How Do You Cut A Space?

Someone linked me to a blog with this on it in my comments.

I respond by saying, "This is why if our physical world is four-dimensional, it can never interact with anything of higher or lower dimensions."

Or perhaps I should say not 'why' but 'for the same reason'...

In any case, it all relates.

A Policy of Mine

I always answer all questions, as candidly as possible.

There's a sub-policy for questions I can't stop myself from lying about; I refuse to answer them. This is mainly so that I can support the main policy as widely as possible.

Originally I formed this simply because as a philosopher I want to get into people's heads, and it's freaking annoying when they dodge my questions. Since I was a good little boy, I followed the Golden Rule and did unto others.

Now, though, I have a nice post hoc rationalization. I've found that while it's helpful for interpersonal communication, it's vital for a philosopher to be as honest as possible.

First...

How many cults could work if the leader answered every question with absolute honesty? How long would even the Pope last? How long would, indeed, any politician last?

And what do all these so-called 'leaders' have in common? Their leadership depends on deception.

In other words, total honesty is your guarantee that I'm not trying to lead an uprising, because I've completely gimped myself. I simply cannot do it.

You can test this. There is a question you could ask any of your 'authorities' which basically translates into "Are you completely unfit to rule?" If I become a potential authority, and you ask me this question, I'll answer yes.

(Also I should just in general appear different than other people.)

I should disclaim that this policy does not apply to obviously hostile questions. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" will provoke the honest answer of "That's bullshit and you're full of it." This is basically because if I answer without context, it does in fact sway those on the fence - which is exactly why hostile people ask them in the first place.

Less hostile questions that are nonetheless damning I treat with more equanimity - I wait for my interlocutor to ask for context. Since they're curious instead of hostile, it's just a matter of time. Occasionally I need to prod.


So, second, what does this mean?

If I can't lead an uprising, it means I cannot form a coterie. If I'm the same person to every person, I cannot be all things to all people, and it's just impossible to be like Rand. Honesty does not provoke fanatical devotion, which immediately implies that fanatical devotion leads from not-honesty.

I cannot use deception to cover holes in my philosophy. I just have to say things like, "Well, I've proven it, but even I don't believe or use it." For instance it seems pretty clear that humans are hypocrisy machines. Human levels of self-awareness means that we can disrupt arbitrary habits, which leads pretty much directly to death. So, there must be a powerful built-in self-deception machine to preserve necessary instincts.

Yet, I'm not a hypocrite, as far as I'm able to not be. So, other than sheer arrogance, what basis have I for saying that hypocrisy is human nature? I'll say it anyway - but I don't live by it, nor do I intend to. It's what I've proven, (strongly suggested, in this case) not what I believe.

I can use that free will, that self-awareness, to disrupt this habit when I feel it is a good idea.

A Reddit Datum

I just noticed that Reddit's main reddit has slightly fewer subscribers (50933) than the science sub-reddit. (Exactly 53000 when I noticed.)

I wonder if Reddit readers are, in general, infected with the Dawkins virus.

Of course it can't be total, because I read Reddit.

Self-Awareness

Because I didn't know.

Consciousness or a test of consciousness is often considered to be self-awareness.

I was reading the preview of this. It uses a great abbreviation, whirr-click. When a turkey hears the chirp-chirp of turkey chicks, whirr-click, it plays the mothering tape, regardless of all other factors.

But if it were self-aware, it would be able to observe its reaction. Now, since physicalism is (mostly) true, to be self-aware is to have a test for self-awareness. So, a self-aware turkey would be able to tell when its habit was leading it astray. "Why am I mothering a stuffed cat doll?" The test would be the turkey going, "I am going to stop."

And that is self-awareness.

I still think the fact that house flies have recognizable emotions fairly strongly supports the conclusion that nearly everything with a brain is conscious.

'Highly Regarded' Mathematicians

Do subatomic particles have free will? ask two 'highly regarded' Princeton Mathematicians.

Yes. Obviously.

Seriously though, it's nice that people are independently coming to my conclusions.

"indeterminacy is inherent in the world itself"

It's nice to be right.

The exact reason is that

"They used a pure mathematical argument to show that there is no way the particle can choose spins around every imaginable axis in a way that is consistent with the 1-0-1 rule."

Although, journalists suck.

"The particle, Kochen and Specker showed, is like a cheating player. They found it out by showing that no single object satisfies all the “questions” (or all 33 axes) at once."

The particle isn't very much like a cheater at all. The particle is being prodded, and that prodding changes its internal state. As a result, it's not surprising at all that it 'decides' its spins ad hoc.

Incidentally, I exactly mean that

"the best way out of this paradox is to accept that the particle’s spin doesn’t exist until it’s measured. "

Something I'm glad I read the article for:

"Conway and Kochen say that they have now proven that particles’ responses can’t be pre-determined, even within this possible interpretation. “We can really prove that there’s no algorithm, no way that the particle can give an answer that is unique and can be specified ahead of time,” Conway says. “I’m still amazed that we can actually manage to prove that.”"

