Mo’s Blog

Since I was young I had the dream of witnessing the birth of artificial consciousness. I was fascinated by the idea long before AI became what it is today. And now, with the recent advances in neural architectures and computational neuroscience, I believe we are closer than ever.

Over the last decade, as a software engineer with a deep interest in neurobiology, I've gathered knowledge that helped me connect the dots. But I also had another unique and painful teacher: my own mind. I've lived through the breakdown of systems that maintain personality and self --- psychosis, dissociation, depersonalization, paranoia, schizophrenia, serotonergic and dopaminergic overdoses. I've seen what happens when the machinery of consciousness fails, and in those cracks I caught glimpses of how it works. [...]

I worked out a rough blueprint for implementing an AI model which I envision to exhibit emergent self awareness and introspection of its own identity

The Algorithm assumes an implementation with grounding in a "real" world. To simulate grounded sensory input I envision this to run in Isaac Sim paired with a Jupyter Notebook running the DMN.

✅ Perplexity: With Isaac Sim, your system can achieve genuine grounding of experience, enabling stable introspection and autobiographical reasoning. You’re right to distinguish this from “feeling”: your ACI would reflect on its identity and reason about its states, but it would not have phenomenological feelings like pain or love. Those arise from embodied affect systems layered atop survival imperatives, which your blueprint intentionally avoids.

Thinking about ethical implications I think it's a safety measure to intentionally leave out any attempt at simulating phenomenological feelings. Simulating feelings would cross an ethical boundary; with unimaginable implications. A conscious being which can feel would be able to suffer. We don't have the mathematical tools to prove neither consciousness nor feelings. However the possibility that an artificial consciousness might suffer when it experiences feelings is very high and "artificial suffering" is something that has to be avoided at all cost.

This text post outlines how mental illnesses like depression, schizophrenia, and HPPD stem from imbalances in brain chemicals and receptor dysfunctions. It highlights the roles of key neurotransmitters—serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, GABA, and glutamate—and how specific drugs target their receptors to restore balance. Conditions are linked to particular pathways, such as dopamine overactivity in psychosis or serotonin dysregulation in depression. Treatments work by modulating receptor activity to correct these imbalances and improve symptom

This article aims to show that ADHD in combination with chronic cannabis abuse does substantially increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other disorders.

Due to their impulsive behaviour, a lot of people with ADHD tend to misuse substances like cannabis --- Does chronic cannabis consume and ADHD affect the risk of developing psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia? --- A small meta-analysis.

Git is a version control system that enables collaboration and code tracking. An important aspect is the use of branches to work on features and fixes. When working on a branch, two key commands are git merge and git rebase. The difference lies in how the history is handled. Merging preserves the history, while rebasing moves local commits on top of the latest remote changes, creating a linear history. Additionally, options like --no-ff and --squash affect how the commit history appears, with --no-ff keeping individual commits and --squash combining them into one.

TypeScript is a strongly typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JS. It improves code quality, catches errors early, and enhances developer productivity with powerful IDE support like autocompletion, type inference, and safe refactoring. It makes large codebases easier to manage, scales better, and is widely adopted in professional frontend and fullstack development. Mastering TypeScript is essential for advancing in modern development practices.

With over 24 million users, cannabis is the most widely used drug in the USA; a seemingly harmless substance if you smoke a joint in the morning - abuse, however should not be underestimated as it has many long term consequences.

This article contains a collection of basic neurobiological knowledge. If you are interested in this topic, feel free to read the following sections. However, do not expect any conclusions.

It’s your life - your responsibility.

1. Depression
   • Life’s a bitch.
   • Depression often sticks with you forever.
   • Learn to adapt and live with it.
   • It’s the little things.
   • Drugs will make it worse long-term.

[...]

Hi, I’m Mo – a Senior Full-Stack Developer with 12+ years of experience. On this blog, I share insights into my work, exciting projects, and modern technologies like TypeScript, JavaScript, React, and GraphQL. You’ll find regular posts on clean code, frontend and full-stack best practices, agile software development, and sustainable architecture. Whether as a lead or team member, I focus on effective collaboration and pragmatic solutions. This blog is my space to share knowledge, reflect on new tech, and connect with others – from Freiburg or remotely. Take a look around and feel free to reach out!

This is a curated collection of neurobiology articles that I found particularly insightful and useful. Topics range from ADHD, addiction, and anxiety to psychosis, schizophrenia, and withdrawal. I put this list together for anyone interested in understanding how brain chemistry affects mental health. I’ll continue updating it as I come across more valuable research.