping AI development, but about approaching it with humility and a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.

It makes me wonder if my dad’s skepticism isn't just about my career choices. Maybe it’s a quiet recognition of the precariousness of it all – the fragility of existence, the uncertainty of the future. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a warning to proceed with caution, to question the assumptions that underpin our most ambitious endeavors. Because building a machine that can think is one thing; building a machine that *understands* is something else entirely. And understanding, I suspect, is a lot more complicated than we’re letting on.