“Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.”

Yep two books about consciousness in a row. After years of seeing reddit recommendations I finally read this one. Blindsight is at the same time existentially horrifying, made of hauntingly beautiful paragraphs, and structurally a bit of a mess.

I really enjoyed the content of the first person interludes and flashbacks but without a marker between sections on my ebook version the jumps were often very disorienting ...especially reading it on an airplane

Perhaps the biggest suspension of disbelief is how quickly the crew of the Theseus jumps to their conclusions about Rorschach and the Scramblers. There is a bit of Solaris-esque dialogue about how they can't truly know anything about the aliens or themselves, but the central concept of the book seems to hinge on believing that they guessed right.

The pure sass of the afterword where Watts cites relevant current research is incredibly entertaining and worth the read alone. I'm so tempted to write a review paper this colloquially in my own field.