The ego tunnel
by Thomas Metzinger · first published 2009
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible, neuroscience-grounded overview of consciousness and the self as a constructed model rather than a real thing; suits readers who want to move past armchair philosophy of mind and those curious about AI.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
We’re used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain — an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is “a virtual self in a virtual reality.” But if the self is not “real,” why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it? Do we still have souls, free will, personal autonomy, or moral accountability? In a time when the science of cogn
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…sidequel, Echopraxia. You can also find them bundled together under the name Firefall. And I think out of his main works, Blindsight is probably the most accessible. It also led me to Thomas Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self” [2], which Watts used as a source material in his research and had good things to say about. The Rifters series is great, too, but there’s a sort of…
on “John Carpenter’s “Planaria”: Or, the New Individualism” ↗Somewhat related is Thomas Metzinger’s The ego tunnel. Metzinger is an applied philosopher, directly examining what is consciousness as can be determined and backed up with neuroscience. I loved Antonio Damasio’s the feeling of what happens, and the ego…
on “Vipassana for Hackers [pdf]” ↗…the spiritual perspective, which is not always the most intellectually rigorous perspective. For a more scientific treatment of the underlying neuroscience, I'd recommend Thomas Metzinger's work; "The Ego Tunnel" is a good start. My experience is that understanding the physiological mechanisms behind our awareness, cognition, and emotion gives us a better map of how we might engineer different mental states,…
on “What is Enlightenment? (1784)” ↗I found Metzinger’s ‘The ego tunnel’ immensely helpful in identifying the constituent parts that we mean by consciousness. Everything the physicist Sean Carroll says about consciousness rings true to me. It is only an illusion in the…
on “Toward a Mature Science of Consciousness” ↗Thomas Metzinger addresses this exact question in his book _The Ego Tunnel_ ([1] a great non-technical overview of his work in Philosophy-o-Mind/Neuroscience), and he comes down strongly on the side that any artificial generation of "consciousness" would be reckless and could…
on “Human Brain Project: $1.61 billion to achieve human brain emulation by 2024” ↗The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger, contains a revelatory research upon nature of human consciousness, makes me question about what existing AIs do wrong, and what is exactly the human intellect, feeling and emotion.
on “Ask HN: What books are you reading?” ↗…the myth of The Fall, as the emergence of consciousness, one is no longer one with nature but now separate from it. Metziger's book is a good overview of such investigations: https://www.amazon.com/Ego-Tunnel-Science-Mind-Myth/dp/04650...
on “What's Up with Those Voices in Your Head?” ↗Thomas Metzinger’s ‘The Ego tunnel’ is a very good book picking apart the phenomenon of consciousness.
on “Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind?” ↗Consciousness: Thomas Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel” Life and death: Molecular biology
on “Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time” ↗I didn’t read the entire thread of previous discussion. The referenced article is consistent with the work of Thomas Metzinger who wrote a very accessible book called “The Ego Tunnel” as a follow on to his more detailed and scholarly treatise “Being No One” He introduced me to the ideas in this paper that he induced from his own observations of his “mystical” experiences. It is…
on “How Did Consciousness Evolve? (2016)” ↗"The ego tunnel" by Thomas Metzinger ( 2009 ). It offers an amazing insight on the concept of the self and the inner workings of conscience.
on “Ask HN: Summer reading” ↗I think this book fits nicely in here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ego-Tunnel-Science-Mind/dp/0465020...
on “Consciousness on-off switch discovered deep in brain” ↗Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Quine - Two Dogmas of Empiricism Stirner - The Ego and its Own Nietzche - All of them, really Metzinger - The Ego Tunnel
on “Ask HN: What are the books that changed the perspective of your life?” ↗Thomas Metzinger studying phenomena of neural correlates wrote "The Ego Tunnel". After reading his book I realised that perceived time and space and perception itself are just complicated models, run on our wetware, and these are result of evolution by abaptation, including culture…
on “The Unreality of Time” ↗These are not trivial at all. Read Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel" for more information. There are neural nets within neural nets, but there is no such thing as "me", "you" or "I". Also additionally Dawkins's "The Magic of Reality" is quite a food for thought.
on “Why read old philosophy?” ↗