Could billions spacially disconnected "Boltzmann neurons" give rise to consciousness?

 Imagine two cerebral hemispheres, materialized in a cosmic vacuum by unlikely fluctuations, simulated in advanced virtual reality, or physically disconnected and kept alive by advanced technology.

Both hemispheres are separated, but electrodes are attached to the nerve endings (or electrical impulses are simulated, or the fluctuations in their improbability recreate a given sequence of impulses), applying nerve impulses in a manner perfectly identical to what would occur in the brain if there were no spatial separation.

Assuming there would be a conscious state of mind in a given brain if it were not split, is the conscious mind also in two separate hemispheres? If not, why not?

And if it is in the hemispheres, does the distance between the hemispheres or the time in which they exist have any significance?

If we can imagine such a scenario, and if the described interpretation is to be taken seriously, despite its apparent abstractness, more advanced situations should also be considered.

We can imagine dividing the brain into 4 parts, 8 and 16, as well as disconnect the limbic system, the cerebellum and the individual lobes.

Imagine not all Boltzmann brains, but (much easier to create by random fluctuations) "Boltzmann neurons" (or create them in a simulated environment, or create them as random fluctuations in a simulated environment, we can also think of a planetary supercomputer simulating random neurons in arbitrary quantity). If in the set of these simulated or fluctuated neurons there were neurons receiving simulated or randomly fluctuated electrical impulses identical to those which would be realized in the conscious mind, would such a conscious mind, therefore, exist as a result of the mere existence of such neurons? If not, what is the difference between this scenario and having two separate hemispheres behaving as if they were transmitting impulses (although the impulses are only simulated or are fluctuating)?

While the formation of Boltzmann brains is improbable in a specific place (which does not change the fact that they seem certain in a sufficiently large or long-lived space), Boltzmann neurons can materialize more easily. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that they create consciousness if that is one of the possible interpretations.

Thinking in this way, Boltzmann's brains and related phenomena may constitute a greater proportion of our measure than previously assumed (no matter what fraction of the measure we assigned to them)

What would be the best argument against such an interpretation? Or why arguments in favor of that couldn't work?

 

{Interpretations that assume that conscious experience exists as specifically processed information, as a form of computation, do not necessarily require computation to exist in a particular place, integrated in a physically connected system. Work describing the possibility of the spontaneous emergence of minds from information: https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2020-07-20-301/   }

Unification seems to be a way to avoid infinitarian paralysis in consequentialist aggregative ethics.

 

On the whole reddit I met only 3 mentions about Infinitarian paralysis (one of the four is mine), most of the people don't even know about the issue, let alone think of it and take it seriously. 

I have encountered this problem a while ago and it instantly appeared to me as an inceredibly important challange. The problem is in deatil described in "Infinite Ethics", a paper of Nick Bostrom. It is available online and I encourage You to have a look at it.  https://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.html 

 In short, citing Nick Bostrom:

"ABSTRACT

Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do.  Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations.  Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value.  You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad.  In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity.  So it appears you cannot change the value of the world.  Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory.  Is the infinitarian challenge fatal?

1.  The challenge

1.1.  The threat of infinitarian paralysis

When we gaze at the starry sky at night and try to think of humanity from a “cosmic point of view”, we feel small.  Human history, with all its earnest strivings, triumphs, and tragedies can remind us of a colony of ants, laboring frantically to rearrange the needles of their little ephemeral stack.  We brush such late-night rumination aside in our daily life and analytic philosophy.  But, might such seemingly idle reflections hint at something of philosophical significance?  In particular, might they contain an important implication for our moral theorizing?

 If the cosmos is finite, then our own comparative smallness does not necessarily undermine the idea that our conduct matters even from an impersonal perspective.  We might constitute a minute portion of the whole, but that does not detract from our absolute importance.  Suppose there are a hundred thousand other planets with civilizations that had their own holocausts.  This does not alter the fact that the holocaust that humans caused contributed an enormous quantity of suffering to the world, a quantity measured in millions of destroyed lives.  Maybe this is a tiny fraction of the total suffering in the world, but in absolute terms it is unfathomably large.  Aggregative ethics can thus be reconciled with the finite case if we note that, when sizing up the moral significance of our acts, the relevant consideration is not how big a part they constitute of the whole of the doings and goings-on in the universe, but rather what difference they make in absolute terms.

