Radio Receivers vs. Televisions: Two Descriptions of the Same Theory of Consciousness

This paper examines a striking case of independent intellectual convergence in the understanding of consciousness. Over the past decades, several researchers working in different traditions, countries, and historical periods have arrived at remarkably similar conclusions: that consciousness functions not as a generator of reality, but as a receptive interface. Vasily Nalimov described the brain as a radio receiver that unpacks meanings from a pre-existing semantic continuum. Donald Hoffman independently formulated the Interface Theory of Perception. Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum spoke of the brain as a transducer interacting with a more fundamental field. In the conceptual framework developed in *Interfaces of Mind*, consciousness is described as a reactive interface — a kind of television that receives a broad stream of information and transforms it into a locally accessible picture. Despite different metaphors and terminologies, these approaches converge on the same structural understanding: individual consciousness is not the source of meanings, but a point of access to a broader field. The paper analyzes key parallels between Nalimov’s probabilistic model (Bayesian filters, semantic continuum, cosmic consciousness) and the interface model (heuristics of “familiar letters,” dominants, and the architecture of separation). It argues that such independent convergences are not accidental, but indicate that a particular layer of reality has become accessible to scientific and philosophical inquiry.