Ask A Genius 870: Large-Scale Information Exchange in a Relational Cosmology

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/09

[Recording Start] 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we’ve had some disagreements on IC over the last few years. One of those is the idea that consciousness is required for large-scale information exchange; it’s a simplified way of saying it. I don’t think it’s necessarily derivative if you think like large-scale physics, that you get a mind out of that, in terms of that kind of consciousness, whereas for sure we know we have this whether as an apparency or a reality at the level of subjectivity. So, my disagreement is, really, are we making some kind of fallacy where we’re saying the part has it, and we’re posing this theory that goes large scale, and therefore, the large scale has the same property? I mean, is that a fallacy? Is it not? I think that’s really the kind of fundamental disagreement there.

Rick Rosner: So, I have an argument in favour of consciousness. By taking a look at our consciousness and its various ingredients, you can do a lot to degrade thought and still have consciousness. So, my argument is that it is possible to have a large-scale, real-time multimodal self-consistent information system that is sufficiently degraded to not have consciousness and that is as efficient as a system with consciousness. You can argue that consciousness might get in the way, as our brain is supposed to help us survive, and you can argue that consciousness might get in the way of certain specific situations. It might lower your odds of surviving, but overall, consciousness is part of an information-sharing system that is very helpful in terms of continuing to exist. 

So, whatever momentary specialized handicaps that consciousness might impose overall, the degraded system that you’d have to the precluded consciousness would be a lot shittier than a conscious system. I would say, therefore, that a big, efficient system is going to embody consciousness. We can talk about the specific components of consciousness and whether you can do without them and still be conscious. 

Jacobsen: So, I would argue you can have a mathematized version, a descriptor of the universe. That descriptor incorporates the idea that it’s a process universe that you have sort of a time running through it. Similarly, I think you can have a mathematical model of human information processing that would amount to a theoretical framework for not only engineering but also the processing of human consciousness without the incorporation of the screen and subjectivity. So, I think it’s based on a couple of truisms: 

1) We can simulate the universe. 2) We can use math. 3) With that math and the computability of the universe, you can simulate the universe. So, there is a simulation aspect of the universe. It doesn’t mean the universe is a simulation; it doesn’t make any sense. In a similar manner, we have another truism, which is the fourth point: that we have a fundamental subjectivity to ourselves, which is basically Descartes; it’s one of the undeniable facts of our self-existence. So, that subjectivity in the universe does argue for a mathematized information processing simulatability of the universe with individual subjectivities and some beings in that universe. The reach that you would make that I’m hesitant about would be that subjectivity at that very small magnitude can be expanded to a larger scale. So, in some sense, you can say that since there are subjectivities in the universe, the universe is conscious of its own subjectivities. It doesn’t mean the same thing as saying the universe as a whole has a mind; that’s a different sort of argument or form of argumentation.

So, those are all truisms; those four points, as far as I can tell. So, you can mathematically describe the universe, this process of seeing in the universe and simulating the universe, which will become a principle of future science, I think, and fourth we h, we have subjectivity in the universe. It takes those four as parts of information cosmology and then argues that the universe has a mind. Certainly, I have my biases against Gods, so that might be an emotional thing that’s playing into that as a bias, so I will certainly be open to that as a critique. Yet, in terms of this logical argumentation, you can sort of make that step; I think it’s less of a deductive argument and more of an inductive argument at that point because we don’t have that larger subjectivity. So, we have to make a probabilistic argument of how much the evidence really argues for that and in that probabilistic sense, I would argue more in favour of no at this time rather than yes. However, I am open to the idea that that’s a possibility.

Rosner: All right, so about subjectivity, I’d argue that almost all thinking is subjective because thinking is about something, and that’s the subject. It’s not that thinking is not about everything; a lot of thinking is about specific things, and when you think in generalities, even that thinking has been shaped by the experience of specifics. So, it’s hard to get away from subjectivity in that you’re thinking about a subset of everything. 

Jacobsen: That makes me think about something that’s important. There’s all this rave among more agnostic scientific types who look at the universe as a big computer, but it’s simulating itself: self-hyphen simulation. I don’t think that makes logical sense if you think about it a little more subtly in this stance. If you have a self, that’s not a simulation and its objectivity; that’s just the self, processing. We have a simulation of the world internally, but that’s not the self. So, there’s not a self-simulation in the universe at all. That doesn’t make any logical sense. You have a self-connectedness to that information, a processor in terms of self-reference, yet you have a simulation of that external world, whatever that being or creature is. So, you have a self, and you have a simulation; you do not have self-simulation.

Rosner: Okay. I would argue about whether that’s an important distinction in that when you simulate the world, and you’re a part of the world, we have a clear demarcation between our bodies and the world. In that case, the self is clear, and we consider ourselves to be our bodies. To some extent, if we have a pacemaker, that pacemaker is still part of us, but we’re sharply delimited from the world. However, I’m not sure that that is a primary metaphysical distinction. You talked about the screen, referring to consciousness as being something experienced, like a movie being projected onto a screen. I won’t necessarily argue against that; I would just say that that screen is part of the shared real-time analytics and sensation and processing that goes on, that you can assume a screen, but that the screen is built into large-scale self-consistent multimodal information processing.

