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

21–30 of 244 posts

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

#21

Post by sixQuarks »

The article is quite ridiculous for stating that the alternative theory of a Multiverse is sloppy. It didn’t really give a reason why it’s sloppy. The Multiverse theory is an elegant and simple explanation for why everything seems to be so fine tuned.

What’s more sloppy of an explanation - that the cosmos is somehow conscious and directed life to appear, or that there is an infinite number of universes?

Looking back at the history of science, when we first thought that the earth was the center of the universe, then found out that the sun is, then found out that the sun is only a small part of a huge galaxy, then to find out our galaxy is just a spec Within hundreds of billions of other galaxies. Doesn’t it make sense that the next step is to discover there are multiple universes?

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

#23

Post by suby »

I think it's unlikely for consciousness to exist in stars or in any population of thing which isn't subject to natural selection / evolution. It seems to me that it arises due to giving a competitive advantage for the population in question.

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

#26

Post by card_zero »

edgyquant wrote: post #18
card_zero wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too small ourselves to fully grasp the complexity Size has nothing do with ability to understand things, so this doesn't make sense.

It matters very much when it comes to perspective. The posters point is spot on so unless you have some counter you should just delete yours.

Perhaps I don't understand the point. "Perspective", you say? I'm thinking that, for instance, a very very large rock does not have an advanced ability to understand things, whereas David Rappaport had a psychology degree.

(Extra bits edited in follow:)

I detect another implied point, which is that there are levels of ability to reason. That is, by analogy with cells, which are dumb, inside a human, which is smart, the supposition is that humans are relatively dumb components inside a universe which is super-smart. This relies on the concept of super-smart having a meaning. (It also implies that the cells are less than totally dumb.) Then humans are somewhere on a sliding scale between totally dumb and infinitely smart. But I see no reason to make this supposition that such a scale exists or has any meaning. So far as I can see, there's only one kind of reasoning and it doesn't have levels.

I guess there's things like squirrels solving puzzles to get nuts out of a container. But I think that's a different function from understanding stuff.

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

#27

Post by delichon »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #3

Parts of the cosmos for sure are and there's no need to look very far for it - for example the part that forms me writing this right now is, in fact, conscious.

If the cosmos is conscious in the way that we are and the speed of light proves to be a limit, then its thoughts would take thousands or millions of years to process. It may be compelled to leverage entities with cogitation components within light seconds of each other for fast thinking. The Thinking, Fast and Slow paradigm could be built into the shape of the universe.

If the slow thinkers seek to constrain the fast thinkers we may get away with a lot before they catch up.

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

#28

Post by nico »

If panpsychism is right, consciousness is part of the fabric of the cosmos, you just can't separate consciousness from it. Does that mean that the cosmos is conscious itself, and what does that mean? I'm not sure, but it's pretty fascinating to think about
Post reply on HN