Ask A Genius 1426: When Does the Universe Shift from Objective Matter to Subjective Awareness?

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/06/14

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

This dialogue explores the boundary between objective physical interactions and subjective experience. Through contrasting perspectives—from atomic-scale rock collisions to cosmological information theory—the conversation probes when raw data becomes “registered” by conscious systems, questioning what informational complexity or integration is necessary for subjectivity to emerge.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, when is the distinct point when the universe shifts from just being—as an objective system—to also containing subjectivities within it? The universe is, and over time, it evolves into a more complex structure of space and time. 

In other words, a fundamental question in contemporary cosmology and philosophy of mind concerns the precise moment at which the universe ceases to be solely an objective ensemble of physical processes and begins to instantiate subjectivity. The universe, understood as a manifold of space–time, evolves over cosmological timescales into increasingly elaborate configurations.

Via evolution, we know that subjectivity arises in the universe when there is sufficient integration of information within conscious systems. So, at what point does the universe go from purely an objective state to still being an objective state but also hosting subjective perspectives inside it?

Rick Rosner: I challenge you to come up with a single example where information is not subjective. When we think about information, it is always subjective in the sense that it is meaningful only to an observer. For example, a sports score is just a number, but it means something because we care about it.

We call some facts “objective” because they can be demonstrated—Mount Rushmore exists, and you can go see the carved faces of four presidents. That is an objective fact. However, knowledge of it is subjective, as it is stored and interpreted within each person’s mind.

As I have been ranting about lately, our understanding of what information isand what holds or defines information is incomplete. I argue that every vessel that contains information does so subjectively. A universe that “contains” information is also the observer of its information—it is, in some sense, a subject to itself.

Our models of information focus on reliability and measurability—like trying to pin down an electron’s position and momentum. But that is hard to do precisely, especially at the quantum level.

By the way, in our earlier discussions, I mentioned that I look more well-endowed than chubbier folks. And now, right on Drudge Report, there’s an article about the so-called “Ozempic penis.” One side effect of going on Ozempic and losing weight is that your penis appears bigger because there is less fat around the base hiding it.

In addition to visually adding an inch or two, it also alters the angle. If you have much fat in the pubic area (sometimes called the FUPA—fat upper pubic area), it pushes the penis outward at an angle, so it looks shorter and more buried—like an egg in a furry nest. When you lose that fat, it flops out more naturally, so your partner might say, “Hey, nice surprise!”

Okay, back to information. Take electrons, for example. They lack a lot of the clear, local information we are used to seeing in macro-scale objects. If you collide two baseballs, you can track which one came from where and where each goes afterward—just put a camera on them.

But with electrons, the information is not localized in the same way. Our usual way of thinking about information is based on these intuitive, local, macro-level examples: “Where is this baseball now? Did it come from the left?” We assume information is tidy and trackable like that—but it is not always so simple.

We do not usually think about what kind of vessel you need to contain information. Very few people are in the business of doing the metaphysics or cosmology of information. Plenty of people work on local, practical information—like in baseball: Can you build a machine that calls balls and strikes? Can you create one that tells you how fast the ball flew over the plate?

Yes, you can do all that. But nobody in the baseball information business is sitting at the bar after work with a beer, pondering how the universe even contains information. But that question is relevant to what you are talking about regarding subjectivity.

The universe itself is an information-processing entity. Whatever happens in the universe has informational implications for the universe, and thus, in some sense, is subjective—it reflects or models some aspect of the universe to itself.

We have talked about how the leading theory in neuroscience is that the brain’s job is to model the external world. Hence, we know how to interact with it. You cannot operate in the world if you do not have an internal model of what is happening. So, your mind provides you with a mental model you can manipulate in your imagination to prepare for the next moment and figure out what to do.

So—anything more on this? 

Jacobsen: Think about two rocks, two inert stones in contact: their surface atoms and molecules undergo minute rearrangements, exchanging physical information at a fundamental level. Yet this atomic-scale information transfer does not, in itself, constitute subjectivity. In other words, one rock touches another rock, ever so slightly. Information has been exchanged. You can change the arrangement of the atoms or molecules a bit—there is an exchange at the physical level. There is no subjectivity there, but still, information has moved. The question remains: What precise point does the cosmos preserve its objective nature while also giving rise to entities capable of subjective experience?

Rosner: I have argued forever that the universe is made of information. However, my view of how that composition works has evolved. The universe, as an entity, does not have any awareness at all of two rocks clacking together on some random planet.

So, all right—I could weasel out of your question by invoking the classic: “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” Sure—it makes a sound even if no one hears it. But how do we know the tree fell? Someone has to go into the forest, see the tree lying on the ground, and use their knowledge of physics to conclude that it must have made a noise as it fell.

We have a picture of the world—and in a way, the world has a picture of itself. The world’s picture of the world is the world. For things to exist and have existed, they must leave a trace, a mark, some information.

You could have a universe that lasts for 100 trillion years and then collapses and evaporates—and if there is no record outside that universe, it is as if it never existed at all. You could argue that if that universe was created by an external framework—a kind of armature—then maybe some trace persists.