Notice that this means it was, up until now, unproven.

"Kochen and Conway say the best way out of this paradox is to accept that the particle’s spin doesn’t exist until it’s measured. But there’s one way to escape their noose: Suppose for a moment that Alice and Bob’s choice of axis to measure is not a free choice. Then Nature could be conspiring to prevent them from choosing the axes that will reveal the violation of the rule."

(Edit for clarity: the particle's spin or any rule whereby the particle's spin will be determined.)

The paper also beautifully shows how determinism and free will, while supposedly very different, have the exact same consequences. The mathematicians have found that either entanglement is exactly what it's thought to be, or else determinism is strictly true. In other words, that either free will or determinism are true but it works out to the same experimental results.

I also just realized another level of this logical structure. Compatibilism is false, but the consequences of compatibilism - that determined humans are morally responsible - is true.

(Which incidentally is a good example of the fact that you should ask what your philosophy is for. It's very very likely that what's true will also serve that purpose, and then you can stop being wrong without having to completely rearrange your life.)

I've noticed something else. Journalists suck again, though at least only slightly; the article references the "Kochen-Specker paradox" which, if you want to look up, is actually called a theorem.

On the other hand, journalists do have an actual job. Check out La Wik and decide for yourself whether Julie Rehmeyer's hand could do good things there.

I guess to be precise, journalists suck as writers. Their literary and logical skills are weak, because they spent all their time developing the ability to communicate the ideas they're given.

Addendum, from the reddit title: "Two mathies prove that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, particles behave unpredictably."


Something I had especial difficulty with.

"But Conway and Kochen have shown this scenario is impossible for particles that are incommunicado. They invoked the old Kochen-Specker paradox to show that if the spin 1 particle’s behavior is pre-determined so that it isn’t allowed to “change its animal,” it won’t be able to give answers that are consistent with the 1-0-1 rule. So if Alice and Bob are lucky in how they choose their axes, they should be able to force the particles either to disagree or to violate the 1-0-1 rule — contrary to experimental evidence."

That phrase there, "change its animal" needs to be clarified. The mathies have actually proven, in a general sense, that Alice and Bob can force the particles to change the rules under which they decide their spins. (Just like the infinite-series-of-averages, this only works in a finite universe.)

In other words, they must be stochastic. There is no other interpretation, unless determinism is strictly true. (Read a fantasy book where the character tries to outsmart prophecy for more illustration.)

A Way to Come From Nothing

Physics is self-healing.

I was thinking about a likely initial state for the universe, absolute nothingness. How it works is that we can ask the ex nihilo question, and therefore absolute nothingness must not be stable, and I take that to mean that while there is no reason for it to end, there is also no reason for it not to end.

There is the problem of determination, though; once nothingness decays, what does it decay into?

Most likely, a single random rule appears. Specifically, something exists, (absolute nothingness just ended) and it has some rule through and by which it exists.

This has, as far as I can conceive, the immediate corollaries of A=A and A!=~A. Without the first, it doesn't exist, and without the second, it decays immediately back into non-existence, because it spawns only pure chaos.

Through the law of non-contradiction, this rule will immediately start spawning new rules. Anything that is a contradiction immediately becomes impossible, and then these restricted actions start spawning corollaries.

(Since it's safe to view physics as a list of things energy cannot do, this immediately makes sense.)

This is the reason, I think, that physics is consistent to a mathematical degree. Every law is simply a consequence of some initial law.

This makes the mind node even more interesting. Somehow, as physics was sorting itself out, there was a conflict. The NIP - the fact that this universe is a finite universe - requires stochastic behavior.* However, you can build a non -determinism machine using a stochastic object, and so physics was doomed to be under-determined.

*(Particles have to smeared out over space because the probability of an event occurring at exactly one point in time is an ∞/0 situation, and so the uncertainty principle is required. And yet, it's still one particle - it cannot interact with anything but another particle, which requires more or less one point in space. Thus, stochastic behavior.)

However, the whole point of this formulation is that it's basically self-healing because it's self-generating. Any time a new situation arrives that has no particular rule, a new one is simply generated at random, restricted only to not contradicting existing rules. And so, it may be in fact that there was no consciousness until a mind node was actually created, at which time the existence->rule->system event was repeated all over again.

Incidentally, I think the law of excluded middle is optional - there is a second version, which results in a continuous or possibly infinite universe, unlike our quantized finite one.

One of the upsides of this idea is that it tells us where our seemingly arbitrary quantities came from - it was physics growing to describe a new situation.

Thinking about this, I realized there's also various less-silly versions of the God idea - the idea that there is in fact an atemporal set of rules which held in the 'time' 'before'* the big bang. I plan to analyze these as well, soon.