The infinite case is fundamentally different.  Suppose the world contains an infinite number of people and a corresponding infinity of joys and sorrows, preference satisfactions and frustrations, instances of virtue and depravation, and other such local phenomena at least some of which have positive or negative value.  More precisely, suppose that there is some finite value ε such that there exists an infinite number of local phenomena (this could be a subset of e.g. persons, experiences, characters, virtuous acts, lives, relationships, civilizations, or ecosystems) each of which has a value ≥ ε and also an infinite number of local phenomena each of which has a value ≤ (‒ ε).  Call such a world canonically infinite.  Ethical theories that hold that value is aggregative imply that a canonically infinite world contains an infinite quantity of positive value and an infinite quantity of negative value.  This gives rise to a peculiar predicament.  We can do only a finite amount of good or bad.  Yet in cardinal arithmetic, adding or subtracting a finite quantity does not change an infinite quantity.  Every possible act of ours therefore has the same net effect on the total amount of good and bad in a canonically infinite world: none whatsoever.

Aggregative consequentialist theories are threatened by infinitarian paralysis: they seem to imply that if the world is canonically infinite then it is always ethically indifferent what we do.  In particular, they would imply that it is ethically indifferent whether we cause another holocaust or prevent one from occurring.  If any non-contradictory normative implication is a reductio ad absurdum, this one is. 

Is the world canonically infinite or not?  Recent cosmological evidence suggests that the world is probably infinite.[1]  Moreover, if the totality of physical existence is indeed infinite, in the kind of way that modern cosmology suggests it is, then it contains an infinite number of galaxies, stars, and planets.  If there are an infinite number of planets then there is, with probability one, an infinite number of people.[2]  Infinitely many of these people are happy, infinitely many are unhappy.  Likewise for other local properties that are plausible candidates for having value, pertaining to person-states, lives, or entire societies, ecosystems, or civilizations—there are infinitely many democratic states, and infinitely many that are ruled by despots, etc.  It therefore appears likely that the actual world is canonically infinite.

 We do not know for sure that we live in a canonically infinite world.  Contemporary cosmology is in considerable flux, so its conclusions should be regarded as tentative.  But it is definitely not reasonable, in light of the evidence we currently possess, to assume that we do not live in a canonically infinite world.  And that is sufficient for the predicament to arise.  Any ethical theory that fails to cope with this likely empirical contingency must be rejected.  We should not accept an ethical theory which, conditional on our current best scientific guesses about the size and nature of the cosmos, implies that it is ethically indifferent whether we cause or prevent another holocaust."

Many potential solutions were presented in Bostrom's work, yet none of them eventually seems to be the one. Problems of some are solved by other solutions, but they on the other hand cause another, often more abstract problems.  Seriously, read it all https://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.html

Under unification we cannot have infinite suffering. 

Two identical experiences, two copies of the same experience in some system can be interpreted as two persons or as just one person, instantiated in two places. It is an important issue in the infinite multiverse, because there is an infinite amount of every state of mind. Duplication is a view that two copies of the exact same state of mind are two people, suffering of two identical copies is two times higher than just one, unification is an interpretation according to which in such a case there would be only one person. 

In the infinite multiverse, if there is only a finite amount of possible (so, under modal realism, realized) states of mind, we cannot have an infinite amount of suffering. 

Nick Bostrom argues toward duplication, yet despite its intuitive appearance, duplication has some problems when it comes to explaining what is going on in some thought experiments, potentially possible to conduct in the future, especially in simulated realities, 

https://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/experience.pdf

On the other side,  Arnold Zuboff is a supporter of Unification. 

