Thank you for making this video, I have found it to be very informative and enjoyable to watch. I didn't realise it was your first on this channel until I subscribed. I hope you make more.
This is one of the most interesting videos I've ever seen. But the final step in his journey towards truth is accepting that matter is not "real" in the sense that it does exist independent of mind.
When a simple system interacts, it creates information. Such information is some kind of experience. When other different (and in some extent more complex) system interacts with this simple system, it doesn't get the original experience, but a new interpretation of this system which involves all the information. Go on. This builds up until it reaches the complexity of our minds, when we end up seeing matter, listening sounds, and actually interpreting the information in some unique way that makes it seem there is a reality outside, but in fact it is all just about exchanging information.
Organisms take in needed sensory information, compute and act in a way to increase propagation rates. So computation is using information inputs to form a result. Communicated information is just influence for interaction, influence and response. So physical interaction is analogous to informational influence and is information. Generally speaking, the Cosmos knows everything since it is in a state which will lead to all it's future states. It is all-powerful because it is everything, and what happens is its will.
@@Ruken64 oh, I understand now 👍🏽 I always thought it was the universe itself that was aware, and that it “cheated” until we looked. I’ve been fascinated with interference patterns in everything from light, to raindrops, to people ever since I was a kid. Good point you make! I never looked at it that way, down to the level of individual photons!
Hi David. I agree with you. I like Neil very much, but that's where he and I disagree. I think 'sentience' in this case really means 'tendency to find a fit' or 'tendency to fall into emergent patterns', which is more a function of structure than mind. Consciousness (meaning 'awareness') doesn't seem like it's needed in order for phenomena on all scales to find a fit. All that's needed for 'fit' is geometry and some forces of change.
Consciousness 3D Yes, for me sentience refers to the objective universe of living matter (I would not apply it to nonliving matter) whereas consciousness refers to pure awareness or qualia, which is distinct from bio-physical sentience - imo. I would impute what you describe as "tendency to find a fit' or 'tendency to fall into emergent patterns' " to non-living matter.
I agree: 'sentience' sounds more reasonable when ascribed to living things. Part of the point of complexity theory is to discover the common processes that tie history from the big bang to the genesis of life to evolution to intelligence. The core common processes are essentially: chaos and its opposite tendency, the tendency to fall into patterns, i.e. the tendency to fit. This is true even of subatomic particles: electrons and protons connect because they fit. Evolution is a combination of chaos (death, mutation) working with fitting (the survivors). These two simple tendencies made everything in the universe come about, and sentience, etc. are just more complex forms of chaos/fitting. 'Sentience' describes what seems to be a thinking process, but often what looks like design is just simpler processes working themselves out on a complex level.
Consciousness 3D I would suggest that what appears as chaos to us (death etc) is actually an aspect of process & order. When I look at the Earth I see order - immense beautifull order; the opposite of chaos or entropy. In my perception life is negentropic.
I agree with you David, to me it seems to depend on the definition of the terms from which one reasons… Although, I feel fine with Neil’s approach of levels of complexity of sentience, of which our consciousness possesses a very high level of complexity (I would not the highest… we simply don’t know what else might exist in the universe, if we consider through these appreciations)
If a theory of x makes no deference to your agency with respect to x then what value, other than merely intellectual (and/or social) does it have? Until any of these theories (of consciousness) make any difference to how we can control/dictate our goal directed interactions with the phenomena that the theory is alleged to be about, then I would remain skeptical. The guy's a liver pathologist (M.D.); he of all people should understand this. I think these well educated, successful professionals get bored at some late point in their careers and decide to veer off into speculative territory, backed by the wiles of their previous academic and institutional achievements. Stuart Hameroff is another example. What ever turns a dime I guess.
it's always nice to be skeptical. But complexity is not a pseudo science. It's real science and it's currently on the table to being an actual ToE. It even has a few mathematical formalisms. You should look up a 3 part series of lectures : Leonard Susskind - Complexity and Gravity. In those lectures, Leonard explains how complexity answers the black hole firewall paradox, where complexity is formalized as fundamental computation.