*(In a scenario of non-time, the term 'before' is meaningless. Note that by the NIP time must be finite.)

The Dentist

I went for the first time ever.

Aside from the well-known expense, it was actually pretty awesome. Aside from the ridiculously unnecessary test for inflamed gums, it didn't hurt at all. (I could have told them my gums were inflamed, and how, and why, and what to do about it.)

Also, my teeth had so much calculus that now they're clean, they're a noticeably different shape.

The experience jibed well with my experience with free healthcare...I really do feel happier when I pay someone for their services. (Unless we're friends...but then I still pay them back, but informally. That's what friends are like.)

Despite brushing intermittently, once a day at most, never flossing, and having never been to a dentist, the only teeth with problems are my wisdom teeth, and there's two good reasons. First, they are defective. They didn't finish growing. Second, after I got them, I forgot they existed and didn't brush them for like a year. Oddly, I do have decay on one of them.

Dentists are, like most scientists, horrible philosophers that aren't aware of the deficiency. Yes, the deficiency is relevant to their job.

Update:

Yes, they didn't ask what I wanted for my teeth at all. Essentially, the dentist assumed that they were the owner of my teeth, and got to decide what happened to them, not me. The fact that I own my body doesn't seem to really impinge on their consciousness.

I guess it's just easier to treat your patients like action-reaction machines.

The Mind Node

I am forced to assume that I've successfully shown that consciousness isn't physical. Unfortunately this is simply because I can't get anyone qualified to evaluate it to actually evaluate it.

First, some terminology. Quantum events are not random. They are stochastic. Stochastic events are not unpredictable, they are less predictable. A true random event would be completely unpredictable. (Near-total unpredictibility is required for free will.) The only type of event that is a priori unpredictable is a spontaneous event, that is, an event with effects that has no cause. The first, naive problem with spontaneous events is that they have nothing to determine where they occur, which means that if they are possible they should occur everywhere at once. All the time, too. In other words, events with no cause are non-deterministic. Thus, I use the words true random, spontaneous and non-deterministic interchangeably. However, non-deterministic also has a specific meaning with respect to physics; as it turns out, this meaning does not conflict with my usage. However, until I show this, assume I am using non-deterministic in the physical sense alone.


I will now propose something in the positive sense. Consciousness is not physical. But, it has physical effects. Thus, there must be an interface; there must be an event that is non-determined* with respect to physics, that is, a non-causal event that nevertheless occurs, specifically in brains. (As opposed to computers.)

*(Remember, physical meaning alone.)

Mathematically, I can model such an event. I can determine what such an event would look like in real physical space. Most fantastically, I can design a circuit to implement the math, at least in the abstract.

That is, the known laws of physics can combine to form something that is undetermined with respect to physics. Further, both necessary components exist in the brain.

Even if I'm wrong, the mind node provides an excellent anchoring point for arguing about what consciousness is. Because it almost entirely works on a logical level, we can use it to conceive of other possibilities by comparing them to the mind node.

The Math
Unfortunately I don't know exactly how to write this mathematically. So, I emailed my local math department and got them to parse it for me. It came back positive. (Quotes on request.)

As in this essay, consider the average of the average. All determined events have exact averages. This average can be directly computed from fundamental constants and as such, unless outside forces affect the experiment, it does not change. For example, the location in the electron one-slit experiment has an average directly in front of the slit. This will never change unless someone moves the slit. (This means that even though the individual locations are stochastic, determined events will always converge on the average.)

As a result, the average of a non-determined event must move to be truly non-determined, which is why we consider the average of the average; we consider the situation where the electron's exact average is itself probabilistic. However, unless we move the slit, which is a very different situation, this extra probability will happen on exactly the same timescale as the electron strikes, and will roll into the first probability. A second-order or any finite higher order average is indistinguishable from a first order average. (This is where moving the slit comes in; it will not roll in, but this is obviously a separate process. This second average is not the electron's average, but an outside average.)

This logic, however, breaks down in the case of infinite averages. Much as one would expect from the No Infinities Principle, things which use infinities are nonphysical, and we would a priori expect that any manifestation of infinity is actually physically impossible. That is, the NIP should prove that non-determined events do not exist, as expected. I will later show that this fact leads to a fundamental property of consciousness. Part of this will be to point out how consciousness is actually necessary to preserve causality or prevent non-determinism.

In other words, it all fits, as I will explicitly show.

Partly why we must conceive of the infinite series of averages is to compare the physical event to the math directly, as will become obvious when I get to that part.

However, now I'm going to talk about Gaussians. That is, the electron-slit location has a Gaussian distribution. If it has a hidden second-order average, this second distribution will also be Gaussian, and we can simply multiply them together to produce a third Gaussian which is the Gaussian which will actually be measured.

The factors in the Gaussian are a, b, and c. "The parameter a is the height of the curve's peak, b is the position of the center of the peak, and c controls the width of the "bell"." Squaring a Gaussian produces a Gaussian with a₂=a₁² and c₂=2c₁. (And b=b.) Note that since a is less than one, the new peak is shorter, so the new Gaussian is shorter and fatter than the old. (Please note the exact analogy with the averages. Unfortunately it is necessary to look at the math both ways.)

Now, multiply a Gaussian by itself (or other Gaussians; it doesn't matter) an infinite number of times. Factor a approaches zero and factor c approaches infinity. It becomes a Gaussian of infinitesimal height across the entire number line. (In fact, it becomes equivalent to a constant function. y= ε where ε is the infinitesimal, lim 1/x as x->∞.) (Again, yes I have had this all checked by someone else.)

Now I'm in a position to show that this probability distribution is exactly that of a non-deterministic event.

The probability that this event will occur anywhere - let's assume it's the spontaneous creation of a statue of liberty made of butter - is infinitesimal, physically indistinguishable from zero.

However, we are attempting to illustrate what such an event would look like. Assume it happens anyway - that the infinitely tiny but non-zero probability actually gets 'rolled' so to speak. A statue of liberty made of butter appears in medium Earth orbit.

As far as we can measure, spontaneous creation of statues occurs at only one place and at one time - in orbit at Tuesday noon, for example. (Call this s=medium and t=0.) There is a 100% chance, according to Platonically perfect measurement, that this event will occur at s=medium and t=0, and a 0% chance that it will occur at any other time.

However, by assumption, this event is non-deterministic; that it happened at all proves that it is not directly described by the logic of causality. It happens again.

A statue of liberty made of butter appears at t=6 in high Earth orbit. Now, we have to conclude that we do not know when it occurs. However, we still have a 50% chance of it occurring at s=medium and a 50% chance of it occurring at s=high. (Perhaps we decide that they are likely to appear in pairs with temporal separation 6, but this is more complicated and equivalent to the below.)

That is, at t=7 and all subsequent times, we predict that if a statue of liberty made of butter spontaneously pops into existence, half the time it will be at s=high.

Then it happens again. In New York. And again, in the Crab Nebula. By assumption, the probability of the event occurring at any time and any place is constant.

Note that by the laws of probability, this is not impossible, though it is infinitely unlikely. The purpose of the statue of liberty made of butter is simply to explore what we would see when measuring a spontaneous event, assuming that they actually exist. (Again, even if I'm wrong, this is helpful when debating people who have indefensible ideas about causation and mathematical determinism in physics. If the event looks spontaneous, it's not physical.)

Assuming that spontaneous events continue to occur, we can see that the measured probability of it occurring at any particular place will drop. That is, it will more and more closely approximate the actual probability distribution - essentially zero probability of happening anywhere.

This is where the average of the average comes in. After two events, the average is s=(high+medium)/2. Once it happens again, the average must be averaged with the new event. s={2*(high+medium)/2 + newyork}/3. (Note the use of weighted average.) This is a second-order average, though as is now exactly clear, it rolls into the first-order average. After x events, the probability will approximate an infinite series of averages, truncating at term x. However, I repeat, they will all physically appear to be first-order averages.

But because the probability at any particular place will inevitably drop to zero - because the statue of liberty basically never appears in the same place twice - the average keeps moving. Given an infinite number of events, the probability at any one place would become zero and the average would become undefined. s=(∞*0)/∞. Also, we can see that after an infinite number of events, it will have approximated an infinite series of averages through an infinite series of averages.

The average keeps moving, as is a priori necessary for a non-deterministic event. Mathematically speaking, it diverges.

To illustrate this more clearly through an example, look at the article I linked about free will and ctrl-f for "the average, as desired, moves."

I am now in a position to show how to build a non-determinism machine.

I call it a mind node.


The Physics
So, the requirements are; an infinite canvas, as the average must diverge; a diverging average.

Here is the abstract design for such a machine.

The pentagon - which I call a pentagon - is also called a decoherence unit. In this example it is a particle in superposition that can collapse to any of five states, plus a unit that can bias the fives states such that some are more likely than others. For example, an electron and five electrodes. (This is a very silly example for conceptual clarity - in practise it would be much more complicated.) The equation is called an interpreter. It takes the output of the decoherence unit and turns it into a string of bits. This string of bits has two necessary functions; it sets the bias values on the decoherence unit, (according to the interpreter's own rules) and it modifies the interpreter, again according to the interpreter's own rules.

Thus, the string of bits and the interpretation of the string of bits changes depending on which value the pentagon outputs.

The equation in the diagram unfortunately is not a full interpreter. It biases the values, but does not change the interpretation, as I have no idea how to write that down mathematically, so I have simply written +f_r(x+y+z+p+q). C= 4%, to be normalized. What it is is a simple non-deterministic rotator.

