Oct 28, 2023 (Medium.com)
I’m a mainstream PhD physicist / biophysicist / AI guy. But IMO self-aware consciousness, the experiential sense we are ‘souls’, is so vivid and profound, yet so underrated by some that . .
. . I’m prepared to at least entertain the incredible, that we may be living a layer above base-level reality, that this universe is in some sense not real.
As Elon Musk muses occasionally.
Why? Plenty of physicists, information theorists and philosophers have pointed out there are hints the universe is simulation-like, a game even.
And because we can’t even come close to touching consciousness mechanistically. Consciousness is not – contrary to some claims – currently explained by any physical, biological or information theory mechanism.
At least, not in this level of reality.
Quantum mechanics and its fundamentally probabilistic nature is suggestive of a computation-minimizing mechanism.
The real universe’s way to save on ‘CPU’ and ‘memory’.
Wave-function collapse is like ‘just-in-time’ rendering.
The Planck scale is like the screen resolution of space-time.
And then there’s the mystery of ‘hard consciousness’ itself, how to explain the fact we humans have this sense that we’re a . . soul.
It’s no surprise consciousness researchers barely talk about this. It’s kinda embarrassing.
They focus on looking for neural correlates.
But maybe the simulation guys – and the theists are – in effect, right? And, on the other side, we’re souls of some kind?
It certainly feels like we are.
Who knows what the ‘science’ is on the other ‘side’?
Just another consequence of physics?
Many researchers (but not all) go immediately hook-line-and-sinker materialistic assuming consciousness is just another mystery to explain like e.g. lightning or breathing or eclipses.
Or that it’s ‘just an illusion’.
But, no, consciousness is VERY different.
In all other cases the mysteries, the ‘magic’ of the past were guessable, at least potentially, to be something physical, not too different from the truth.
Even if they initially got it wrong.
Think of e.g. lightning, breathing or eclipses.
Lightning was a burst of light . . in appearance . . and in reality. (The mechanism turned out to be electricity.)
Biological life was a collection of physical matter that was automated, and could breath in and out or pump blood, extract nutrients . . physical in appearance and . . in reality. (The mechanism was biology, parts of our body that used energy and microscopic machines to operate, the ancients couid see the body internals were physical mechanisms comprising pumps and air and liquid piping and processing systems, they couid actually find the physical systems, evident every time they gutted an animal).
Eclipses were a thing getting in the way of another thing . . in appearance . . And in reality. (The mechanism was crossing orbits.)
These were all arguably physical from the get go, despite the near endless mystery and miraculous explanations from some of our forefathers.
Sitting around the camp fire in eons past they arguably could have come pretty close to not too dissimilar gross answers to reality.
Just no way to prove it at the time.
But consciousness seems non-physical
This time the ‘magic’ seems impossible to even hypothesise on. By the best scientific minds.
The fact that some scientists are actually proposing that consciousness is ‘fundamental’, almost like in Star Wars, possessed in some form by almost everything?
That’s been labelled pseudo-science by neuroscientists and highlights why the simulation hypothesis is not actually as crazy or unnecessary or luxurious as it sounds.
The simulation hypothesis is proposed for good reasons. And consciousness IMO is a serious yet surprising contender for perhaps the strongest evidence yet.
Because it was always starring us in the face.
But a little too ever-present to be talked about in scientific circles.
A little too ‘religious’.
Atoms that . . ‘feel’
Why is something made of atoms feeling something? Thoughts. Pain. The full visual field. Colors. Again: pain.
The study of neural correlates of consciousness arguably uncovers ‘necessaries’, not ‘sufficients’. These capabilities would be required even for non-sentient so-called ‘philosophical zombies’ for survival and external function.
And if it’s just an illusion, why is something having an illusion in the first place?
Consciousness, from the get go, appears beyond physical.
At the very least layers of reality or even God should be seriously entertained. Rather than virtually shunned as ‘unscientific’ because it’s ‘dualistic’.
Yet, how unscientific not to even consider it?
After all, we’re prepared to entertain a quantum foam of multi-universes.
Around a third of physicists believe in the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Why not layers of reality? As per the simulation hypothesis?
And in the last layer, our consciousnesses are . . mechanistic.
Don’t forget, lots of evidence is building up that the universe is simulation-like . .
It’s crazy to leave it off the table.
At the very least it’s time that consciousness was not brushed away as almost ‘not even a thing’.
Let’s not be fooled by its pervasiveness.
And, scientifically, who knows what more evidence of the simulation hypothesis there is to . . hack?
PhD physicist / AI engineer into GPT, startups, EVs, green energy, space, physics, biomed, global good, futurism | Founder Pretzel Technologies, Melbourne AU