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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

2-boxers has far more riding on the problem than 1-boxers. Specifically, if Omega predicts what the 2-boxer will do, they learn that they are predictable! Presumably, their belief in their own unpredictability is of sufficient strength that they 2-box. Thus, they should 1-box and at least be rich.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

#newcomb #oneboxer #philosophy I've heard people still disagree about the Newcomb's problem. I think it is silly to be a 2-boxer, so I wrote a little paper about it: philarchive.org/rec/NILNPU While the main analysis won't convince an insistent 2-boxer, I think, the discussion does suggest that...

philarchive.org

Andre Sevenius Nilsen, Newcomb's Paradox Under Epistemic Uncertainty: A Two-Stage Policy Analysis - PhilArchive

Newcomb’s paradox is still debated despite its deceptively simple setup. Here we introduce a two-stage policy framework parametrized by pre-entry and in-room 1-boxing propensities (α,β), predictor err...

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Recently read through Kleiner and Hoels papers on falsification, substitution, and their impact on physicalistic theories of consciousness (and now, on LLM consciousness or lack thereof). Any good articles discussing these papers or take them further? #consciousness

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Thanks to my collaborators @algarwegian.bsky.social, johan storm, Imad Bajwa, @gernoternst.bsky.social, @theneurocookies.bsky.social , Arnfinn Aamodt, and Benjamin Thurer.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

unconscious in "unconscious states", and I think that's an issue most empirical and theoretical work on consicousness really doesn't discuss enough. I've written about that here: www.frontiersin.org/journals/hum...

frontiersin.org

Frontiers | Are we really unconscious in “unconscious” states? Common assumptions revisited

In the field of consciousness science, there is a tradition to categorize certain states such as slow-wave non-REM sleep and deep general anesthesia as “unco...

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

this is not evident in EEG. Either option would be a minor (or major depending on how you interpret it) blow. Either deep sedation is not useful as a contrast in terms of consciousness, or many existing methods thought to be sensitive to consciousness' absence are not. I don't think we are

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

c) we find no evidence in EEG that there's anything different between periods associated with an experience (dreams) and periods associated with no experience From this, a natural conclusion is that either we dream all the time during deep sedation, but forget - or we occassionally dream but

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

a) we dream a lot during deep propofol sedation, a state which is normally described as an unconscious state b) forceful awakening from within the sedated state yields the occasional report of no experience (classically taken as a sign of unconsciousness)

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Reposted by Andre s nilsen

Bjørn E Juel @algarwegian.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

In #consci we commonly use altered states as contrasting cases to understand how changes in consciousness relate to changes in brain properties. But far too little is known about what exactly differentiates them... Both in phenomenology and in the brain. Want to help clarify the lay of the land?

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Alt: a cartoon monkey holding a red sign that says please contribute

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

True, but except for memory and connectedness which are easy to operationalize, a quantitative change in content or phenomenological aspects seems hard to even conceptually define beyond other vague terms like richness or diversity of experience. But I need to dive deeper into this literature.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Thanks! Yeah, the question is what a "different mode of consciousness" mean? It's easy to say that dreams and waking are different, but how? Just in terms of connectedness? Content is also different, but can it be parametrized? Dream decoding is posisble, somewhat, so it can't be THAT different.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

We have a study in review doing just this (awakening people)! Hopefully it'll pass this round and be out soon. Granted, it's RASS-4 not RASS-5, but deeply sedated nontheless. There are some studies already doing something similar (nordstrom, sandin 1996; casey et al 2022). But yes recall is an issue

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Curious about your speculations about this, and how this might generalize to sedation and anesthesia, which also show huge variance in report rates.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Nice work. Agree with the conclusion. I'd go as far as to argue sleep is a completely conscious state.the huge variance in report rate between studies and subjects for certain states suggests to me that methodology and sample characteristics explains more than variance in dream generation.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Agree. Pondering further, the artificial consciousness question will not be settled by science, but the science that allows conscious AI companions will be preferred over science that doesn't, much like a sci. theory of c. that doesn't allow animal consciousness is not considered seriously.

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Andre s nilsen @turntwine.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Interesting. My naive interpretation is that p consciousness of specific content (e.g. red) is distributed and that multiple pathways exists, but with the dominant path gone it takes time to 'resolve' and 'settle' a percept, like a weak attractor vs strong. It's not a without p, but a before p!

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