Roy Baumeister - What is Self Awareness? 

This doesn’t sound like “what is awareness”, but attributes of awareness. It’s interesting that the most important spark of life has no attributes, only a state of knowing the now.

Seems to me that even if we weren't self aware, our senses and brain would still have the exact same information available to it and would still be able to react in all the ways he's suggesting is caused by awareness.

what gets me even more is attaining self awareness in lucid dreams.

"One of the most profound and important aspects in all of your education, regardless of what you do in life, is alertness. It seems so commonplace that no one thinks of it when they talk about personal development, spiritual training and so forth. People talk about awareness, but awareness is not the same as alertness. When you are alert, you are watching things around you. When you are aware, you are rarely aware of things around you. You are aware of yourself thinking of things around you. When you are alert, you are looking with very little thinking involved. If you were trying to listen to a conversation in the next house down the street, you would have to listen very carefully, yes? You couldn’t be thinking, “How am I doing right now? Here I am listening to the conversation in the next house. Why am I here anyway? What’s going on with me? I feel this way and my body hurts.” That is the difference between alertness and awareness. Awareness is very important, but alertness is more important. The person of Knowledge is extremely alert, which makes life very exciting. When you become aware of yourself and your mind too much, it bogs you down and leads to a very unfortunate kind of self-preoccupation. It is giving too much attention to something that is inherently confused. Besides, you have to be outside of your mind to do anything with it. Otherwise, you are running about trying to plug up the holes and keep it all moving along, like a car that is always in disrepair. It is like always working on your car and never going anywhere! Life conspires to make you alert because until you are alert, you only see those things that are relevant to your interests and pursuits and nothing else. Therefore, your frame of reference is far too limited to comprehend the meaning of your life and to experience and enjoy the Mystery of your life." A quote from *Wisdom from the Greater Community, Book 1* - Chapter 27: Disappointment, a free online book of preparation for a future that will be unlike the past, by Marshall Vian Summers.

Great thinking content. Thank you.. I've always felt like I was in my *Gundam* suit. It has gotten scares from battles, armored up for more protection and wiser from surviving. It's mines and I accept it while we go through our journey of life.

Being aware of being aware is our inherent Wholeness of Being, wherein perceiver, perceiving and perceived are a 3 in 1 unity, no division. This way of Being is in perfect alignment with the Absolute, the Infinite, Eternal Whole that is ever greater than the sum of it's constituents, where everything changes for the better.

It takes a special kind of group of people to talk about and listen to these topics as most folks nowadays don't give two rips about their existence, hell most people don't even care to look to see what's going on around them.

mirror and self awareness ! regarding kids and some other animals that is related mostly to consciousness type two but for adult humans it is mixed both consciousness type on and type two (more complicated than that).

Internal self-awareness provides a definite evolution advantage in that it can provide greater appreciation of self and thus enhanced self-respect. Most will focus on just the actions that self-awareness should trigger but all actions are problematic in terms of outcomes. Focusing on the innate ability to discern self-awareness reinforces the value of yourself to yourself.

Awesome

It is interesting that Baumeister espouses Freud's psychoanalytic theory of 'id, ego and super-ego', without once mentioning him! It is also interesting that he discusses self-awareness without once mentioning sentience and/or consciousness. I would suggest that self-awareness isn't simply a social construct relating to social conformity, but rather the essense of 'nosce te ipsum', our ability to 'know thyself', gnosis... to know what it is that we are. 'As above, so below'...

Be aware of the self awareness!