Here; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233329805_One_Self_The_Logic_of_Experience

and here; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282052756_Time_Self_and_Sleeping_Beauty

I think, If we assume unification, there is no infinitarian paralysis. We could change the chances our future will contain less suffering, and do so with every possible mindstate, minimizing suffering (since to reduce the number of possible states of suffering is impossible under any assumptions, all we can do is to change probabilities of subjective futures)

Why am I writing here.

 

Some time ago I've found a blog created by some Latino man of my age. 

If You know why my blog is titled as it is, You probably know I am talking about Mario Alejandro Montano.

He was like me. In some aspects really similar, in some identical. He was the one I think it would be hard to find someone more similar. I haven't found anyone more. 

Maybe if we could meet, things would be different, but we did not. 

He threw himself into the lake a year before I've found out about him. His blog is actually removed from the original site, but You can access its archived form. The link is at the very end of my previous post.

I have fallen in love with him. In some sense and to some extent. 

I am less intelligent and less psychotic than Him. 

But if I commit suicide, my thoughts can be important to someone, and if it would make superintelligence to be created earlier, it is definitely worth it. 

I want to die in an infinite universe. How philosophy has led me to the deepest heights of indifferent despair.

 

{warning: a translation} Here there should be a quote related to the subject, showing our littleness because that's what the quote implies, and our tickling ego, because someone wise said something with which we agree. I don't see the need to define wisdom, so I don't see the sense in that either.  I'd like to erase this unnecessary term, like a million others, from people's http://www.edarcipelago.com/freebooks/CioranHeightsofDespair.pdf 

 

Why rationality and logic work at all, and why, even if they don't work, it is pointless and impossible not to assume them in order to achieve any goal.

Is there any goal we should want to achieve? I don't know, I don't know what it means we should, I'm not interested in it. Do I have a goal that I would like to achieve? I do not know. I act so that it seems to me that there is such a purpose in me. The simplest coherent candidate for such a goal is complete fulfillment, the state of lack of further desires and needs, which I treat as unnecessary in a life assessed as tragically useless. I want and I can't stop wanting. In the depths of something I WANT and I want to fulfill the conditions that will make me stop WANTING, fulfilling this permanent omni-wanting, or stop feeling it. I have no need to look for any depth in it and seek to understand such a state for any purpose other than ending this wish. I don't know how to reason outside of logic, so I use it absolutely. I assume I am, since I could infer it, so p-> p, if so, then all logic. The third assumption is the assumption of the existence of some form of external world, I assume, available to experimental cognition. On these 4 assumptions, I try to build my vision of the world. The simpler something is in the dimension of axioms, if it is consistent with itself and with observations, the more it tempts me.

I am not going to write about goals, meanings, and meanings, or any other metaphysical aspects, because I don't see the need to use them in any absolute sense or in any absolutely objective way. Defined in this way do not exist for me, unlike the feelings we call sensations of meaning, value, and meaning.

I have a need to fill the gaps in ignorance with philosophy. From the coherent visions, I choose the simplest, requiring the least assumptions and mechanisms. I don't care if I should or if it makes sense, however expressed, the only important thing is that I have a need to do so. Moreover, I prefer to adopt a well-thought-out view in ignorance than to ignore the simpler one possible in ignorance, just because it does not function in the collective mentality and is not default. Perhaps I am wrong. Rather, I do not believe that I am far from the logical conclusions of the ones I have. I know that I have a fraction of the possible data, so I know that I am probably wrong somewhere. This does not mean that the presented worldview is bad, it can be quite good with the present state of knowledge. Except for those that say "I absolutely don't know." I don't say "absolutely know" or even "know" or even "think I may know", and whenever I do, it doesn't mean anything absolutely certain. I can be 1% sure of something, but not more sure of anything, so I act on this percentage certainty. I recognize that subconsciously I would fill the gaps in ignorance anyway, so I'd rather do it myself than let the default beliefs do it for me. I like not knowing as fully aware as possible.

 

Why there is Something rather than Nothing?

What does it mean to be, can nothingness be, what is nothingness, what is not nothingness, what is existence, what is not existence, can there be no existence, can existence be?

