Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

heraldscotland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 244 posts

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#131

Post by digging »

peddamat wrote: post #108
RaftPeople wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens Can you clarify what we "already know happens"? Even for humans, it's not clear that "conscious choice" exists and causes changes in state, because we don't know what the mechanism is that can cause a state change other than state at time T-1.

Isn't it assumed that everything is deterministic apart from what is done by the somewhat magical, "free will"?

No - quantum uncertainty gives us the assumption that everything is fundamentally random and nothing is deterministic, unless we assume a meta-determinism (or superdeterminism) whereby fundamentally random outcomes are actually predetermined.

How does that relate with the experience of decision making? That's a complete unknown. But the simplest explanation is that free will is simple, once we define it as "the experience of making a decision" instead of the traditional, nonsensical definition of "the act of making a decision that is fundamentally independent from prior events". Usually free will is framed as "choice vs slavery", which is a useless definition because choices can't be made in a vacuum.

In other words, of course we have free will: We feel like we have free will, and free will is simply the feeling of having free will. Conscious decisions (if those even exist!) are physical processes just like everything else in the universe.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#132

Post by smeej »

This entire article reads like an April Fools joke. It can be summarized, "I can't understand the mind of the God I think exists, therefore there must not be one, even though all the evidence points to willfulness behind what I have managed to understand."

The level of arrogance here is absolutely laughable. I would strongly recommend even a high school level theology class to this poor philosopher before he hurts himself.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#133

Post by digging »

m463 wrote: post #126
kouru225 wrote: post #69

In the first volume of Masks of God, Joseph Campbell points out that you can break all creation myths down to 3 categories: Creationism (where there is a god that created the universe), Animism (where the universe itself is alive), and Participationism (where the universe is the result of some interaction). He then points out that if you ask random children to make up the story of how the universe was created, the st…

what if the universe was never created, and always was?

Doesn't that fall under participationism?

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#134

Post by noncoml »

m463 wrote: post #126
kouru225 wrote: post #69

In the first volume of Masks of God, Joseph Campbell points out that you can break all creation myths down to 3 categories: Creationism (where there is a god that created the universe), Animism (where the universe itself is alive), and Participationism (where the universe is the result of some interaction). He then points out that if you ask random children to make up the story of how the universe was created, the st…

what if the universe was never created, and always was?

We would have to come up with a better explanation/understanding of time in order to make this argument logical.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#135

Post by digging »

hydrolox wrote: post #61
ricksunny wrote: post #20

Boltzmann brain: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (1x08) actually had an episode on this: https://screenrant.com/strange-new-worlds-boltsman-brain-sta...

the thing with the Boltzmann brain is that, even though it sounds compelling (in a philosophy thought experiment / random thought kind of way), I think there's one main criticism that shuts it down. If the brain is having all these experiences/thoughts itself, it came up with the idea of a Boltzmann brain, and the laws of physics, and logic, etc. So therefore, the laws of physics that Boltzmann brain is using the jus…

I don't think that's as strong an argument as you're presenting it. If anything can exist, and if randomness can exist, it's simpler for a Boltzmann Brain to exist than for our actual universe to exist. The exact laws of physics that the Brain has imagined don't actually matter and they don't have to match the physics in the universe that created the Brain. (It doesn't have to be a literal human brain.)

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#136

Post by netsharc »

Douglas Adams;

> This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#137

Post by noncoml »

dgoodell wrote: post #95
a13o wrote: post #54

We never bothered to define consciousness with any scientific rigor, so why not? It's common for things that are everywhere, to also be nowhere at all. Could the cosmos, in fact, be smurpity-badoingo?

Why is it so hard for people to understand that you can’t have productive discussions about things that you haven’t solidly defined?

What I like to ask about consciousness is to identify the step in the chain of organisms or matters where we jump from not having consciousness to having one.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#138

Post by stvltvs »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #88
itishappy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens... Do we know this?

You chose to type a reply to me right? I guess you could assume that you are compelled and your free will is an illusion, but honestly that view is shit.

> that view is shit.

Do tell. I also have strong views about free will, but opposing views are worth more than an offhand dismissal.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#139

Post by untech »

I didn’t like this article at all. Maybe I am missing something, but the thesis seems just too shallow, borderline pseudoscientific.

The main argument is “fine-tuning”: the fact that global constants in the universe are in an optimal state for existence of complex matter and, by extension, humanity. For me, the simplest explanation is the anthropic principle, or survivorship bias. If the constants weren’t optimal, we wouldn’t be able to make this observation.

The article barely touches this obvious explanation, and uses weak “multi-universe” theory. And refutes this strawman in a weird, in my opinion demagogic way (see for yourself).

Also: this line of thinking doesn’t refute creationism! The only argument against creationism was made against omnibenevolent god, so creationism was also strawmanned.

I regret that this article has gained so much attention on HN.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#140

Post by InternetPerson »

hydrolox wrote: post #61
ricksunny wrote: post #20

Boltzmann brain: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (1x08) actually had an episode on this: https://screenrant.com/strange-new-worlds-boltsman-brain-sta...

the thing with the Boltzmann brain is that, even though it sounds compelling (in a philosophy thought experiment / random thought kind of way), I think there's one main criticism that shuts it down. If the brain is having all these experiences/thoughts itself, it came up with the idea of a Boltzmann brain, and the laws of physics, and logic, etc. So therefore, the laws of physics that Boltzmann brain is using the jus…

That's why Boltzmann brains are a problem. If a theory predicts the appearance of Boltzmann brains, then that theory is (arguably) self-defeating.

For example, let's say you tell me your theory of the universe. And then I say, "Wait a minute, doesn't your theory lead to an infinite stretch of time where random brains can randomly spring into existence?"

If you say, "yes", then I'd say, "If your theory is true, then I'm probably just a Boltzmann brain, and this whole conversation is just a figment of my imagination."

I would assume that I'm probably a Boltzmann brain because the number of Boltzmann brains that ever exist will be far larger than the number of human brains that ever exist. Even if it takes a zillion years for a Boltzmann brain to appear, it will happen zillion times, over an infinite stretch of time.

Sean Carroll discusses this in much more depth in "Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad" [1]. In the paper, he argues that "the theories that predict [Boltzmann Brains] are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed."

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00850

Post reply on HN