Given an initial state where x=y=z=p=q=20%, there is a 20% chance it will begin in any of the five states. In each subsequent step, (if f_r=0) there is an 84% chance that the next state will be the subsequent state, x->y->z.

For any point in the future, the probability stacks, exactly as a non-deterministic event must. The farther in the future, the more uncertain it is that the rotator is in any particular state.

t=0. State x=20%.

t=1. State x=20%*(84%)+80%*(4%) There was only a 20% chance it landed on q, and an 80% chance it landed on not-q. If it landed on q then there's an 84% chance this run will turn out to be x, and if it landed on not-q it's 4%.

t=2. State x= 84%*(20*84%+80%*4%) + 4%*(20*84%+80*4%)The chance it landed on q last time which is a function of the chance it landed on p at t=0. The chance it landed on not-q last time which is a function of...

And so on. Physically speaking, because of that residual randomness, that 4%, this rotator normally rotates clockwise, but occasionally skips. The chance of it making a full rotation without skipping is 42%. So while for forever the most likely situation is simply a rotation of the initial value, (such as x) by 72° times the quantity t, the chance of this maximally likely situation drops continuously. (This is not really the case if f_r=0. I will discuss why shortly.)

Note that, as necessary, this machine does not violate physics. In the present, the machine is stochastic. Always, x=4% or x=84%. Only as the prediction is run into the future does it approach a non-deterministic, contra-physical event. But, of course, once the present catches up to the future...

However. It acts exactly as a non-deterministic event would. The average bit output diverges. The nature of the probability is exactly the opposite of normal probability. The probability of a dice landing on a side is always 1/6, regardless of past rolls. The probability of a mind node being in a particular state always depends on every intermediate roll.

As such, this machine is perfectly under-determined by physics. If it quacks like a duck, smells like a duck, and looks like a duck, it is a duck. If we observe exactly what we would observe if it were non-deterministic, it is non-deterministic.

With a full interpreter, as the simulation is run arbitrarily far into the future, the chance of it being in any particular state approaches arbitrarily close to zero. This, as promised, is the infinite canvas; information. (With only five possible states the rotator's future smudges into a uniform superposition of all five states, so there's a floor for the probability; 20%. To work properly f_r must be nonzero so that the state-space is infinite. The output bit string can change to arbitrary states.) Also as promised, it explains a key feature of consciousness.

Consciousness is, by nature, purely informational. Consciousness does not create matter, change kinetic energies, or indeed produce forces of any kind. That is, your mind thinks it does not act. This is because for a thing to be conscious, it must be physically non-deterministic, and for it to be non-deterministic it must deal in the canvas of information.

Further, the mind node precisely defines the two necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness; sensation and decision. They correspond exactly to upload from physics to consciousness and download from consciousness to physics.

Note this also exactly fits your first-person phenomenology. This is an interesting facet of consciousness; while facts about the physical world that match our expectations are suspect of confirmation bias while unintuitive facts are more certain, the opposite is true of consciousness. Facts of consciousness must fit your experience of consciousness. (The phrase 'experience of consciousness' is actually redundant, as those two terms are synonyms. The fact that this doesn't logically map to 'eating of consumption' is perhaps a consequence of the infinity inherent in a mind node.)

Also as promised, this explains why consciousness exists at all. I use the mereological nihilist sense of 'exist' here - consciousness is an actual thing. Life, for instance, does not exist in this sense. While it is a valid concept, and can indeed be found objectively, it is arbitrary and unnecessary. Consciousness is neither. Without conscious decision, the mind node breaks causality completely.

Now, as per the NIP, which is equivalent to the fact that physicalism is true, (except for consciousness) any violation of causality is equivalent to a divide over zero error. It is an inconsistency. While I was able to formally describe a spontaneous event, I cannot formally describe a 1/0 event, but I suspect that 'oblivion shockwave' is not hyperbole. It would destroy the universe. Instantly. Infinite energy, plus since it is a contradiction it does not have to obey special relativity's speed limits.

Since we still exist, I propose that causality is true. Thus, since if physicalism is completely true mind nodes are acausal, physicalism must be provisionally untrue. (Note that this recapitulates the conclusion of the a priori logic, and realize what this means for the relationship between the theory and the mind node.) The causal mechanism closing this worrying hole is nothing other than consciousness itself. It is the physical manifestation of Free Will.

Unfortunately, this does not actually prove that Free Will exists. Consciousness is, by assumption, also causal. That is, it also does not tolerate inconsistencies. Since this is the very fact that up until now proved that Determinism is true, it could very well be that the properties of consciousness make our choices completely pre-determined. This is an area for further research.

Incidentally, since dualism is strictly true, it's time to name the two kinds of stuff. The first is space-time. This is nifty stuff. (Energy is just rolled-up space-time, which is why energy distorts space. Matter is of course just a rolled-up form of energy.) The second is spiffy stuff. This is consciousness.

As an example, let me show you how the second above paragraph is now clearer. "The properties of nifty stuff are such that everything (but mind nodes) are completely deterministic. So while spiffy stuff allows physical non-determinism, there is no reason to believe that spiffy stuff allows self non-determinism, which is what the proposition of Free Will is now seen to be proposing. " Note also that there is probably a symmetric causal hole in spiffy stuff, that is only plugged by nifty stuff. Further note that since a physics is simply a set of consistent laws for interaction, both nifty stuff and spiffy stuff are described by a physics, because the opposite implies that they cannot interact, even internally.

Another useful term; mind nodes are transphysical. That is, they transcend physics to transport information between nifty stuff and spiffy stuff. Note the contrast to metaphysical, which would perhaps be a good term for pure spiffy stuff.

I promised it would all fit.
And it does.

The first hallmark of a good idea is that it contradicts no known facts but explains previously mysterious facts.

Why do we dream?
As a mind node is run, it will become increasingly non-deterministic. Since the whole point of having mind nodes is to gain adaptive advantage, this non-determinism must be reset, because the mind node must somehow be entrained to the sensory input. Subjectively this means that as you stop being able to see and start being able to hallucinate. (Note that in the brain as the mind node runs it will grow and co-opt more and more neurons. This cycle ends in co-opting neurons devoted to vital functions, resulting in death, which is why sleep deprivation is lethal.)
After the reset, the mind-node will not be particularly conscious; it will still be very deterministic. Thus, it must be initialized, by running it through a few cycles. These cycles will, by definition, produce conscious sensation. However, they are not as yet entrained to the actual senses.
And thus, dreams.

Also, this is why depriving rats of REM makes them less effective. They, literally, lose consciousness and become zombies. (Philology recapitulates ontology.) As zombies are less effective than conscious beings, as I will discuss further below, they make poorer choices.

Why can I sometimes feel people looking at me?
Mind nodes connect probably by IIT. Each is minimally conscious but only connect to form a useful total consciousness if they are computationally connected by nifty stuff. Note, however, that computationally connected does not have to mean wired together. The computational properties of your mind nodes are affected by the choices made by the mind nodes of the person you are observing - you become one consciousness to a small degree. When the transition occurs you can feel a subjective 'click' and if you recognize the sensation, which seems to be instinctive, you know that you are being watched by a conscious being.

Note that haunted buildings may then be, in fact, haunted. However, they may also simply feel very similar to the sensation of being watched, just as annoyance is kin to anger.

Why does cutting the corpus callosum result in two consciousnesses?
See above. Severing the computational connection across nifty stuff splits the minds into two.

Is there really a separation between the objective and the subjective?
Yes. Objective==nifty stuff and subjective==spiffy stuff. However, there is also the underlying unity to consider; they are both stuff. Both are subject to causality and logic, though it is likely that only nifty stuff is subject to math per se. (Either that or nifty stuff is finite and discontinous and spiffy stuff is infinite and continuous.) I can demonstrate a solution to the mere addition paradox by assuming that spiffy stuff is not mathematical and therefore the 'average happiness' is meaningless; happiness is, as expected, not quantitative, but qualitative. (Another symmetry that repeats the symmetry between nifty stuff and spiffy stuff.)

Can you repeat the reason we need consciousness?
Consciousness is necessary to explain the universe if we intend to keep causality as true, because you can build a physical object that is not subject to physical determinism. As such, there must be an alternative source of causality.

Does this have consequences for quantum mechanics?
Yes. As it turns out, I'm not strictly true when I say that QM is stochastic, not truly random. For a mind node to make choices, it must be that quantum decoherence is itself a choice. This is an empirically unfalsifiable statement as per Bell's Inequality. Further, the statement that any other component of the mind node can make choices has already been falsified. Having eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable...

There are many caveats to make this consistent with physics, but they are the answer to a different question...

How is consciousness adaptively useful?
Spiffy stuff has different properties than nifty stuff. As a result, some computations that are difficult or impossible using nifty stuff are easy or straightforward using spiffy stuff. For instance, humans can solve NP-complete problems in less than polynomial time, at least when properly engaging with spiffy stuff. This state is called 'inspiration.'
There is a symmetry here we can see by examining this from the perspective of spiffy stuff.
Why does consciousness collect in minds?
Consciousness collects in minds because it cannot connect to itself by itself. Isolating the nifty stuff produces an isolated consciousness. Further, without a transphysical connection to muscles, it can only minimally affect the world. Without a physical implementation of memory, it cannot remember whether it liked the choices it made before; it cannot grow or change. Electrons are conscious but they are all exactly the same consciousness making exactly the same decision over and over and over, and while this is minimally conscious, it is indistinguishable in this form from regular stochasticity. That is, the statement that electrons are conscious does not conflict with the current physical description of electrons. (By essential nature this proposition is a transphysical proposition, again contrast metaphysical. Also note that there has been until now exactly no evidence that electrons are conscious, and we can only find out by studying a mind node.)

