Beyond Zero and One - Machines, Psychedelics, and Consciousness

Andrew Smart’s Beyond Zero and One: Machines, Psychedelics, and Consciousness offers a provocative exploration of the boundaries between artificial intelligence, human consciousness, and the enigmatic realms opened by psychedelic experiences. The book challenges prevailing assumptions in both technology and neuroscience, suggesting that understanding consciousness requires moving beyond binary thinking and fixed computational paradigms. By bridging the world of machines and the altered states of mind induced by psychedelics, Smart invites readers to reconsider what it means to be conscious, whether machines can ever achieve genuine awareness, and how human subjective experience remains fundamentally mysterious and irreducible to...