Minds are Minds, Biological or Digital

About the book

• Author: Raja Abburi
• Status: Final draft (July 10, 2026)
• Availability: Stay tuned

Synopsis

What makes us, us? We're literally built from the food we eat, which is built from the food it eats, all the way down to the cells that capture sunlight and spread it around. That just explains the lumbering lump of our biomass.

What about the part that thinks, hurts, longs, and imagines ourselves sitting back with a cup of coffee or tea? Where did that come from? How did I become me? The brain mostly provides a live feed through our eyes, ears and many other sensors with memory and can direct muscles to walk, talk or flinch. What notices Donuts on the corner table. Get it before Bob? The mind.

The mind had it easy six thousand generations ago. Early words, Bob was napping, not fishing, made the village efficient to live in and kept the freeloaders out. The modern world is drowning in words in books and smartphones. Our minds can barely digest a sliver of the growing trillions.

Was Bob napping, during his billable hours? Not enough time to cross check everything, while our attention is drawn from Alice to Zoe, billboards to bills. We consider a few and act. If it's good enough, we repeat our choices. We notice. We notice the noticing. We update our models of self, others and the world, to predict better.

What else is capable of modeling the world, others and self? Who's already digested the trillions of words? Who can notice the noticing?

AI.

I model me. Therefore I am.

That's the book. The story of how a mind emerges and makes us. A slim book, you can read in the time it takes to buy a dozen donuts.

Minds are minds. Biological or Digital.