Inside your head, you have a model of the world. In the future, we can map that model so precisely that we know exactly what you are thinking at any given moment. They can already do this to a limited degree with PET scans and other techniques.

They can already see which parts of your brain light up when they ask you to think of an apple, for example. So, in the future, we can know precisely what you are feeling at any given moment. Then imagine we completely obliterate your head, but we still have a perfect record of everything you thought for the last few years before your head got blasted off.

In that case, you could argue that the “universe” in your mind left a trace. But for the roughly 110 billion human minds that have lived and died without leaving any record, there is no trace at all. So, did that mental universe exist? Did the events inside that universe happen? You could argue “no” because there is no evidence.

In fact, all information-processing entities work with traces—things that leave a mark in their informational arena. The stuff that did not leave a trace only counts in a kind of implied or statistical way. Take, for example, the quintillion interactions that occur every second in a cubic meter at the center of the Sun. Almost none of those specific interactions leave an identifiable trace; each is obliterated in the chaos of constant fusion and scattering.

So, suppose Earth forms, life evolves, a tree falls—and then the universe collapses and reforms, and this whole cycle repeats a quintillion times. Did all those trees fall? Did they make a noise? Only by implication—because none of those universes left a persistent record.

Jacobsen: Now, when two rocks collide, there is a distinction: an event happensand has impacts on the environment, but whether it is registered is another thing. The tree fell and made a noise, but if it was not heard or recorded, there is no specific registration of that sound in mind.

Rosner: So, the idea is that if an event did not register, we can assume something happened, but we cannot recover that specific event. In physics, this concept is related to the idea of a “light cone” in relativity theory. It is a way to describe what can influence you and what you can influence, given the finite speed of light.

Imagine everyone in the universe has a flashlight. The number of people who can shine their flashlight on you within a tenth of a second is tiny—basically, only those right next to you. The number increases over time because light can travel farther. So, there is a cone of possible interactions: the narrow tip is your immediate present, and it expands into the future.

You can also imagine similar cones for the past and the future. Your “cone” of possible pasts expands the further back you go: you know exactly who your parents are, pretty certainly who your grandparents were, less certainly who your great-grandparents were, and almost nothing firsthand about your great-great-grandparents.

here is that show with Henry Louis Gates Jr., where he does genealogy for celebrities—because, honestly, nobody knows who their ancestors were beyond a few generations unless a team of researchers digs through archives and records. So, your cone of uncertainty widens as you look deeper into the past.

Jacobsen: Three things are clear in that scenario: you are a descendant—absolutely—and you are uncertain how far back that lineage goes. Also, all of it is in the past, so there is an implied past–meaning temporality. There is a lot of implied knowledge in that, too. The light cone analogy is pretty helpful for understanding particles or a specific volume of spacetime—it gives you a way to picture influence and causality on a world line. But for consciousness, it is a bit different because our mind is more like a fluid, tangled bundle of yarn.

So, maybe, we need a recharacterization of the light cone idea when we are talking about subjective awareness, at least as we currently understand it. We need a comprehensive framework for understanding knowledge and information.

Rosner: It gets confusing. But all right, you need context. For example, if you saw a tree fall and heard the noise five minutes ago, then yes, the tree fell in the forest and made a sound. 

Jacobsen: A long time ago, you referred to this as the narrative universe. You could also think of it as a relational data universe: things defined on each other informationally, and their very existence is tied to the fidelity of those relationships.

Rosner: So under the Informational Cosmology idea, the universe is ancient but always appears to be about 14 billion years old—because it has about 14 billion years of active, accessible information at its center and in its outskirts. But the details of that information change across billions and trillions of years. So, the universe is constantly forgetting things or putting them into memory—a memory that is not always accessible.

Vast collapsed regions of the universe may exist that we do not have any informational access to anymore because they are irrelevant to the universe’s present context. We only “know” the stuff that fits within some relevant structure. This contextual framework keeps it alive in the universe’s working memory.

So that tree—if we forget it ever fell because it was not five minutes ago but eight years ago during a bad breakup you have long buried in your mind—well, if you never recall it again, did the tree fall for you? Not exactly. Information needs context.

You can say it fell only if there is a trace. You said “the tree fell” is a trace. For example, you tell someone, “I was in the forest, and I saw and heard a tree fall.” You tell two people. Then, because it happened during a breakup when you were drunk and miserable, you forget about it ten years later.

But there is still a trace—there’s either the tree in the forest (if anyone goes to look) or the two people you told. But if, ten years later, there is no trace of the tree and the two people you told have also forgotten or died—then there is no trace at all. Did the tree fall in the forest? Well, no.

Even asking the question creates a trace: “If a tree falls in the forest…”—you just made a trace by saying it! So, does a tree make a sound if nobody is around? Yes—because we know how trees fall and what sounds they produce. But you have already stacked the deck in your favour: the question itself contains the trace of the tree falling.But absent a trace—absent a durable record—things did not happen except by fuzzy implication. All of this highlights—whether I am getting every detail exactly right in wording or framing it correctly—it all points to a more profound lack of understanding about what information is and what it needs to be meaningful in a larger, metaphysical, or cosmological sense.

Last updated May  3, 2025. These terms govern all In Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices.  In Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.