Ask A Genius 335 – Science and Religion (5)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/29
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Rick Rosner: However, if you look at consciousness, this is kind of the second principle that I see that consciousness probably is technical but as principles or attributes, consciousness is an attribute of large-scale information sharing within the system.
For our system to exist, it has to have a large degree of self-consistency and self-consistency requires a large sharing of information because you can’t be consistent with what you don’t have information about.
You have to constantly keep the rest of each part of itself against the condition as a part of self-consistency that is finding it, the universe has constantly defined itself very precisely in order to impose self-consistency on itself and a consciousness is a necessary adjunct in this large-scale sharing of information.
Then it is unavoidable if in large-scale self-consistent systems. In the end, that implies the hands of the creator because we can’t create worlds. We can, at some point, have the technical wherewithal to create simulated worlds with simulated thinking beings if we want to.
We can also create a self-consistent world where all the self-consistency is supposedly outside and there is no large-scale information sharing. That’s kind of what happens with computers. We build the computers. They process information linearly.
They don’t police themselves for the most part. Computers aren’t conscious, but the existence of large created systems like computers implies that they are part of a larger world in which there are beings that are conscious.
Sub-consciousness may be an unavoidable aspect of existence and that still does not imply a creator in many instances. Most instances do imply the existence of consciousnesses of unlimited extent and power.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A functionally unlimited number of them. It’s for all intents and purposes. It’s for all intents and purposes unlimited.
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