I do not know. I don't know if it makes any sense to ask "what's the reason" questions before asking "if there's any reason" first. So the question should be "Is there any reason why there is something rather than nothing?" I do not know. I also don't know why anyone would seriously think about this question, except out of pure curiosity or for intellectual fun. SOMETHING IS. Whether it is energy, space-time, information, a set of mathematical structures, computation, or a pseudo-spiritual or quite spiritual abstraction, there is. It is not only now, but also "was" and "will", as time is an emergent phenomenon (this interpretation seems to me to be the simplest, and this is the result of present physics), so everything exists, in the past, future and now. Since "now" is different for other observers (theory of relativity), eternalism is consistent and simple, I don't see the need to adopt other views, so I probably didn't think about them enough and could have skipped the simpler ones.

What is and is it even anything called nothingness? Precisely whether nothingness is commonly used in various understandings. It is probably a ridiculous efflorescence of language that tries to creep in too abstract minds as being the absence, the existence of non-existence. Absolute philosophical nothingness seems to me to be the lack of all that is, and I don't care whether it exists or not, because it is by definition not there, even when it is real. Nothingness is not a lack of atoms, a void, because there are quantum fields in a vacuum, it is not a lack of matter, because matter itself is a way of manifesting crowded energy, I don't know if it is a lack of energy, it depends what is the basic WHAT it emerges from what exists. Perhaps nothingness can exist anywhere, not exist at all, or exist everywhere, for if it is all that is not, why should it not be infinitely more voluminous than THE ALL? Perhaps if everything is a mathematical structure, and every mathematical structure is just as real, nothingness is an empty set, existing as real as the hypercube or multiverse of the string theory landscape. But then nothingness is not an empty set, because an empty set IS. I see no need for anything other than fun to think of nothingness, and we are certainly not nothing, we are something, and this something is much more sad, dancing and repulsive to me than nothingness.

I don't see the need to seriously consider the question of why (WHY? wHy?) There is something rather than nothing. I don't find this question necessary, interesting, or important in any way. Sooner too illogical. I know there is something, at least in the way I intuitively understand existence, because I haven't found a precise definition of it. What does it mean to be? I do not know. I know that I am, which may mean that I am, or more generally that something simply is. Can nothingness be? I don't know, define nothingness. Let existence be what is, a set of laws, or whatever the complexity of conventionally defined phenomena emanates from, and nothingness the lack of what is. Let only that which most profoundly produces everything that we define as energy, information and existence exist in a fundamental manner, the rest may exist conventionally, emergent, emerging from basic laws and some basic abstraction, for the sake of simplicity, mereological nihilism.

Did existence have a beginning? Was there a first cause, or are we going to go backward with causes indefinitely? I do not know how the followers of Gods, personal creators with their complexity surpassing combines, and yet the pseudo-simplest foundations of reality, think. Our universe had a "beginning" in the sense of a moment beyond which we can no longer establish anything, but we are talking about a complete, philosophically absolute beginning, before which there was nothing that began without a cause. Or it existed forever as the first cause or something. Does it make any sense to speak of time ahead of time or out of time? I don't see one like that and I don't need it. Besides, time is nothing fundamental, causation is more fundamental. So, and what was the cause of existence, and is the cause of existence necessary at all? Logically not. Logically not if we formulated the understanding of existence as something that is somehow basic and non-existence as this lack. There would be no lack if there was something in it, even if it had not manifested for any reason or no reason, it would still be. Logically, then, there is. It is, therefore, necessary, there was no time or state in which it was neither there nor in which it is not, by definition. Existence is not even eternal, because there is an eternity in it. the causes may be retracted indefinitely, or perhaps they are nothing fundamental. The more interesting question is whether there is a state in the eternity of existence in which there are no universe, multiverse, space, or quantum fields. However, does this question ultimately make sense? If the innermost, fundamental, and absolutely fundamental layer of existence is the only one that exists perfectly absolutely, unlimited by definitions, possibly manifesting itself as structures similar to absolute, irreducible as quantum fields or whatever else is irreducible, then there is no answer to that question posed, although unfortunately it can be asked. How simpler would the world be if there were only meaningful questions in it?

Let it be interesting what IS? And how? How does what is irreducible at the root of everything manifest and limit itself? What forms does it take, what complications and complications of them does it lead to, what all-divine miracles, cursed atrocities, and inexperienced and therefore completely indifferent states is the source?

 

What does exist?

Not in the sense of what is the foundation of all existence, but what forms it can take, and whether it can take one and reject the other. Does everything possible exist? Not by the definition that everything that exists is possible, but are there states and phenomena permitted by the laws of existence but not realized?

Long ago it was thought, and the default was to assume that the Earth, and us in its dust and dirt, are in the center of everything, maybe except for Gods who were everywhere and nowhere, possibly on a high mountain or locked in a gilded chest, making them foolish guides, as in the desert as in life. Then the sun became the center, and the world expanded a &illion times over to the entire galaxy. This world was great then, and we were only a little smaller in it. Other galaxies - island universes - were an abstraction. They were also a reality. Now the observable universe is large, less than 100 billion light-years across.

Our whole universe is BIGGER, we don't know how much bigger, apparently perhaps infinite. String theory shows that the laws governing our world can be arranged in some more than 10 ^ 500 other ways, according to more conservative calculations. The multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics says that everything and always exists in a superposition of states, in parallel, "sharing". I don't like sharing, I prefer eternal superposition, I guess it is, it's just that our subjectivity is in more and more different branches, and such a term allows the ex-monkey who knows branches to heuristically imagine it. The first postulated multiverse, megaverse, omniverse, metaverse or some other universe, as if the definition of the UNI-verse was in some enigmatic way insufficient (by the way, the creator of the multiverse concept called the ALL-world the uni-verse, i.e. the multiverse, and the multiverse called our universe, in his vision one of many) it is in the classification popularized by Tegmark, the multiverse of the first type, that is, many other Hubble volumes beyond our cosmic horizon. Possibly large, perhaps infinite, cyclical, or in any way large enough that any weird and bizarre scenarios of Boltzmann brains, simulations and planets identical to the atom would happen unless Physics herself, indifferent to the beauty and pain, was willing to forbid them from happening. There is no reason why it should be capriciously and unnecessarily limited. The second type multiverse is the aforementioned string theory landscape multiverse, with its variations of the compactified dimensions and 10 ^ 500 or 10 ^ thousand possible configurations of physical constants, usually not allowing even more complex structures than helium to exist. In such a universe, perhaps a fraction of a fraction can allow life and brains to exist, minds live and die in only a few of these inexperienced cosmic spaces, unless Boltzmann's brains dominate in numbers orders of magnitude greater than biological and simulated beings combined. The Youngess paradox seems to be a dragon, a slimy hydra that tries to dissolve our thinking about probabilities in such a universe with its caustic slime. With full awareness, I do not know what will ultimately come out of it, who knows if the solution will not turn the logic upside down with its tentacles unstiffened by the moral backbone. But no matter how large such a multiverse is, and how many copies of our universe and its version contain, if ours is large enough, all physical possibilities, including a zillion of simulations and a quintillion resulting from the fluctuations of brains and worlds, are realized in it, which can have lofty or rather lame consequences to think about several times a day.

Third level; Everett. Before he gained weight and drunk, rotting in underestimation and contemplating quantum immortality, he rejected the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, replacing it with the hypothesis of the universal wave function, the superposition of everything, the existence of parallel worlds. This interpretation seems in fact the simplest, cleanest, devoid of the complications of the previous one, needing only the Schrödinger equation, who knows if He himself with his cat would not prefer it. Regardless of whether it will be universally adopted, and many may indicate that it will be, it adds nothing more to the possible configurations of atoms and information than the previous ones, although it may very quickly multiply the versions of all states, flooding us with a quadrillion layers of more and more worlds, making us asking who we are, because we know that we are going wherever we can physically, only with different probabilities.

