Ask A Genius 1308: Consciousness in an IC Universe: Modeling and Information Processing
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/05
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What would be an alternate term for “consciousness” in an IC universe? I’ve been thinking about this more. What would be an alternative term for “consciousness” within an IC framework that decouples it from more mystical or metaphysical interpretations, making it seem less magical and more technical? Is there an existing term that serves this purpose—one that isn’t a neologism? What would make consciousness seem less mysterious? What synonym would be applicable to reduce associations with pseudoscience?
Rick Rosner: When people think of consciousness, they often associate it with subjective experience or emergent intelligence, but in a technical sense, it could be described as a process of Bayesian probabilistic responses—essentially what you see in an AI neural network. However, human consciousness is tacit and operates on a vastly different level from AI. AI can generate responses that pass a Turing test, but our awareness, responses, and feelings emerge from neural processes and predictive modelling that have evolved over millions of years.
I’m not sure what the ideal term would be, but perhaps “reality construction” or “reality modelling” would be more precise. The brain’s primary function is to model the external world and our place in it, helping us navigate and interact with our environment.
That said, our cognitive models are far from perfect. The human brain does a good enough job to enable our survival and reproduction—hence our species’ persistence—but its interpretations of reality are full of cognitive biases, perceptual distortions, and limitations. Our brains don’t give us a purely objective picture of reality; rather, they construct a functional approximation shaped by evolutionary pressures.
If you asked a hundred or a thousand people whether their brain gives them an accurate representation of the world and forces them to choose between “accurate” and “inaccurate,” most would likely choose “accurate. ” However, that doesn’t mean their perception is objectively correct—it only means it is functional for their needs.
Jacobsen: Correct. Even 52% still counts as a majority.
Rosner: Right, but the definition of “accurate” matters. Functional accuracy and objective accuracy are different things.
We’ve explored this in discussions about how evolution prioritizes species-level survival over individual accuracy. Our brains evolved to favour useful illusions over strict truth.
Jacobsen: In a way, I’m playing the part of Larry David here, questioning everything skeptically, while you’re taking the Jerry Seinfeld approach—more observational, more inclined to accept the practical side of things.
Rosner: I can be skeptical, too.
Jacobsen: Neil Brennan recently commented in an interview that Seinfeld is darker than people assume, while Larry David is lighter than people expect. It’s an interesting reversal of expectations.
Rosner: If the limitations of our neural architecture ultimately constrain consciousness, then reality itself is not necessarily a fully rational or idealized place. The constraints of information processing, biology, and physical laws dictate the nature of existence.
According to the principles of IC, though, not all systems must come to an end. You could argue that any given construction of information must eventually decay or transform, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it ceases to exist—it may simply reorganize into a different informational structure.
And that’s not necessarily the case. You could argue against that, given the idea that there’s no upper limit to the size of a universe built from information. You could argue that, while I wouldn’t say it’s necessary, there could be worlds that continue indefinitely.
But, anyway, I don’t know. I mean, that’s a somewhat bright spot—the idea that you could exist indefinitely.
There’s no such thing as actual immortality because, to have that, you’d have to exist for an infinite amount of time. And we know that’s really not allowed. Indefinitely is fine, but you can’t have actual infinities in physical systems. You can’t have infinite space, infinite matter, or infinite time. You can have anything short of infinite, which is still pretty good.
Jacobsen: Given the visible universe’s estimated size and material and energetic content, could we approximate its current informational content and its theoretical cap? Given the amount of material and energy in the universe, could we estimate some peak information content?
Rosner: Yeah.
Jacobsen: So, the question would then be: If that’s the case, why isn’t an optimized information-processing universe always at its cap? Is it not always at cap, using all of its resources optimally? Or is there some physical principle preventing that?
Rosner: For example, in physics, some principles optimize for efficiency—like Fermat’s principle of least time, where a photon takes the path that minimizes travel time from point A to point B. You could estimate it, but you’d need a working definition of information.
You could take the universe’s total mass and compare it to the energy of a photon emitted when a hydrogen atom transitions from its first excited state back to the ground state. Then, you could divide the total mass energy of the universe by that energy value. That might give you a rough estimate of the number of bits in the universe. It wouldn’t be a great estimate, but it would be a starting point.
If the universe is built out of the energy lost by long-distance photons redshifting due to the curvature of space, then the lowest average energy photon defines a fundamental information unit. There are lower-energy photons than the hydrogen transition photon, but they’re much less common.
That hydrogen transition photon is super common, so you could call that your fundamental bit of information. Not that I even like the idea of a universe made of those kinds of bits. But still, you’re just looking for some kind of freaking number.
The number of bits, using that estimate, is way larger than 10851085. It’s got to be somewhere in the 10901090-something range because 10851085 is an estimate of the number of particles in the universe.
Those particles are mostly protons and neutrons. But honestly, I don’t know exactly how the total particle count is distributed. In estimates of the universe’s mass, I assume they’re counting particles with resting mass. I don’t know for sure.
And if you compare the mass of those particles to the total mass energy of photons, the ratio is something like—I don’t know—a hundred thousandfold or more. The ratio of an electron’s mass to a proton’s is about 1,836:1, so that gives some scale.
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