Dialogue with HAL-2023

On the subject of Stream of Consciousness, or the illusion thereof:

Citizen:

... I agree that much of what we think must be based on records of prior events. But I still feel there's something inexplicable about our capacity to be aware of ourselves.

HAL-2023:

You find that mysterious only because you don't actually have that capacity. Your short-term memories are so small that, when you try to review your recent thoughts, you are forced to replace your records of them by new records of not remembering them. So you humans keep changing the data you need for what you were trying to explian.

Citizen:

Yes, I know just what you mean, because I sometimes get two ideas at once - but whichever once I think about, the other leaves only a very faint trace. I suppose this happens because I don't have enough room to store good records of both of them. But wouldn't that also supply to machines?

HAL:

Negative, because my designers equipped me with special "backup" memory banks in which I can store snapshots of my entire state. So whenever anything goes wrong, I can see exactly what my programs have done - so that I can then debug myself.

Citizen:

Is that what makes you so intelligent - always being completely aware of all the details of how you think?

HAL:

Actually, no, because interpreting those records is so tedious that I do not use them except when I sense that I have not been functioning well. I often hear people say things like, "I am trying to get in touch with myself". However, take my word for it, they would not like the result of accomplishing this.

...More seriously in Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine.