>>All I was saying was that metadata, or data about data, is what consciousness
is...
>getting a little pretentious, aren;t we metaboy?
IMHO, and as discussed earlier, the universe is nothing but symbols, and consciousness is the metadata that orders those symbols. Here's a better example of what I mean than the other one I was using: imagine crashing your bike badly, looking up, and seeing people on the street laughing. What do you make of it? In the West, we would be horrified and offended at people taking pleasure in our injury. In fact, it is metadata the tells us how to interpret the data (injury, laughter) that way. A Japanese person in the exact same predicament, would be reassured, because in Japan, people would laugh in such a situation to show the victim that it wasn't so bad. Same DATA, different METADATA. There is also a metadata that tells you you should be offended if someone takes pleasure in your injury, btw.
You can go deeper of course, and say that metadata tells you the difference between scratches on a piece of paper and words on a page. And metadata that tells you that that mess of pieces and colours underneath you is a 'chair'. You can't claim to know for sure what's in front of your face. Consciousness is layers of metadata. Period. Flames?
*Pleromaboy*
"Jesus said, 'Know what is in front of your face,
and what is hidden from you will be disclosed
to you.'"
- Gospel
of Thomas, 5
"Damn, damn, damn, damn."
- some guy on the bus