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Jacobsen: If you removed that screen, you still have that sense of self without any of the simulation. 

Rosner: So, that’s a point for my argument. I don’t think you can remove the screen, but if you could, you’re still conscious. I think there are things that you can tune way down. Like in previous talks about this, I’ve talked about the security AI or whatever you want to call it, watches over a warehouse via a bunch of cameras and sensors. That system, you can imagine, has zero autonomy. That thing can’t do anything. I mean, what you’d want it to do, at the very least, would be to be able to call in the police or something else if it detects things happening to the warehouse, but you can imagine a broken or cut-off system that watches the warehouse and can’t do anything. In the same way, somebody can be conscious but locked into their body via paralysis; they can see what’s going on, but they can’t do anything about it, but they’re still conscious. So, autonomy seems like something that can be removed from consciousness without making something unconscious. 

Jacobsen: So, you can make a two-stage distinction there; primary is the self and secondary is the “simulation.” You could have primary and secondary senses of consciousness. 

Rosner: I’m not sure how much of the self is necessary, but having a delimited body over which we have autonomy gives us a strong sense of self. Does the thing watching over the warehouse have a sense of self? Does it think the warehouse is me? I don’t think so. I was looking at my hand earlier when thinking about that we were about to have this talk, and I’m conscious of my hand, and I get sensation from my hand, but my hand isn’t conscious of what it feels as part of my consciousness. Is it part of myself? I don’t know. It’s on the edge of myself; it’s at the end of one of my limbs. Yeah, it’s part of my body, but is it part of myself? I guess so, but how strongly does it make my hand part of my consciousness? Reasonably strongly and that I get sensation from it, but you can remove my sense of my body from me.

All information from my body, everything below my neck, you can get rid of that, and I still am strongly conscious, and I’d argue that one reason, in addition to autonomy and just being very localized in space, that our self is so strong is that our primary, our most important sense organs are all located in our head; sight, sound, and then you got to smell and taste are less important, but they’re all there within a few inches of each other and that further makes our consciousness localized. Plus, we know who we are in terms of what we look like. When we think of ourselves, we first think of our faces, and if we’re hot, we think of our asses and our tits and such, but mostly our faces; our whole identity is everything above the neck which can perhaps lead to some misunderstandings of consciousness. If our awareness and information were more distributed, maybe we’d have a different idea of consciousness.

Jacobsen: So, then how do you make the extension from that self and that simulation of the world to this notion of a larger scale mind at the level of the universe? That’s the gap which to me requires very strong evidence because it’s a very strong claim. 

Rosner: One characteristic of consciousness or a strong central characteristic is awareness of reality. By awareness, I guess I mean conscious awareness, but that makes it a circular argument. By conscious awareness, I mean a highly developed multimodal cinematic, fully experienced sense of reality. A sense that gets circular, but you can tease it apart into what makes it… you can call it vivid. When we wake up and experience the world, we experience it in such a way that we know it exists, and we know we exist in the world and in real-time; it’s highly defined. You can pull all the little characteristics of it apart and say these are aspects of a conscious experience, and I would argue that all those aspects embodied are made by the real-time of it, the multimodality of it, the highly associative nature of it, and I would argue that all those things make it feel conscious and simultaneously are important for having a powerfully helpful understanding of the world. That feeling of consciousness goes along with powerful processing and modelling of the world, and unless you really work hard to engineer it out, they are inseparable. What you have after you’ve engineered it out is shittier than the system that’s necessarily conscious.

Jacobsen: Without the subjectivity present, what if we’re left with an eternal agnostic position?

Rosner: I don’t know how you can do without the subjectivity because we’re built from subjective experience.

Jacobsen: I do not mean at our scale; I mean at the super large scale, cosmological scale.

Rosner: Well, where does the universe get its information? I see postulates or arguments that the information in the universe is information that’s gained from somewhere from experience external to the universe, that the information in the universe is a record of something external to the universe, and that information is necessarily subjective because the information has a point of view. Information is the impinging of sensory information, of information impinging on detectors, and being analyzed, and that information comes from somewhere specific. The radiation, the light that strikes our eyes, the sound waves, the changes in pressure that strike our ears, and each photon that comes from a specific place give us information about the place from which it came. It’s all subjective in that none of it comes from some general place. If it did come from some general place, then it reflects a large area that is still specific and not every place. I mean, you can get some stuff that is so fuzzed out that it might reflect information about a larger area or volume than, say, a photon bouncing off the skin of an apple, but still, it doesn’t come from all possible places. Since it doesn’t, it’s specific and subjective. 

[Recording End]

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