Comment by tekni5 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tekni5 | Hacker News Reader

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This is going to sound pretty absurd, but I have this unscientific hypothesis about what consciousness really is.

I believe there is a chance that consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information, contained within some infinite outside universe, where there is no time or space.

So imagine this infinite outside universe full of all possible information, it exists in some metaphysical location, it has always existed and it will always exist. All this data makes zero sense and has zero purpose. Within this information exist patterns of every kind, everything real and not real is there. However for this data to become expressed, a conscious entity is required to exist inside of this data for the overall universe to place it in some sort of order.

Therefore consciousness acts as a binder of random information, for this very conscious entity to exist some of this infinite information must be placed in a coherent order. So in this view, the start of the universe does not occur with the big bang, but with the first conscious entity. After this point, for consciousness to continue to exist, it must have a narrative based on fundamental laws which explain how it came into existence. All of history is created after the first conscious entity appears, the formation of the planets, evolution, etc.

To better understand this, imagine a roll of film. You take each frame of this film and make it a separate slide. If you shuffle all these separate film slides and ask someone to view them in no given order, it would make very little sense of what the storyline is. However if you let them sort this information, they might be able to arrange this film in a continuous and coherent storyline. Similarly each planck time of our universe is a separate slide of information which exists in infinity. If a conscious entity exists in that frame the universe must provide a coherent storyline for that entity. Therefore additional frames are pulled out from infinity to allow consciousness to glide through infinity and essentially exist.

I hope that made sense, if I have failed to explain it I apologize.

That's not absurd, it's a perfectly plausible philosophical hypothesis. The only thing that's wrong with it, besides the fact that the "first conscious entity" sounds awfully similar to a god, is that I have no idea how to test your hypothesis scientifically. But that shouldn't be a problem if you don't intend your hypothesis to be a matter of science in the first place.

By the way, "consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information..." is self-contradictory, since existing as random information still counts as existing. I don't think this is what you intended, so I would suggest that you change it to something like "consciousness is a requirement for there to be order in the universe" or something along those lines. (Caution: if you say "consciousness is a requirement for the universe to be intelligible", that becomes sort of tautological.)

Anyway, happy philosophizing!

Thanks, excellent points. Maybe one day I will sit down and write everything down properly, and re-edit not to make semantic errors.

I don't mean to imply the first conscious entity is a god, it's possible there is no first but simply a time frame where conscious entities arise.

Isn't consciousness itself a pattern in that infinitely possible universe of yours? It's kind of a circular argument you're making. If you have no constraints then anything is possible, including consciousness.

Yes it is a pattern in a sea of infinity, the process by which consciousness exists is by continuous grouping of that pattern where all conditions of that consciousness to exist are met. The grouping is just a byproduct of infinite information. It's sort of difficult to imagine, because we are so constrained in our reality. It may very well be circular reasoning, but it seems to make sense to me.

As far as how it relates to Artificial Intelligence, I can provide the following example. The various interconnections and information that exist to create the internet may have already given rise to a similar process. If we viewed say each day of global internet activity as raw data, we maybe able to see certain mathematical patterns emerge. Such patterns might be an echo of a simplified universe and a hint of intelligence, which has naturally emerged due to the vast size of information being created, moved and processed. The intelligence which is emerging probably has no conception of us and is unable to communicate, it simply relies on the natrual occurring patterns of interconnections to exist. It maybe thinking and trying to find out the purpose of its existence as well. The only way we could ever communicate with it is to figure out what patterns to look for and in what time frame.

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