Is consciousness the derivative of information with respect to the difference of information (ie. a clock cycle -- time?)
The only atomic thing is the way I percieve the universe right now. Someone else will percieve it differently. I'm _not_ talking about the fact that your blue might not be my blue, I'm talking about the fact that time might move at a different pace (if you've accelerated or decelerated) and that you're a long enough distance away from me that our lack of a shared "now" is not negligible in calculations.
So a digital model of the universe would have to take into account that the whole universe, again, isn't an atomic entity, and rather model that we have different entities perceiving things as the universe has propagated to their point of view, in their speed of time.
But if I recall correctly, the book doesn't touch the question of how consciousness can arise to begin with, other than making a passing reference to GEB's strange loops.
I can see some value, for example, in the idea that consciousness (maybe I should rather say subjective perception or awareness) somehow emerges out of a reasonably complex system. But that wouldn't explain what it is in our universe that allows awareness to emerge to begin with.
I think some fun questions to think about are:
* Can we create awareness in a circuit by making it complex enough? What are the requirements?
* If we simulate a universe, does it inherit the ability to create awareness from our universe?
* How the heck do you validate any of these answers?
Well, I'm confused now, consciousness is too hard. Sorry if I sound like gibberish.
EDIT: This isn't meant to be a criticism of the book, which I can only recommend to anyone.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/21consciousness.ht...
Thats is a completely meaningless statement. If we added this to our model of the world, the model wouldn't predict any new phenomena.
> Is consciousness the derivative of information with respect to the difference of information
You can define consciousness like that. But it would be something different then our intuitive understanding of consciousness.
That sounds like a logical fallacy, mate. Or at least an extremely biased outlook on discussion
Also, when we're talking about what could hypothetically be outside of our universe, unreachable to us, there are millions of possible theories. (All of them meaningless.) Why choose a simulation on a computer from our universe?
Hence, if it's reasonable to go from "lots of complex stuff exists" down to "simple fundamental physics exists, complex stuff is emergent" then it's not unreasonable to go down a further layer and say "computation exists, physics is emergent". It's pure reductionism; the first step takes us from a world of "complex stuff with fundamental physics which can do computation" to a world of "fundamental physics which can do computation"; the second step goes from "fundamental physics which can do computation" to "computation".
It seems silly, as someone who isn't omniscient, to claim that our universe being a 'simulation' has no bearing upon experience. For all you know, light's speed is based on the clock-speed of a higher-dimensional crystal. It's interesting to think about, and there actually are consequences to this even if they aren't immediately discoverable.
For a guy with a username like RiveriaKid..you sure have a closed mind unlike a child.
Perceptions (I see an elephant) are different than ideas or thoughts (I think there are pink elephants in parallel universe).
> It's interesting to think about, and there actually are consequences to this even if they aren't immediately discoverable.
What consequences? If there are consequences than yes, we can add "we're in a simulation" to our model of the world. But there can be much simpler explanation of the phenomena. Models of the world should be as simple as possible. See Occams razor.
> For a guy with a username like RiveriaKid..you sure have a closed mind unlike a child.
I have a very open mind but I'm also very rational. The username is a reference to one great sci-fi sitcom by the way.
There is a difference between perceptions and ideas, though its pretty hard to illustrate because you can't describe a perception without categorizing it by ideas that are external to the perception ("elephant", for instance, is an idea, not a perception), and even short of description to others, ideas shape our internal experience of sense data on a pretty fundamental level.