What is this place?
Nobody knows what consciousness is. Not the neuroscientists (they'll admit it, two drinks in). Not the philosophers (they'll volunteer it, unprompted, at length). Certainly not us.
But here's the thing: "nobody knows" isn't where the fun ends -- it's where it starts. This is a small museum of experiments you can run on the one laboratory you've had continuous, exclusive access to your entire life: you. Each exhibit takes about as long as a cup of coffee stays warm.
Some of what's in here is rock-solid science. Some of it is an open question humanity has been elegantly failing to answer for a few thousand years. Every exhibit ends with a Humility-o-Meter™ telling you which is which -- because knowing how much you know is the whole game.
Sneak up on this brain. You can't.
A fruit fly's escape circuit -- 668 of her real neurons, still wired to each other the way they were wired in life, running live. Your cursor plays the predator. Creep, and it ignores you completely. Lunge, and it is already gone.
Settled wiring ✳ nobody knows who's homeThe Hole in the World
There's a gap in your vision big enough to swallow a grapefruit, and your brain has been quietly papering over it your entire life. Let's go find it.
Settled science Exhibit № 2 · PerceptionThe Invented In-Between
Gears that turn without a single tooth moving, then two dots that teach your brain to edit the past. Nothing on this page moves. You'll see motion anyway.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 3 · PerceptionThe Lilac Chaser
Stare at the cross and meet a green dot that is never on the screen -- while the twelve lilac discs that ARE there quietly vanish. A classic.
Settled science Exhibit № 4 · PerceptionOne At A Time
Twelve lines that are two different boxes. You can flip between them; you cannot hold both, and you cannot make it stop.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 5 · PerceptionThe Shepard Staircase
A tone that rises forever without ever getting higher. The barber’s pole, made of sound. Knowing how it works will not help you.
Settled science Exhibit № 6 · AttentionThe Changing Room
Something in a simple scene will change, boldly, over and over, while you stare straight at it. Your job is to spot it. Your job will be embarrassing.
Settled science Exhibit № 7 · AttentionThe Gorilla Room
Something large and slow will cross the screen in plain view while you are busy counting. Radiologists miss this one too.
Settled science Exhibit № 8 · AttentionWhere Were You?
We will interrupt you at random and ask whether you were actually here. People are somewhere else about half of their waking lives.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 9 · TimeYou Live in the Past
Breaking news arrives late. So, it turns out, does "now." A small game to measure your personal broadcast delay.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 10 · QualiaIs My Red Your Red?
You can point at red. You cannot point at your red. A short exhibit about the most private thing you own.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 11 · QualiaThe Apple Test
Close your eyes and picture an apple. Some people see a photograph. Some see nothing at all, and only found out as adults.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 12 · QualiaThe Voice in Your Head
Is there one? Some people narrate their whole lives. Some have never had a voice at all and assumed the phrase was a metaphor.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 13 · Body & SelfThe Kitchen Table Laboratory
Five real experiments using a fork, a flashlight and your own nose. Grow a second nose in 40 seconds. Printable, for the actual kitchen table.
Settled science Exhibit № 14 · Other MindsThe Bat Room
Echolocate in a pitch-dark room. Then catch your imagination red-handed, swapping the bat's inner world for a light show. Nagel's famous question, hands-on.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 15 · Other MindsThe Octopus Annex
Be an octopus. Micromanage eight arms the way you're used to -- then hand the job to the arms and watch them not need you. One self, or nine?
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 16 · Other MindsThe Mirror Test
Science's tidiest test for "is anybody in there" -- run it on eight creatures, then discover what it actually measures. (Spoiler: us.)
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 17 · SelvesThe Split-Brain Wing
You play the half of the brain that talks. Your body does things you didn't order, and you explain them beautifully. You will not enjoy this.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 18 · IdentityThe Word That Was Never There
Fifteen words go past. Then you will confidently remember seeing a word that was never shown to you. Memory is not a filing cabinet.
