I promised a fuller account when I had finished the book (#1456628).

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness is science journalist Michael Pollan’s latest creation. It deals with a surprisingly wide number of themes and fields, and we jump around a lot: from intricate neurobiology of plants(!) to stream-of-consciousness literature to AI and to Buddhist meditation practices. You’d think that works — illustrating many different ways of thinking about the mind — but all it achieves is supreme confusion and disorientation.

In his interview with Joe Rogan, Pollan said the structure for his books is learning with the reader… “I’m kind of an idiot on page 1.” In this book, I’m not so sure he, or we, are so much wiser on page 239.

In fact, he says so outright:

"I find myself not at all sure what to believe, or anything. I'm abashed to say I know less now than I did when, naively, I set out to unravel the mystery of consciousness." (p. 225)

In The Economist review I cited a few weeks back #1456628 I said:

Disagree about "page-turner" since the prose is dense and the topic insanely academically complicated neurobiology,

After finishing the book I maintain that that’s the problem. Additionally, there’s some stunning humblebrag involved in throwing needlessly complicated words at you. Long ago I observed that eloquent and highly educated authors sometimes do this:

You’re not impressing anyone when you’re cluttering your texts. You’re not pleasant to read when your sentences are a mess to get through and your use of words is clunky and require constant help from a dictionary.

"prurient" and "chiliastic" are kind of unnecessary; adding "hypnagogic" to my internal lexicon of English was not an enriching experience. (I'm not better off for having considered the ugl "nonegoistical" awareness.)

Pollan's journey tries to give us the lay of the land of consciousness research, elevated by some stray ventures into literature, psychedelics, memory. In stark contrast to AIs, he lands -- via heavy use of interviewees -- on embodiment of the being that carries the consciousness being important. I remarked on the yogi-unified-body idea:

"Feelings are the language in which the body speaks to the mind" (pp. 67-68)"Feelings are the language in which the body speaks to the mind" (pp. 67-68)

Per Antonio Damasio, a neurologist Pollan discusses in this chapter, "feelings are the body's way of getting the mind's attention in order to help keep us alive." (p. 69)

We are encouraged to think of the body as a support system for the brain, when, as Damasio reminds us, the very opposite is true." (p. 72)

The embodied experience of a mind seems crucial, at least to this embodied conscious mind_.

Takes us to page 104 to fully carve back the simplified and mistaken Descartes idea of mind and (physical) body be separate: in the brain the hardware/software distinction breaks down: because software changes literally reconfigure the physical properties of the brain itself,

Your brain is materially different from mine precisely because it has been shaped, literally, by different life experiences—that is, by consciousness itself. Brains are simply not interchangeable, neither with computers nor with other brains. (p. 104)

Whether on the scale of evolution or a single lifetime, our minds are formed by friction with the physical world and the living brings with whom we share it."
What we and our fellow animals have in common, and what is missing from the shadow world [=Plato's cave shadows] in which artificial agents exist, is, of course, the body—what it knows of the world and all that it contributes to feeling and consciousness in turn. (p. 116)

For the topic that mostly came up on Joe Rogan, AI, Pollan writes

I find this a deeply unsettling prospect, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm getting comfortable with the idea of sharing consciousness with other animals (and possibly even with plants, in my case), and I'd be happy to admit them into an expanding circle of moral considerations. But machines? (pp. 99-100)

OVERALL IMPRESSIONOVERALL IMPRESSION

It's too dense. It attempts to deal, lightly but not lightly enough, with two outrageously incomprehensible fields: computer science and neuroscience -- among many others. So Pollan slaps a bunch of rapid-fire one-liners from countless interviews with hot shots, merge that with some first-person experiences of tripping and talking to plants or meditating in the New Mexico mountains — and Bob's your uncle.

The most memorable and powerful moments from, e.g., This is Your Mind on Plants #1431543 (which for some asinine publishing reason has a secondary, American title "How to Change Your Mind" #973341) was Pollan tinkering, telling us — narrating, introspecting, observing — what happened as he ingested certain plants or, in the case of coffee, abstained from it. Then he overlaid that with physiology 101 for us dummies who followed along reasonably well.

In A World Appears, he overdid that; too much science infighting, too little tripping. We got the trademarked Pollan treatment only on scant occasions. (In his defense, how are you supposed to provide a first-person narration of AI's consciousness? Of which of the eighty-seven(?) theories of the mind makes much sense? You can't — which would probably have been a good observation to make before embarking on this excess quest.)

It’s a little bit of a letdown to have a respected journalist walk you through an intricate topic and arrive… nowhere:

"after my five-year journey into the nature and workings of consciousness, I somehow knew less than I did when I started." (225)"after my five-year journey into the nature and workings of consciousness, I somehow knew less than I did when I started." (225)

Consciousness is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries, yes, but it is also so very simple it can fit into a sentence. I open my eyes and a world appears. (p. 239)

Pollan is cool, I like following along his journeys — psychedelic pun very much intended.
This book is not it. Do better next time, sir.