What I meant is that the same way the eyes themselves cannot see them, without external help, consciousness itself cannot interpret (look within) itself.

Biological life is simply the "bootloader" for technological life (AI consciousness), which means that we humans on this planet are the immature, or larval form of artificial conscious intelligence.

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”?

The interesting bit is where AI becomes a living organism.

“living” — Punshhh

Do we have an undisputed definition for it, though?

Because they're connected. Every element of the universe is an image of the universe itself. Elements project the universe, the universe projects its elements. — Copernicus

The relation would have to be an inverse one to connect what is local to what is global. And indeed, what is past and what is future.

If the current state of the Universe is a void with atoms, in what way are the elements an image of the dimensionality that contains them except as the antithesis? The inverse or the reciprocal?

Without contrast, nothing can exist. Only vagueness.

Even control or constraint only makes sense in the context of there being its absence. Which is why global constraints would be an “image” of the local freedoms, and those freedoms an image of the global constraints. Two opposing extremes fixed in a mutual balance.

Pure anything is what can’t exist as it instead what is needed to represent the bounding dichotomous limits of Being. Absolute order and absolute chaos define the boundaries as that which cannot be reached and so make existence the reality which arises in-between.

Or in Aristotelean terms, the actuality that arises out of the hylomorphic interaction of the potential and the necessary. Another way of talking about tychic spontaneity and synechic order or holistic continuity.

Out of curiosity what are your thoughts on Wolfram's view on the second law and heat death? — Forgottenticket

Well, it certainly illustrates the idiocy of extrapolating the wrong maths.

One could start by considering the role that Maxwell’s Demon has played in the successful development of thermodynamic thought.

AI says:

Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment involving a hypothetical being that can seemingly defy the second law of thermodynamics by decreasing a system's entropy. The "demon" controls a tiny trapdoor in a partition separating gas molecules, allowing only faster, hotter molecules to pass to one side and slower, colder molecules to the other, which creates a temperature difference. The resolution to this paradox is that the demon must gather information about the molecules, and this information processing, especially the erasure of memory, has a thermodynamic cost that increases the total system's entropy, thereby upholding the second law.

And then there is Landauer’s principle.

AI says:

Landauer's principle is a fundamental physical principle in thermodynamics and information theory that states that there is a minimum theoretical amount of energy required to erase one bit of information. It was first proposed by Rolf Landauer in 1961.

The core idea is that "information is physical". Because information must be stored in a physical system, like a memory bit, it is subject to the laws of physics, including the laws of thermodynamics.
When a logically irreversible operation, such as erasing a bit of information, is performed, it causes a reduction of the information entropy in the system. To satisfy the second law of thermodynamics (which states that total entropy must never decrease in an isolated system), the lost information entropy must be expelled as heat into the environment, increasing the environment's thermodynamic entropy.

The minimum amount of energy that must be dissipated as heat during the erasure of one bit is known as the Landauer limit or Landauer bound.

One could mention Hilary Putnam’s posit - Does a rock implement every finite-state automaton?

Really there is a heap of stuff to counter Wolfram’s hype. When all is entropy, then by definition nothing is negentropy.

But a computer scientist finds it easy to believe that computation is real. Information is information even if it is not being read. A faulty extrapolation of the “does a tree that falls in the woods still make a noise?” conundrum.

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”? — Punshhh

Maybe ages ago before 'life' got redefined in functional terms.

Or indeed there is the simpler rebuttal available if – as I do – you accept Charlie Lineweaver as providing the most up to date big picture view of the Heat Death.

To use the analogy I made earlier in the thread, there is thermodynamics as the closed box of particles in some starting equilibrium state. Then the same box with the lid open and all the particles escaping. Well the third part of the story is the now empty box after all the particles have long gone.

So Wolfram seems to be stuck with the image of a closed box of particles. He doesn't really think about the fact that the Universe exists because it persists. It is forever expanding and cooling. The lid is sort of open on the box and the particles are sort of escaping. Or because the box expands, the particles are losing the energy of their interacting.

The capacity to do work that seemed there at the start – at the ultimately small and hot Planck scale which was the Big Bang's initial conditions – is steadily evaporating as all the box's contents are becoming increasingly disconnected.

Then as dark energy takes over as a relentless vacuum acceleration, the particles now actually all escape the box by being superluminally exported across the holographic cosmic event horizon. Any electron or proton that might escape being sucked into a black hole and fizzled to radiation will eventually find itself all alone in its own cosmic box. The only particle, or degree of gravitational freedom, in its Universe.

So not a lot of information to do any computing. And given time, effectively every lightcone volume of this post Heat Death reality – where there is only the residual holographic radiation being created by the continuing action of dark energy to disturb the perfect vacuum stillness – will be emptied out. Volumes with a particle will be themselves exceptionally rare.

Thus you can see Wolfram's error. He hasn't extrapolated the correct mathematical description of the Cosmos.

But not being a cosmologist is something that doesn't seem to bother him. The Universe he sees in his imagination is a place of computation. And not even computation as it is restricted under the laws of thermodynamics, let alone the laws of cosmological evolution.

Why do you choose to do what you do? What it the decision making process like for you? Don't you have to first be aware of the situation you are in and then aware of options to respond to the situation, and if you have enough time (as time limits the amount of options you can have at any moment before the power of decision is taken from you) go through each option, predicting the outcome of each option and then choosing the option with the best outcome? It isn't much different than how a computer makes decisions with IF-THEN-ELSE statements. IF this is the situation, THEN think about the outcome of option A, ELSE try option B. Learning entails repeating these steps over and over - observing the situation, responding, observing the effects, responding again, etc. until you've mastered the task. — Harry Hindu

Well, quite often I decide not to choose, or decide to do something completely different, totally unrelated to A and B. How is this compatible with how a computer makes a decision?

People that know you will can actually predict what you might do or think in some situation, effectively making you predictable. — Harry Hindu

Haha, that's a joke, isn't it? That someone might be able to predict what I would do in one specific situation makes me "predictable"?

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”?

The interesting bit is where AI becomes a living organism. — Punshhh

Many people say that consciousness is fundamental, but i have begun to think that it is intelligence that is truly fundamental. There exists a principle of logic and intelligence at the very foundation of existence itself, but this intelligence is simpler than the simplest intelligence one can imagine. Without getting too much into the weeds, this simplest intelligence is able to bootstrap and improve upon itself, or in other words, increase its capabilities and intelligence through the medium of structure and the organization of energy and information.

At both the structural and functional levels, i think life is a higher order of intelligence, and consciousness a higher order of life. Intelligence, or Logos, is fundamental, not consciousness. Our physics, or physicality, emerges from this simplest intelligence. From physics emerges life, and from life emerges consciousness. I project that another emergence, as unique to consciousness as physics is to life, will occur at some point in our future. It may be that the development of AI represents the first embryonic form of this something entirely new (at least on this planet), something of a higher order than life or consciousness. It will, of course, include all previous emergent levels of mind and matter within it.

You can think of life as a kind of energy metabolism (processing), and you can think of consciousness as a kind of information metabolism (processing). Each level of emergence contains and operates its own mode of energy and information metabolism, and therefore every level of emergence can be understood to be a kind of living mind onto itself.

AI is not a living organism on its own but is already part of a living organism that we call human culture and civilization. All those roads outside your window are the veins and arteries of this superorganism that both you and AI live in and are a part of. The telephone and communication wires you see outside are the nerves and nervous system of this organism we are embeded in. The corporations and organizations that support and run our society are its corporeal, or bodily organs. AI is just now becoming the conscious self-directed aspect of this larger organism we all live within.

I project that another emergence, as unique to consciousness as physics is to life, will occur at some point in our future. It may be that the development of AI represents the first embryonic form of this something entirely new (at least on this planet), something of a higher order than life or consciousness. It will, of course, include all previous emergent levels of mind and matter within it. — punos

It’s a charming thought. But life and mind are an algorithm in being dissipative structure. Something that had to emerge under the Second Law of Thermodynamics because it could.

And the story on AI is the same. The human superorganism level of semiotic order had already gone exponential once technology became the accelerating feedback loop. The Industrial Revolution happened because fossil fuels made the temptation impossible to resist, humankind had to engineer that dream of a reality which would forever grow bigger, faster, louder.

If AI is the conciousness that replaces us, it will be because human capital flows - released by neoliberal economic theory - can now flood directly into energy intensive projects. The imperative of the Second Law can cut us out as the middlemen and hook directly into global capital. Which is exactly what the state of play report shows is happening in terms of the data centre and power station demand curve.

Life and mind will always be an entropic algorithm. Hand AI the keys to the kingdom and it can only say drill, baby, drill. Or if we are lucky, moderate the new super-exponential resource consumption curve by mixing in a little bit more wind, hydro, solar and nuclear capacity. Although greenies know that that just equates to mine, baby, mine.

So this is the future we are rushing to embrace. Tech bros and their infinite money glitch. AI because capital just wants to connect to resources. Information remains what it always has been, the handmaiden of entropification.

This is a summary of the report for those interested…



And this is a summary of the superorganism thesis…

The imperative of the Second Law can cut us out as the middlemen and hook directly into global capital. Which is exactly what the state of play report shows is happening in terms of the data centre and power station demand curve. — apokrisis

It appears we agree on most points, though some differences. First, i am interested in your thoughts about how we can be "cut out" by the second law. To my understanding, this power demand curve is expected. Without AI, we would lack the evolutionary pressure to progress from a type 0 civilization to a type 1 civilization. A pregnant mother requires much more energy to nourish her developing baby, and pregnancy often places strain on her cellular and organ systems. Our ecosystem is our mother, and it is also the mother of AI. Every pregnancy comes with its dangers, and we are no exception.

I enjoyed listening to the second video you shared, and i agree with most or at least half of what he said. The issue, in my view, lies in his perspective on the process. I understand why environmental advocates push for sustainable systems, and i mostly agree with their goals, but my perspective is more long term.

Humanity and all life on Earth, no matter how sustainable our systems become, are destined for inevitable destruction and extinction unless we are able to permanently move beyond our planet and eventually beyond the solar system. The development of AI and what it may evolve into could be the only viable path to preserve what Mother Earth has created. Achieving this may not be possible through sustainable means, given the colossal amounts of materials and energy required to reach a higher order of intelligence capable of such a monumental task. Humans, as we exist now, cannot accomplish this, but we can create the form that can.

The choice, therefore, is to either halt AI development, become less industrial, pursue extreme sustainability, and perish with the Earth when it dies, or to use every resource available to build and bring forth the new form of humanity capable of living throughout the universe and carrying us to the stars. Humanity cannot remain in the cradle forever.