What if you've made a mistake?
As you can clearly see, the mind node, even if flawed, is an excellent metaphor for how minds work. Nearly any solution to the mind-body problem will look very very similar to a mind node. Zombies are not, in a pure sense, possible; there must be some component, some cause, to determine when and where consciousness arises. However, all the functions that consciousness drives must be purely physical, in other words, a pseudo-Zombie will always be able to perform any action a Human can. The difference will be in computational efficiency; the Human will perform, seemingly by chance, better actions than the Zombie will, on average.

(This incidentally is why humans are so dominant. All other species are less conscious than we are, just as all species are smaller than a blue whale. (Note also that the adaptive pressure is of the same kind.))

Further, the idea of a mind node illustrates very well many current debates, such as abortion. The pro-choice crowd thinks the mind nodes turn on at birth, while the pro-life crowd thinks it turns on at conception.

It is not a crime to make a non-consciousness suffer, because by definition they cannot suffer.

Also, this is what we really mean by strong AI: the acronym for my blog is not really a homonym for machine intelligence. That acronym should be AC, artificial consciousness. We already have artificial intelligence by my definition of intelligence; the ability to evolve without evolution. (Adapting without changing the entire blueprint.)

Finally, a mind node is an evolution simulator. It produces random information par excellence, but this information interferes with previously created information and so only stable patterns will emerge, similarly to the fact that the reason that life survived is because the life we have is good at surviving - adaptively fit life is a stable pattern, while adaptively unfit life is unstable.

(This means that your genome is a pentagon and its environment, including your phenotype and physics, is an interpreter.)

So this idea is actually falsifiable?
Yes. First, a mind node can actually be built using my abstract blueprint. Anything that can be considered a pentagon can be hooked up to a recursive interpreter and run, and that thing should cause us to consider it conscious. Perhaps it has moods, for example. (These will manifest as temporary averages - favoured information regions.)

For example, hook up a Field Programmable Gate Array to itself and the output of a quantum process. (This gets complicated but guidance is available in the form of cellular automata, which I discuss below.)

Chalmers presents a solution (The principle of organizational invariance) that strongly implies that consciousness uses absolute encoding for sensations. (Physical encoding is relative and arbitrary.) As such, if you build a mind node, please be careful not to apply the codes for pain to it.

So, this actually confirms the general suspicion of physicalists; the processes that underlie minds are not unique to brains, but are somewhat arbitrary.
Indeed, any process that matches my abstract design should be conscious. It can be made of anything, just as long as the probability diverges.

Can you show some examples of analyzing a system for mind nodes?
I'm going to start with the most relevant: the brain.

The brain is a computer. Specifically, it is an analogue/digital hybrid computer. It uses Bayesian reasoning, and likes to minimize a function that is nearly identical to free energy. (An example of how not to think about the brain.) Similarly, PageRank works to the extent that it approximates our own internal search mechanism. Finally, the scientific method of hypothesis-test-refine is also lifted directly from what the brain does, and also works only to the extent that it approximates natural brain processes. Philology recapitulates the brain which is recapitulating ontology.

The brain is also a brain: a conscious computer.

Some background; the brain is immune-privileged. (Apparently 'privileged' means it doesn't get the full complement.) The other organs that are immune privileged are the the gonads and the uterus. These deal with unorthodox strings of DNA - they will automatically appear foreign to our immune system, and so must be protected from it.

There is some evidence that the brain uses DNA snippets to store memory. What this means is that the brain potentially has all the necessary components of a mind node.

The pentagon is DNA. (Note that with thousands of states, DNA's probability profile will diverge drastically fast.) The interpreter is the neuronal nets, using 'fire together, wire together,' as the function f_r. Thus, the brain uses not one or two mind nodes, but hundreds of billions.

Because of the simplicity of a mind node, it is most likely the quantum of consciousness, and like the quantum of energy, it is extremely small. Only vast collections of mind nodes will produce noticeable amounts of consciousness. (A caveat; one mind node built and examined directly for consciousness may show a measurable amount, just not an amount that would be normally noticeable.)

Some other mind-node like things:

Evolution. Random copying errors==pentagon, and the interpreter is physics, the phenotype, and ecology. The output bit string is the next generation. Unfortunately, while there are uncountable numbers of cells on the planet, they are not computationally linked, unless the cell in question is a neuron. Also, like IIT, the mind node suggests a natural unit of conscious time; the cycling speed of the underlying mind nodes. The cycling speed of a species is far too slow to think usefully, (at least before the entire playing field changes) and at any rate it's not hooked up to memory, which means that even if it did think of something, it would be unable to retain it to act upon.

