For decades I have believed that the "now" was undervalued in AI/AGI. "Now" is a single integrated idea including past, present, and future. It's not three separate things... How to capture that in computing? It's still a challenge.
On Sun, Sep 13, 2026 at 4:32 AM Linas Vepstas <[email protected]> wrote: > To friends and acquaintances interested in philosophy, AGI, physics, a new > blog post: > > > https://linas.org/blog/2026/09/subjective-being-ness-follows-from-free-will/ > > The subjective experience of being, living, existing, feeling, > experiencing and acting arises precisely because we have free will, because > we have the ability to direct and create a future. I claim more: being > trapped in the here-and-now is a fact of physics; it can be mathematized. I > claim that any agent with executive control over it’s future will also feel > alive and aware and experience the subjective inner life of feelings and > emotions. This includes not just animals, but also plants and even > bacteria. > > The ingress of possible futures from the Platonic realm into physical > reality happens directly in the here-and-now, and the willful selection of > possible futures manifests as conscious awareness of the subjective self. > > This essay is an attempt to put a dent in the "hard problem of > consciousness" by placing a mathematical, physical foundation under it. > > I hope you enjoy it. (p.s. no LLM's or AI's were used to write this; these > are my words. It took several years to put this together.) > > -- Linas Vepstas > *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T9e51fc70bbc4e9fc-M0fa22591b0ade2ee29b2a891> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T9e51fc70bbc4e9fc-M4d1e2d1e64be9f193cbfa182 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
