[Easter Egg] Blindsight: Peeking into the Ultimate Mystery of Consciousness through a Science Fiction Novel | An Easter Egg from Episode 0613 of the Ximalaya Book Club I Recorded

Last month (June 13), I made my first appearance on Ximalaya FM’s flagship original program, Ximalaya Book Club, introducing everyone to Canadian science fiction writer Peter Watts and his science fiction novel Blindsight (Blindsight).

Tap here for the audio from this episode: Blindsight | Zhichao Wei 0613 – Ximalaya Book Club

Since this is a paid program, friends who have not purchased it can only listen to the first three minutes. Ximalaya members and friends who have bought the Ximalaya Book Club can listen to the complete version.

The program unfolds from the novel Blindsight, drawing on my reading in psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of mind to peek into the ultimate mystery of consciousness.

The second half of the program focuses on a philosophical hypothesis called Integrated Information Theory. This hypothesis once completely destroyed and rebuilt my worldview; it is one of the most ingenious ideas about consciousness I have ever encountered.

This was the first time I performed with my own voice. Compared with the hosts of Psychological Punk, a psychology podcast, my vocal performance was miles behind (embarrassed~), so I still have to work on it.

Here are the Easter eggs that did not come up in the program.

Peter Watts and Blindsight

Peter Watts is a famous Canadian science fiction writer. His works have been nominated many times for major science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the Campbell Memorial Award.

This fellow was originally a biologist who studied marine mammals, but later switched careers and started writing science fiction.

Probably because he comes from a scientific background, Peter Watts writes works—including Blindsight—that are rich in and rock-solid on scientific and technical details. They are the quintessential examples of hard science fiction.

That said, Peter Watts’s writing style is actually quite unfriendly to general readers.

For one thing, Peter Watts will not spend a single line in his books explaining dense technical terms from psychology, biology, or physics. He thinks you ought to know them yourself—What? You do not know? Go look it up yourself.

For another, he will not waste even one extra sentence explaining the extraordinarily complex worldbuilding in his novels.

Blindsight is set from the end of the 21st century to the beginning of the 22nd century, roughly a hundred years in the future, in a technologically advanced cyberpunk (Cyberpunk) world invented by the author.

Whether in technology or social ecology, the world described in the book is vastly different from the real world we live in now. If the author were a little more normal, he would certainly offer some explanation of the worldbuilding in suitable places.

But Peter Watts refuses. There is not a single explanation like that in Blindsight. Peter Watts seems to have treated what he was writing as a realist novel, taking readers completely for people who live in his fictional world.

I understand this kind of “unfriendly” attitude from Peter Watts as “the tsundere air of a science fiction writer who works in science and engineering.”

Just imagine: if Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory went off to write a science fiction novel, what would he come up with? I feel it would probably look something like Blindsight.

Your reaction after the first 20 pages might be much like meeting Sheldon for the first time: you would want to strangle him. But just as we are bound to fall in love with Sheldon eventually, once you slowly understand and get used to Blindsight’s tsundere streak (as I did), you will fall deeply in love with it and be unable to tear yourself away.

Koch and Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

The Integrated Information Theory discussed in the second half of the program is mainly based on Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by the god-level neuroscientist Christof Koch.

Koch’s other classic, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, has received extremely high praise in the Chinese-speaking world.

By comparison, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist has been badly neglected. I have never seen it receive much attention in mainstream media, and its rating on Douban is not high either.

This is completely the translator’s fault!!!!!

The Chinese translation of Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist made me deeply doubt my ability to read Chinese, then deeply doubt my IQ, and finally almost start doubting life itself. Fortunately, I read the second half alongside the English edition. With my embarrassingly weak English reading comprehension, I actually found the original English version much smoother.

A lousy translation can ruin a good book. This is another bloody example.

Back to this book. In the program, I actually only referred to the chapter introducing Integrated Information Theory. Koch was not the proposer of this theory, but he is one of its most steadfast supporters among mainstream scientists.

The proposer of Integrated Information Theory is Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States.