Hard Problems: Life and Consciousness (Sara Walker)
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- Understanding what life is, and by extension how it originates may be the most difficult open question in science, rivaling only the problem of consciousness in its potential difficulty. Both seem to bend our current understanding of physics and chemistry as ill-equipped to solve them. This led the to the notion of the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, meant to precisely articulate the key feature of consciousness our current understanding of reality can’t explain - the problem of experience, that is why does it feel like anything to exist? Like consciousness, here I argue that explaining life can similar be reduced to a single focal hard problem, the hard problem of life, that is how can information affect the material world? I discuss the relationship between the hard problems of consciousness and life and how each problem might help inform progress on the other.
Sarah is a real weapon, impressed by every word she utters.
In the end I got the feeling that Sara is on the right track. And the interesting analogy with ants can also be compared with a flock of birds showing swarm behavior. (The physical distance between the birds also indicates information interchange, but) the overall picture we should look at may be even bigger than the emerging phenomena we see.
Information is not a thing that exists but a relation between things that exist.
Almost done with this presentation. Without a doubt one of the best presentations that overlaps the two disciplines I’ve been following for 3 years now obsessively. I wrote a paper on “consciousness” that was supposed to be 5 pages and ended up being 20 pages and I could have wrote a 200 page paper at the time. The very large span of “information” on “consciousness” is incredible but limited to be honest. I keep reading and hearing the same arguments and same limitations everywhere. On more than “both sides” of the argument. And yes, there is more than two sides and two approaches. I cannot wrote in this text box on CZcams all the sides or my fingers will fall off.
Consider some things (words that describe as best as possible an experience phenomilogcially) like “valence” (overall mood, i.e. ambiance in a restaurant but also emotions arising within the valence) and “qaulia” as well which isn’t the same as “valence” or a single emotional.
We (humans) don’t have to many choices to “communicate” “information” to ourselves internally as well as externally besides language (don’t get me started).
Anyways, long story boring is my newest real experiment is I adopted a wild mustang and I’m gentling her overtime with my mind. I know that sounds weird but with the aspect or idea of “consciousness” within the awareness and attention between two entities etc etc etc. can’t type anymore! Ah! So much technical things to write.
Genius!👍
1. Definition of life:
“Life” is a word. The etymology is fun to follow. It came from somewhere and it has many meanings throughout different cultures even using the same language but in a different area. Example being Greek spoken in Ancient Jerusalem or elsewhere around the Mediterranean. Without going down that rabbit hole which is fun my personal favorite these days to describe what life is is to also describe what life isn’t.
Life isn’t fully entropic. So if life isn’t fully entropic than it must be something else. Why do we say certain elements have a “half life”? Does that imply they exist but they cannot regenerate? So what is life?
Life is resistant to entropy. That’s what life is. The processes it uses to resist total annihilation and it’s ultimate entropy is resistance. All information (matter) will cease to exist in its current form and it will all be converted into Hawking Radiation in the next 10 trillion years or more by our current understanding of the universe. Life resists entropy. That’s what life is.
2. Consciousness. What is consciousness?
“Consciousness” has many definitions across many scientific disciplines as well as religious connections which arguably are similar in the goal of just trying to understand what “it” is but the word descriptions are more complex sometimes in one or both arenas depending on the word and reference.
There is no such thing as a noun in the universe as we know it. Nothing ever stops “moving” as it is relative to its location in space and time or SpaceTime. Even in absolute zero “nothing” stops and even in the most vacant area of space there is “something” albeit not much matter but what is “space” made of? So that’s an issue but I digress.
Consciousness is really hard to give a good definition. It does depend on the disciple and context of the conversation. Not The best I can do (but for now) is to say that consciousness “is” attention to awareness and awareness to attention using centrality processing to act when incoming information “needs” or “wants/desires” a response.
The interesting part is that matter has awareness to other matter. Bonds being formed or broken. Air molecules interacting and so on and so forth. Arguably maybe the attention is when molecules bond vs. just moving out of each others way.
So maybe consciousness is “many” or more than one and maybe more than some number of “attentions” to an awareness of other matter around as it is relative in space and time or SpaceTime regardless of being on a terrestrial planet vs. in space. “Life” may have problems resisting entropy in certain conditions. Obviously but maybe not so obvious. Trying to be very simple here.
A tree is always treeing. A cloud is always clouding. Nothing is ever truly static. Ever. Not Mt. Everest and not an atom in a rock 1 mile below Antarctica.
