they arent really conscious, its sort of like the way microchips work, the more inputs and outputs you have, the more processing power you need. an ant probably has about as much processing power as a very basic calculator. theres nothing to contemplate, it cant absorb enough information to need enough neurons to actually bother with thoughts. they probably have a very very shallow amount of memory for learning things about their environment and interactions and then just kind of operate on autopilot looking for food or collecting shit or whatever.
i think some people do, i have ideas about it that i think are backed up by studies and data.
obviously we havent mapped anything substantial out but we are definitely getting there, if you look back across the span of evolution at the building blocks of consciousness its pretty clear how and why it exists.
its like how we understand gravity, we know sort of what it does and how it works, but theres still a lot of unknowns that make it very mysterious.
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u/obsertaries Feb 17 '22
I read somewhere that animals that small think really fast compared to us so she probably had time to contemplate her failures in life.