This is the first episode I’ve watched, where I’ve frowned at the entirety of the guest thesis. He is talking backwards. He’s saying we have to be self conscious (rather than self aware) because we live in groups. That self consciousness was needed to live in groups. However, . It’s probably true that we saw more success in living in groups and so from that, self consciousness was borne. I’m also puzzled at self awareness vs self consciousness. Ive always understood the first to be reflected by descarte- I think therefore I am. And the latter to becoming overly concerned about others perceptions of you. As an aside, Neither are the same as being conscious. Robert started with a good example of self awareness: talking and knowing you present there and are the source of that talking; being aware of being aware. Or later. The idea that - and more other animals have now demonstrated this too - identifying a reflection as oneself usually by reacting to some distinguishing feature. But the other chap, Roy?, was not tlak8ng about awareness, but selfconciousness . Ironically he didn’t seem aware of this… It is probable that ancestors who were self conscious of their behaviours towards others faired better in surviving long enough to procreate and thrive via pooled resources and protection. Even more so when we formed bigger and bigger groups or societies, which also assisted survival. Most modern people judge themselves by the cues of others and have little idea of who they are. People living in hot weather societies usually look after their bodies more as they are more often on show. Hoarding and such anti social bevioirs are usually done by those on the periphery of society. Notwithstanding all that, it’s hard to experiment with modern humans to discover why they display such tendencies. We would have to consider socialisation. My children are probably very self aware when outside the home, because they have been socialised to be so. They are also encouraged to spend some time getting to know who they are to lessen their reliance on looking for others social cues as a checking process to ‘make sure they are acting right.’ I suggest on of the reasons many modern peopl fail to think for themselves, is an over reliance on trying to mirror others people’s behaviour; mainly because those other people are probably also mirroring behaviour. And by doing so, they fail to get to know who they are. Robert is an exemplar of societal socialisation. He masterfully holds agreeable conversations with many different people across a spectrum of ideas, and - so it seems - is always welcomed back. For his part in that trade he gets to discuss things he is deeply interested in and make a show out of those discussions to put bread on the table. He knows who he is but is very empathetic toward others. His empathy is a mix of self consciousness and self awareness cast toward a third party; a theory of mind awareness. There is also a school of thought that humans were not always self aware and being so is a relatively new thing.

Self awareness helps one to see what one can do in, an environment or in situation? One is aware of abilities, relation, needs, responsibility in a given context?

There are lots of versions of awareness. Hunger, comfort etc. But I think this philosophical question is in relation to awareness of being alive. Aware of the beginning and ending of our self. From a cultural view, it is even more interesting to wonder about our awareness of the needs of others. Like, for instance, watching monkeys de lice each other.

I would say, self awareness begins realizing what are my thoughts, and what are instructed thoughts to a subject or to a topic that modifies the meaning to a general opinion. I can only be self aware when I can distinguish between my personal thoughts, and influenced informations, teachings, education, traditions, that will guide me into a wrong awareness.

my self-awareness kicked in for the first time, when I was old enough to understand that I had a dirty diaper and that it was my fault!

That we compare ourselves to others… whither that knowing? That knowing is the self. We know that we know that we know … infinitely. That knowledge per se is not the self. The self is the Knowing. A phenomenon, not a noumenon. It is not a thing. It is a state. The experienced world deals with noumena ostensibly perceiving other noumena and phenomena. The underlying reality itself is a phenomenon.

He says you can have language without consciousness but if all language is produced by a conscious entity than is that really true?

I'm afraid everything he said doesn't explain self awareness rather explains social awareness To understand self awareness,i think one must go beyond one self which i i think is extremely difficult thing to do.

You become self aware by securing the body.

When you become self aware you begin to consider how to sustain individuality and form beyond the parameters of this matrix

Self-awareness is like an algorithm that can monitor and correct itself. It seems that only humans are capable of doing it although some people are not aware they can do it or choose not to do it.

I know what is going on, but this is for future generations "they are your decedents too", why I write ? of course I am not interested in that but it is my responsibility to warn and protect my kind especially future generations nothing more, they will need all I have wrote to survive. they talk about consciousness type one, awareness is side product of larger process and consciousness type one is part of this process. there is unconscious awareness too, through consciousness type two, it is complicated process but this the important part "upshot". self awareness has different degrees depends on how much a person understand how his brain, thoughts, .... etc works.but it is related to what mentioned above.