Math is a human invention. The universe does not care at all about wether humans can describe it using math. It’s not going to change how the universe does things. We can use math and some computations to come close to understanding and even use math and chemistry without math to change things on a small level in the universe. Building a dam in China did change the weight of the earth or at least displaced weight so that does change things in the universe but it doesn’t change the way the universe works. Calculus can describe the world to a degree but never cannot describe it perfectly. It just can’t. Calculate in real time the surface of the sun. How long is a second to the universe? Please measure “now” and get back to me. Please measure the past. Please measure the future and let me know.
We know what “life” is because we know what life is not. Life is not Mt. Everest. Everest doesn’t have consciousness either. But I can climb Everest in my “life” and I can bring my consciousness to Everest and technically it is all in my head being brought to me through my senses and into my mind to get an idea like I want to climb my Everest. Why? How does that score me fitness points? How does that resist entropy? And yes I have a lot of reasons why it does but it also can be just one reason. It doesn’t. I’ll listen more later just wanted to write that down while I had the thoughts in my head.
Some Alan Watts, Hinduism, Buddhism, physics, psychology, neuroscience and other influences. I still love the etymology rabbit hole. Always good ideas on other words in other cultures and what they meant to them at the time they thought the same question. What is “life”.
Push the boundaries of how we think about things? It seems that there is a boundary to the thinking here such that any thinking beyond philosophical materialism is outside a boundary, one that must not be 'pushed' in the endeavor considered in this video. Maybe if nothing in one's thinking is off limits, the "hard questions" would be a bit less hard. Or consider this: if mathematics should be expanded to account for consciousness, what are the conditions relative ANY boundaries to the conceptual spheres, the 'boundary conditions' so to speak. What are the conditions at the boundaries of waking consciousness and non-ordinary states of consciousness? What are the conditions at the boundaries of naturalism and the supernatural? On the latter question, since the supernatural is a part of the mentation of the majority on the planet, why is there a boundary placed there in the consciousness of scientific materialist thinkers?
Consciousness exists only within the set of rules that go with it.
Really enjoyed your talk Sara , thanks.💓
Noosphere/Collective Mind
•X((😁💓)Z(🌏🐙))Y•
Some of Sara's thoughts about life make my toes curl in my shoes. She seems to be a great thinker but, I tend not to agree with her argument why life wasn't spontaneous as propagated by f.e. evolution theory. The concept of life as dynamic information context is useful, but incomplete, because it's just a lighthouse vision (you don't see what isn't visible due to the lack of light outside the scope). One could even argue that the broader (dynamic information) context determines the causal outcome (me) so that no other outcome is possible with or without statistical possibilities.
“Information” is anything, everything and also nothing since nothing is something. Nothing would denote that something is not there but still within the universe so the universe is still in existence this nothing is something.
Everything, or anything is an assembly of parts which interacts relative to its position in the universe which dictates its form regardless of mass.
Basic information is still quantitative as it relates to its form and relative nature to its position. Molecular structures have awareness (or a super basic function) and continue to “evolve” as it relates to their position. Has every chemical structure that could ever exist ever existed? Every bond formed to build higher and more complex chemical structures that will then connect to be aware of a possible interaction to form another different structure in relative space with different pressure, temperature, light, dark, magnetism, electricity and so on and so forth.
Maybe a super cell structure came into being without “intelligent design” (per say) by a trapped air bubble billions of years ago that mineralized into a cell wall but stayed melted due to temperature but inside the bubble was a different temperature trapping basic molecules that overtime did not (or did) “self organize” into a chemical structure isolated from outside forces but possibly static electricity “melted” or “soldered” these chemicals together to “self” propagate. Maybe we are looking into it to much or over thinking these chemical structures because they move faster than other chemical structures like a rock. A rock does move it just moves very very slow or at a different pace. Over billions of years the earth formed. Rocks melt into the core and volcanoes erupt etc etc.
The hot soups of under water vents or hot pools near volcanoes with the correct combination of chemicals arranged molecules into a structure due to the available bonds with the correct conditions.
Possibly acidic or whatever and we just don’t have the correct conditions with the large spans of time to wait or the correct combination just hasn’t been found.
Can it be that “life” is not always forming somewhere on a very small level. mRNA or DNA?
Obviously if evolutionary biologists had all the pieces to the puzzle it’d just be a matter of arranging them properly now to create even the most simple form of life which of course is not so “simple”.
3D print an RNA strand?
Is Sara considering entering the race for the Evo2.0 OOL $10M prize? Her fellow coauthor in their joint 2019 paper referenced in this video is already in the race.