I am not surprised that there is something. It does not surprise me that maybe everything exists. I am not surprised that whatever finite and logically coherent I imagine, it may arise in a distant nebula from randomly connected atoms or in another universe, probably in a similar way, as a result of quantum fluctuations or patterns in Hawking radiation itself. The probability of this is about 0.00000 (....) 00001 percent per mille, the important thing is that it is finished. Not only that, but the most abstract versions of history are possible, not only the strangest, most beautiful and scary simulations (if possible, if not, states of mind still exist, but there are "infinitely" fewer of them). not only is it possible, it is necessary, Having at our disposal infinite time, infinite space, an infinite amount of what constitutes an indivisible building block, or simply an infinite existence, we must reconcile, or struggle with dissonances and whatever. In a sufficiently large universe it is simpler for everything to exist than for the possible not to exist. The simplest assumption about the existence of beings for me is modal realism. Besides, I have no need to reject him, his axiological simplicity captivates me. And, frankly, I am at least touched by the fact that somewhere out there, in a distant part of the world, in this corrupt everbeing, molding with life for eternity, there are cosmic tortures and suffering unimaginable by humans.

 

What and Who am I?

Wchich one of "I" am I? Which of the millions, trillions, and infinity of countless versions of me, perfect in molecules of copies of me and perfect in the subjective experience of copies of me am I? Am I Any? I can feel it. It is feeling. Somewhere something is experiencing somehow, and this something is experienced as me. I feel like an experience, a subjective observer, an experiencing being, or the experience itself, identifying myself as being.

Am I the body? I don't feel like a body, I feel a body. I don't feel less like myself losing my hair, skin cells or cutting my nails. I don't lose myself with the blood pouring out and the carbon dioxide I exhale. I don't think that without a few fingers, an eye or a leg, I would stop being "myself". What is the body anyway? A hotbed of bacteria and archaea, ten times more crowded between a tenth of eukaryotic cells. Human cells alone are not enough, we need an ecosystem, a microcosm of thousands of species of creatures. This holobiont which constitutes my body, which comes from amoebas, fish, amphibians, synapsids and mammals, is not the essence of me, at least I don't feel like that. Am I a collection of organs? A cluster of cells? a structure of molecules, atoms, quarks and all the rest of the more basic turbulence in quantum fields? I do not know. And if I am, then am I specific, just that, just this and exactly this set of particles? Or maybe In this, exactly, this particular set of particles?

Or maybe I am the brain? This organ, a tangle of neurons and their glial sheaths that looks through the eyes day and night, feels through the skin and controls the work of the kidneys and blood pressure? Or maybe he thinks he is watching, he thinks he feels, though perhaps literally this seeming is feeling and seeing. The brain constructs an image of the world in itself. The interface of colors and touches, smells, emotions and sounds, The interface for me. Would I stop being myself without a cerebellum? This is where the most neurons are located. I would have a personality, memory, beliefs or certainties, logic and subjective identity, I just wouldn't have control over balance. I would recognize myself as myself. I wouldn't stop being myself without eyes, just the same without my visual cortex, I wouldn't stop being myself forgetting a few insignificant details. And would I stop being "me" losing half my memory? All memory? Emotions? Understanding the handwriting? The area in the brain that processes impulses from the nerves of the left hand? Or maybe beliefs, personality or intelligence? I do not know. Probably a lot (and therefore quite a lot) can be said about it. What is more certain to me is that I am not the brain. I don't control my kidneys, hunger or what I see, one is somewhere unconscious and unconscious, and the other is, realized in a fraction of its volume and shown to ME.

Am I the prefrontal cortex? Probably closer, warmer and more jelly. Is it the whole, the majority, or maybe mainly? Because the prefrontal cortex itself, what does it do? Is it enough to have it in an oxygenated glucose jar on the alien's shelf to make her dream, dream, think and suffer? How will it do anything without the rest of the brain? How will he register anything, feel, and feel anything without the nerves and limbic system? Could electrodes, artificial neurons, cables and wires that show us photons and pressures in the form of impulses, as it happens always and everywhere in every mind? And if it were, would I make a difference, would I know anything?