Did you ever see your behavior in another person, be repulsed by it causing you to change your behavior? That seems to be consistent with the purpose of self-awareness as presented here.

as if there is nothing, they can not hide that for long time, hopefully future generations will survive as rational intelligent entities.

We create a "self". Hoffstedders "I am a Strange Loop".

What “being” is “being” aware of “being!?” The Second Ultimate Trilogy!? Or is it, Being 3 into 1? One is becoming to question!

Admitting he has no answer to the "private self-awareness" question adds to his credibility as a person

The evolutionary advantages of inner/private self awareness seem obvious. For instance, if you know that you are getting too hot, you know that you need to find some shade or a lake to cool down.

I think internal self-awareness is an important component of general intelligence. Because one the biggest problems with Artificial Intelligence now is it doesn't know what it doesn't know. It gives wrong answers with total confidence. Genuinely intelligent people are aware when they don't know something. They are aware of what they know and what they don't know. And this prevents them from making big mistakes. But AI has no such internal awareness of what it knows and what it doesn't know. And that's why people can be trusted to make good decisions, but not AI.

The argument that consciousness is somehow necessary for regulation / feedback, etc. is illogical it can easily be disproven: The body temperature of a person is regulated, but this metabolic feedback mechanism is not at all conscious. Another counterexample is provided by most simple industrial robot or by a the example of a self-driving car. These devices react to external stimuli, but they are aware neither of the external stimuli nor of the mechanism dealing with the parameters representing said stimuli.

Self-awareness is an illusion, as we do not have a self. We are aware our physical condition, our behavior, and our thoughts.

49 seconds in and he has avoided the question

11.11

I think ,.therefore I am ,I think.

A lot of animals function in groups, not just humans, so are they not self aware? It would seem that we are not so much removed from other animals except for our high level of intelligence.

Is there a relationship of self awareness to God's will?

An interesting way to study self awareness. Question: Society obviously affects self awareness, but should we use the word environment instead of social environment? Society is actually just a part of the environment around us. You also compare to or are aware of a tree, an animal. Now, another question is does self awareness affect society or the environment back? Of course it does, then you are stuck to figure which influences which, 😂

Awareness, consciousness and intelligence etc., are all product of quantum computing function.

Self Awareness is me thinking about money and dystopian workplaces where you have to make lists of productive activities and sanctioned activities, because no one defines value in the same way, but constant activity is mandated. Self-awareness is me lying to my boss with a pleasant smile on my face, while I wonder what my natural behavior would be, if I were a Boss.

I am very self aware…I say don’t do that again….then I say f that

(0:45) *RB: **_"The purpose of being self-aware is so you can regulate yourself."_* ... This is not the reason because even non-self-aware machines can self-regulate. Self-awareness is an unprecedented level of information that emerged after 13.8 billion years of evolution. Humans are the new, biological hosts of this highest level of information, and the reason is mathematical. In the beginning, there was an archetypal mathematical assessment that represents reality: *Nonexistence = 0 ... Existence = 1.* We are the embodiment of Existence (1), and each self-aware human is a microcosm of the same identity struggle that Existence has endured from the beginning. All of us are exactly the same at our core, and yet we all end up with different personalities. Based on our genetic configuration, environment, and stimuli, our self-awareness can evolve into artists, engineers, thieves, politicians, scientists, theologians, and even high school shooters. Existence then takes all of the data extrapolated from 8 billion self-aware information-gathering "workstations" (humans) and uses this to further clarify whatever Existence represents.

Root are Not show up consistence definitions. It occur he Not knows though Science how figure it out. Honestly Roy awarer are consciencess. Aware or conscieness are developmen in earli years when society cristalazed though rules un conscieness. He concepto concern aware are so umprecise because conscieness or aware are unpredicted in brains.

