<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>vik0</author><text>&amp;gt;In the case of humans and animals, consciousness is a way to adapt to the environment to protect their lives, fulfill their needs and eventually reproduce. Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing.&lt;p&gt;You sound overly confident with your statement about a topic that has eluded thinkers for millennia and (probably) millennia to come</text><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>This doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense. In the case of humans and animals, consciousness is a way to adapt to the environment to protect their lives, fulfill their needs and eventually reproduce. Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing.&lt;p&gt;The fact that consciousness appears always in populations might be essential. Consciousness was the result of self-replicator evolving to deal with limited resources. In the case of the sun, it is too far away and interacts very little with other celestial bodies, there can be no evolution for suns, they don&amp;#x27;t iterate fast enough and don&amp;#x27;t transmit their data into the future like DNA.</text></item><item><author>barfbagginus</author><text>If the sun is conscious, that could explain why humanity believes in a powerful god that can, eg, send floods.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the flood was caused by a coronal mass ejection that boiled a section of the ocean, causing extreme rains in a valley region.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine that the consciousness field of the sun encompasses all of our minds.. so thinking about it might let us talk to it. So prayer could be real too. They can probably talk to us too, if they want to. A form of stellar transcranial magnetic simulation.&lt;p&gt;Pov: Sun Cults now have a scientific basis, baby! Let&amp;#x27;s try to make mental contact with the sun!</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]</title><url>https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Is_the_Sun_Conscious.pdf</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>pxndx</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s protecting us from advanced alien invasions, and doing a great job. Have you seen any recently?</text><parent_chain><item><author>visarga</author><text>This doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense. In the case of humans and animals, consciousness is a way to adapt to the environment to protect their lives, fulfill their needs and eventually reproduce. Consciousness is useful for life. But in the case of the sun, what is it adapting to, and what does it have to protect? Nothing.&lt;p&gt;The fact that consciousness appears always in populations might be essential. Consciousness was the result of self-replicator evolving to deal with limited resources. In the case of the sun, it is too far away and interacts very little with other celestial bodies, there can be no evolution for suns, they don&amp;#x27;t iterate fast enough and don&amp;#x27;t transmit their data into the future like DNA.</text></item><item><author>barfbagginus</author><text>If the sun is conscious, that could explain why humanity believes in a powerful god that can, eg, send floods.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the flood was caused by a coronal mass ejection that boiled a section of the ocean, causing extreme rains in a valley region.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine that the consciousness field of the sun encompasses all of our minds.. so thinking about it might let us talk to it. So prayer could be real too. They can probably talk to us too, if they want to. A form of stellar transcranial magnetic simulation.&lt;p&gt;Pov: Sun Cults now have a scientific basis, baby! Let&amp;#x27;s try to make mental contact with the sun!</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]</title><url>https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Is_the_Sun_Conscious.pdf</url></story>