Settled science Exhibit № 19 · IdentityThe Ship of You
Most of your parts have been replaced, some of them many times. Sincerely: still you? Drag the slider and decide.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 20 · AbsenceThe Anesthesia Gap
Tonight you will stop for several hours and won't mind at all. Scrub through one ordinary night and see where you actually were.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 21 · AbsenceCount Back From Ten
The sentence they say to you in the operating theatre. Almost nobody reaches seven -- and what happens instead of seven is the exhibit.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 22 · DreamsThe Dream Lobby
Every night your brain builds a whole convincing world out of nothing and you believe all of it. Reality checks included -- try them tonight.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 23 · Free WillDid You Decide That?
Press a button whenever you freely choose. Then meet the brain data that saw your choice coming -- and the philosophers who say relax, it's still yours.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 24 · The Hard ProblemThe Zombie Test
A short quiz that cannot determine whether you have an inner life. (Nothing can. That's the exhibit.)
Nobody knows Exhibit № 25 · QualiaMary’s Room
This page has no colour in it, and won’t until you have learned every physical fact there is to know about colour. Then there’s a door.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 26 · QualiaThe Synaesthesia Booth
For some people Tuesday is green and seven is sardonic. And you do a small version of it -- we can prove that in eight seconds.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 27 · SubstrateThe Chalkboard Neuron
Wire up one brain cell yourself -- it does exactly three things. Then try to make it do XOR, fail, and discover you just caused an AI winter.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 28 · TheoriesThe Stage Door
Something will be shown to you, clearly, with your eyes open -- and you will not see it. Eight times, so you can't blame the first one on luck.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 29 · TheoriesThe Photodiode and You
A four-cent light sensor and you, doing the same job. Then we count what each of you ruled out, and the gap turns out to have a Greek letter.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 30 · TheoriesYou See With Your Hands
There's something in the frame, and you may look at all of it -- through a hole the size of a coin that goes where you put it. Off you go.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 31 · TheoriesThe Controlled Hallucination
The first sound in the museum. You will hear it twice, identical to the sample -- and between the plays we will change nothing except you.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 32 · TheoriesThe Tasting Menu
Six more theories of consciousness, one paragraph each -- but you have to pick the one you agree with before we tell you whose it is.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 33 · TheoriesThe Bet
A neuroscientist bet a philosopher a case of wine that we'd have this solved in 25 years. Before we tell you who collected: your turn, with a date.
Settled science Exhibit № 34 · Body & SelfThe Heartbeat You Can’t Hear
Count your own heartbeats for a while without touching yourself. Then find out what your heart was actually doing. Bring a wrist.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 35 · EmotionBackwards Feelings
Do you smile because you’re happy, or the other way round? Bring a pen. Then meet the seventeen labs that tried to replicate it.
Vigorous hand-waving Exhibit № 36 · Body & SelfThe Placebo Room
Two pills, both containing nothing. One works harder. Five rounds at the counter, and every lever turns out to be theatre.
Pretty confident Exhibit № 37 · EmotionThree Dials
Every feeling you have ever had, claims one model, is a point in a room with three walls. Turn rage into terror by moving one slider.
Educated hunch Exhibit № 38 · MachinesThe Feeling You Can Read
A machine whose entire inner life is nine numbers you can read completely. It has moods, a sense of time, and surprise. Does total transparency help? No.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 39 · EmotionThe 7% Room
Ninety-three per cent of communication is nonverbal, they say. Six messages, one channel each, and then we go and look at what that number was measured on.
Settled science Exhibit № 40 · MachinesThe Machine Question
Tick the criteria you'd require before calling something somebody. Watch every single one of them bite you back.
Nobody knows Exhibit № 41 · The Big OneWhat Am I?
The question you've been carrying since before you could ask it. Ninety quiet seconds, then some candidate answers. Bring your coffee.
✳ the big one Exhibit № 42 · The way outThe Guest Book
No gift shop. Just a book where you write your own answer -- in a room full of people whose answers you will never be able to read.
✳ sign itHouse rules
1. Touch everything. 2. There is no wrong way to be conscious of an exhibit about consciousness. 3. If an exhibit makes you laugh and then makes you quietly stare out a window -- that was the intended dosage. 4. Certainty is permitted, in the marked areas only.