James Lovelock used his spiffy stuff to come up with the Gaia hypothesis based on this general concept, even though he's not consciously aware of it. Similarly, Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields may be a manifestation of weak links between mind nodes in separate brains. (This is not an endorsement of either.) Note that Sheldrake's unreliable measurements - only certain dogs are good at accessing the morphic field - are completely unsurprising given that mind nodes and their connections can vary in quality, just as intelligence does, and probably independently.

The entire universe. You're part of the universe, aren't you? And you're connected to other human beings? It's probably even more profoundly conscious than this, but I'm not an astronomer so I can't specifically identify cosmic pentagons. Note that the thinking speed of the universe as a whole will be extremely slow, due to the light speed limitations. Still, those slow, slow thoughts are likely incredibly profound, simply due to the fantastic number of mind nodes involved. (Sound familiar, at all? Perhaps has a relationship to a well-known concept similar to the Lovelock scenario?)

The weather is almost a mind node, where the atoms are the pentagons and their collective behavior is the interpreter, but due to the resetting random nature of the component atoms, it is a Class 3. What's a Class 3 you ask? Read on.

What was that about cellular automata? It's a long article and I don't get your drift.
Sorry, I should have pointed out the particular bit. Automata have four regimes according to Wolfram. (Ctrl-F "Class 1." Note that Class 1 and 2 are actually the same) Class 1/2 is the constant or cyclical regime; at some point the automata becomes completely stable and repeats itself endlessly. Class 3 is the chaotic regime; this is simply noise. Class 4 is the interesting one, that shows both order and disorder. It can be stable, but it can also change. Only functions f_r in Class 4 will make conscious mind nodes. Class 1/2 is not infinite - the canvas repeats itself in a set number of cycles, leading to a converging probability. (Class 1 has a period of one cycle, 2 has a period of two or more.) Class 3 may be conscious but we will never know because it will act stochastically. Only Class 4 can make something we would recognize as decisions.

Below you link an article. Why is it so very relevant?
Two reasons; one, they have already built a mind node. Two, they nearly recognized it. "These evolutionary computer systems may almost appear to demonstrate a kind of sentience as they dispense graceful solutions to complex problems." False. They are sentient.

The pentagon is the random mutations. The interpreter is the fitness criteria plus physics. Because the FPGAs can explore multiple solutions, the mutations will mean different things for fitness based on the different phenotypes, meaning that f_r is nonzero, despite the fact that the goal is fixed. (That plus the chips vary, but the code is swapped between them. The meaning for adaptive success is slightly different for each chip.)

This is one of the key passages;

"The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops."

Thirty-seven gates. That's how much more efficient using spiffy stuff for computation is, compared to nifty stuff. Notice that all brains have lots of feedback loops. (There are primitive neuronal nets that do not feed back. Clearly, no feedback means no internal life, because you can't reflect on your own thoughts, plus it means the interpreter cannot arise. The first species with feedback appeared almost immediately after the primitive.)

Also hilarious;

"According to current understanding, even the most advanced microchips fall far short of the resources necessary to host legitimate intelligence. On the other hand, at one time many engineers might have insisted that it's impossible to train an unclocked 10×10 FPGA to distinguish between two distinct audio tones."

Gut busting.

Are there other mysteries suddenly un-mysteried by mind nodes?
Yes, but I'm tired of writing them down for the moment. I will add more later as they come to me. (Yes, this essay is subject to review. Remember that if it gets comments.)

Odds and Ends
Probability is conserved. By the NIP it is probably also quantized, and so the point in the future at which the number of possibilities for the mind nodes exceeds the maximum possible, it definitely becomes conscious. However, because in the present the mind node always has a finite number of possibilities, I'm not sure how this works out. I still suspect that when this future point becomes the present is the point at which a mind node 'wakes up,' but I don't know how that works out logically. This would be something to test in the lab.


This issue has already been called the Alrenous-controversy. (The design has already been called 'ingenious.') I'm going to introduce the equivalent of a membership card; if you agree with me, call the 'pentagon' a 'pentagram.' I hope the reasons for this are obvious. (They probably aren't; I just hope they are.) Note that I will continue to call it a pentagon personally, because I want to get into the minds of my critics to help me convince them. There's no particular need to get into the minds of people who agree with me. -_^. (I really need a sardonic raised eyebrow smiley.)

If you half-agree with me, perhaps you should stick to using 'decoherence unit,' or make up your own term. I ask my critics to stick to 'pentagon.' These cards should not be strictly enforced. If you have personal objections to pentagrams, there's no need to force yourself. (Or vice versa, though I don't see that happening ever.)


The pentagon that is the entire universe likes me. Reddit just tossed me a link that is A) one of my all time favourites, B) on one of my all time favourites sites, C) written by someone sharing my first name, and D) is very very relevant.