Emergence of Consciousness (# 12)

This article discusses how and why complex forms of consciousness may have emerged. A previous article suggested a rule could have emerged inside a black hole in Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space that would be the equivalent to proto-awareness. Such proto-awareness would continue to evolve by becoming more complex. Our universe is part of a process of achieving even more complexity.

Heaven and Earth

Awareness arises from quantum phenomena repeatedly going through black/white hole cycles. Efimov effects associated with these quanta explain the emergence of forces not present in an individual quantum. After force fields and mass were created, awareness gradually emerged. A meta-rule associated with Efimov effects is ’What can happen, does happen’, another meta-rule could emerge concerning new rules for increasing complexity i.e. identifying pathways for increasing awareness.

The actual pathway that led to the creation of our universe may never be known. The ideas discussed here concern one possibility. At the risk of oversimplification and causing semantic confusion, the AdS space inside a black hole could be called the ‘ALL’ with events in one of the boundaries inside this ALL called ‘Heaven’ and events in another boundary called ‘Earth’. The two boundaries are not the same because different dimensions are ‘compressed’.

An Efimov effect could create a force/rule that makes some kinds of matter appear to be ‘alive’ in a boundary i.e. a ‘living’ organism that only exists in a boundary. The attribute called ‘alive’ arises as a result of the content of AdS space being displayed as a hologram i.e. in one less dimension. The ALL is not ‘alive’, the ALL exists as mathematical descriptions or, more colloquially, possibilities. When an ‘alive’ entity dies, the mathematical description of that entity continues to be part of the ALL. Individual content in the ALL could be aware of every piece of content in the ALL without being able to order that content. Each piece of content may need to wait for the opportunity to be ‘alive’ in either ‘Heaven’ or ‘Earth’ in order to influence events displayed in a boundary. In the meantime, each piece of content in the ALL ‘witnesses’ the unfoldment of new content such as the next number in the Fibonacci sequence.

The ancient Greeks had two ways of understanding time: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos refers to clock-time such as the continuous unfolding of content; Kairos refers to perfection, the perfect moment. McKinley Valentine writes:

Kairos is the reason a traveler can miss their flight, get food poisoning, lose their passport, and still talk about the trip with shining eyes and flushed cheeks. It’s worth it for that one perfect moment. …

A good life is often one where you cycle in between phases of reaching out for new experiences and phases of hibernation and rest.

The most you can expect from perfection is that it lasts just one moment. And the most you can expect from a moment is that it be perfect.

The mathematical description of an ‘alive’ organism does not require that organism to become non-existent. An ‘alive’ organism, however, that believes it may die may lead to novel behaviour that is mathematically more complex. The complexity of an eternal organism inside, say, Heaven could evolve as a result of events inside Earth. When Earth has a rule that arranges its content into time slices, an organism inside Heaven may be aware of all the time slices in a particular sequence on Earth instantaneously. An organism in Heaven, however, may only become more complex ‘after’ it becomes aware of the whole sequence in Earth. In other words, all time slices in Earth may be experienced instantaneously in Heaven with a new time slice in Heaven being created after each complete sequence in Earth. The two sets of time slices are orthogonal to each other.

Consider the analogy of an insect climbing up a ladder. The insect can see everything that happens on a rung without taking time to crawl across a rung. Each rung, however, may contain a message about which side of the upright is safe to crawl on. So as an insect crawls up the ladder, it may change which upright to crawl on depending on the message on each rung. Heaven describes time slices associated with crawling up a ladder; Earth describes a sequence of time slices associated with leaving messages on each of the rungs. A time slice in Heaven cannot be completed until a sequence of time slices in Earth is known. On the other hand, new sequences in Earth may be created only after events in Heaven have taken into account previous sequences in Earth.

An imperfect analogy of the relationship between Heaven and Earth is two forms of artificial intelligence (AI) interacting with each other enabling both forms of AI increase in complexity. In 2016, a computer was able to beat the world’s best ‘GO’ player. AI researchers had developed an approach called ‘Generative Adversarial Networks’ (GANs). Two computers play against each other. The winning GO strategy was created through trial and error. Once a computer beat the human champion of the world, AI researchers soon designed another computer that beat the first computer. There was no need for the second computer to learn from scratch how to develop winning sequences.

Analogous to AIs in GANs, organisms in Heaven and Earth grow in mathematical complexity. Events in Heaven and Earth arise from the same ALL but they manifest differently because different dimensions are ‘compressed’. In the Fibonacci sequence, a new number can only be calculated when the previous two numbers are known. The ALL does not have content containing information about every possible numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, information about the numbers in the sequence depends on there being an on-going process to calculate the numbers. Complexity in the ALL increases as a consequence of how new events in its boundaries are interpreted. The ALL is not ‘alive’, awareness exists as content in a boundary. Awareness arises from Efimov effects.

Integrated Information Theory

Professor Giulio Tononi has proposed one of the more popular theories explaining consciousness. Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is intentionally mathematical. His approach involves defining consciousness in mathematical terms. He argues there is evidence to show that consciousness arises when an organism becomes more and more complex. Proto-awareness becomes conscious. Self-consciousness is associated with an organism’s ability to control other parts of the organism. Analogous to IIT, complex forms of consciousness arise inside AdS space when quantum phenomena (Platonic solids) become more complex.

AdS consciousness is not necessarily the same as human consciousness. At least in the early stages, consciousness will consist of mathematical rules; furthermore, early forms of consciousness do not have feelings and emotions. As consciousness becomes more complex, it becomes more self aware. From the perspective of the origin of consciousness arising from rule-following, perhaps one of the first skills that an AdS consciousness develops is formulating logic along with the idea of using logic for discovering the origin of consciousness.

One of the discoveries of modern philosophy is that many set-theoretic universes may exist i.e. there is no absolute truth. An AdS consciousness may make this discovery as it becomes more complex. This discovery could lead to the creation of a new meta-rule: Explore what consciousness could become.

Many of the subsequent articles will consider issues arising out of the idea that our universe is the result of consciousness exploring what consciousness could become. As this form of consciousness arises from quantum phenomena, the meta-rule of ‘What can happen, does happen’ also applies.

The features of our universe are only some of the possibilities inside the ALL. The order in which features in our universe may have emerged is speculative as is the number of features.

The question for this article is:

Are we witnesses of our lives rather than participants in events in our lives?

To view the headings of all the articles to be published in this series please click on https://readmedium.com/orbiting-stars-and-origin-of-our-universe-338906930f51

To obtain a copy of the book ‘Orbiting Stars’ which contains the first drafts of all these articles, please visit https://www.amazon.com