This does not make sense. I am not sure he understands what is the essence of self-awareness. An intelligent system does not need selfawareness (the feeling of existing as a self) to regulate itself or to learn about itself. Our lives are full of very smart electronic systems that can self-regulate and learn via very complicated and adaptive algorithms. These systems will get better in what they do but we do not have the slightest hint of self-awareness. The feeling of self-awareness seems non-computational and non-syntactical and it can not be explained with any objectively functional or causal requirement

What is awareness? Answer: An eternal in the now existence that knows only sameness.

How do you know that you know what you know about being aware that you are limited by quantified measures of time and distance? How are you compared to what you could be if you knew what was a good thing to do? Why do you always reflect your surroundings? Should you be different? Are you proactive or reactive? Do you care for yourself? Do you care for other people? Do you live in truth? Do you kid yourself? Are you confused? Do you know where you stand compared to a perfect version of yourself? Learn from the sages who have been there and done that thousands of years ago. Only your Creator can perfectly cover for you Himself and remake you again from the inside out by the power of His true word as no one else can. That's enlightenment. There is no other reality.

God Sri Krishna says all living beings are souls but only human beings have the intelligence to connect with the whole , the whole is absolute concious Being , God Sri Krishna.

X-Files Socrates once said "know thyself". Physically, I'm pretty much a nobody who drives an old pickup truck on dusty roads in the middle of the backcountry of nowhere. But metaphysically, I am a highly decorated, top gun space cowboy called the Lone Ranger. Like the Blues Brothers, I'm on a mission from good (god). My Mission Impossible is to engage the "supernova" function on my lightship in order to fill a giant black hole in space called ignorance (greed) with light (love)...so that its darkness (misery, murder, mass shootings, suicides, war, etc.) goes away and its heavy gravitational pull stops sucking the joy out of life and destroying the planet. I face some major obstacles though. 1) Light and truth (love) cause vampires (greed) great pain and suffering. That's why the words compassion, understanding, society (socialism), community (communism), "care for all" and "green new deal" cause the capitalist counting corpses that rule US such misery. 2) Like bats that fly around in the darkness of caves...vampires (greed) are blind and cannot see the ignorance of transforming heaven (peace) into hell (war). The capitalist counting corpses are also blind and cannot see the ignorance of destroying the planet. 3) The evangelical monsters are extremely "desperate" to control a darkship called the Whitehouse. Because working in the dark to suck the joy out of life and destroy the planet is the only way that the loveless, lifeless parasites can survive and thrive. It's also how the hostile alien invaders keep their human capital (cattle) corralled. Unlike earthling poets, artists, musicians, mystics, human beings and creators of joy...the capitalist counting corpses that rule US can't create harmony (real intelligence) because vampires (greed) are ignorant (dead). Vampires (greed) who suck the joy out of life have joined the zombies who eat the futures of their children. Zombie Apocalypse is here and happening now.

A very clumsy / “textbook” type explanation…

So boring listening to these platitudes. Though most of the interviews by Kuhn are great

Satan is in the bacteria.

Purpose is survival reproduction death

Humans do not have any awareness of the self. The self is that which is aware of all things. But the self is not aware of the self. The self does not know what the self looks like or where it even is. The self experiences memories and desires and emotions and sensations and thoughts and goals and plans. But the idea of the self experiencing itself is absurd. The self does know when it is experiencing something or directing the arm to move.

One of the most useless discutions about consciousness. Robert wants to know specific and precise things about consciousness and this guy is talking pure stupidities, makes childish useless observations, etc. The true science doesn't ever advance with people that are completely unpassioned about the scientific domain.

What is self-awareness? It is awareness of the self. So, what it the self? It is the thing we (who?) are aware of when we are exercising self-awareness. BTW: There is no theory (deep or shallow) in social psychology. There are just self-motivated hunches and subsequent demonstrations. Tautology and vapid definitions on full display.