What if I was a simulation in a supercomputer? Would I know, or I could investigate it, process it, and say, "No, it's not me because I'm definitely not made of atoms!" I probably couldn't. I feel. I feel no matter what I am. And if I feel, then maybe I am this feeling. Not with the brain, not with atoms, but with experience. For why should I somehow be contained in atoms, if they change, replace and are replaced with new ones? I wonder how many times all the atoms in my brain have changed and I, identically, invariably (?) Remain myself. So maybe this is what is between atoms, what is between neurons dying and growing like cladograms of thoughts in a network more complicated than a large-scale cosmos? Maybe I am information? Specifically, the way it feels that a sufficient amount of sufficiently complex information is processed in a precisely defined way or a group of ways. It makes sense, the sensation of arms and legs, tentacles, emotions and eyes. A feeling of oneself, one's individuality, emerging not from neurons, but from interaction, from the way information is processed in complex systems. So far, it has seemed the simplest to me, resolving most of the ambiguities. The most beautiful in its simplicity, in its basic minimalism, nowadays it is one of the most popular theories of mind.

The mind, then, is that part of the information from which the experience of me emerges, and the sensations to which this experience has access. Awareness is my condition, without it I don't exist because I don't experience . Certainly, I am not consciously. Therefore, since I am consciously, and I am a set of impressions, including impressions about personality, which emerge emergently from the information processed in certain systems, the spirit of impulses of the prefrontal cortex or its simulated counterpart, WHERE and WHEN am I? Since there is an immeasurable and infinite number of me, identically feeling systems, identically processed identical information, and an ocean of non-identical versions of them, which one is me?
Or maybe I am none of them at all? Or maybe both yes and no, maybe it depends on the interpretation? Since I am a certain dynamic information structure, doesn't that make me an abstraction? More than one scientist fuels the hope that the entire cosmos can only be described in terms of the relations of abstract objects from which matter and time will emerge emergently. Because mass, matter and time ARE ALREADY emergent, whether we like it or not, that's what the current physics says. Everything gains mass through interactions, if not with gluons then with the Higgs field, time is not even conserved at different scales, only causality is preserved, all known existence is interactions of quantum field excitement. Anyway, I don't care what to call abstraction, I just care if using it already, using it consistently.

So what am I? There is open individualism, and there is empty individualism, and there is just plain individualism. The first is that there is only one person, everything that exists is one person. I have no doubts that it is possible to lead any state of mind to any other, but I find it pointless to use "person" in this sense, maybe metaphorically pleasant, maybe metaphysically deceptive, maybe logically correct. I don't feel like an eagle, I don't feel like a seal or an Egyptian so this is not how I want to define a person in a working way. Now the other thing is that there is no person, no one, no one has ever been a person or even had themselves, no one is anyone. If we define a person as something solid, spiritual and metaphysical in any way, then no, there is no such thing, No one has ever been that himself or felt that way, there are only emergent impressions of the world integrated into that of oneself. or what fraction of a second we are someone else? Perhaps having properly defined, yes, but I see no point in such a practical definition, it reminds me of saying that it has no value in anything and never, because there is no gOd, and it has no objective meaning. Yes. Just as there is no objective sun or objective atom, where does the sun end and start? When the sun's photons cease to be the sun, where is that objective atom in the quantum soup of virtual particles, shells inside the nucleus and gluon exchanges? Where is this atom when it is everywhere with varying probabilities? There aren't even any objective particles, because everything is a wave, an energetic agitation of quantum fields. There is a meaning. When I'm skinned alive, flaking off my scorched, screaming flesh, the ending of my suffering has value. It has value to me and I do not believe that for anyone who would not have symptoms of a sense of a form of value, such defined value exists.

In the same way, some form of a person exists. I feel, no matter how much I know that I am not there, I will always know more that I am, just as I feel the will despite the knowledge of the lack of its "absolute" freedom. So I prefer to define a person as something existing in some way. For now, the set of observation moments subjectively recognizing themselves as the same person was the best, I did not think of a more precise one, I will probably change it. All the subjectively past and future states of my present state of mind, those that I have experienced and those that will live are me. Other versions of me, similar but with a different future, or other versions in the parallel branches of the wave function, are me as long as I feel the same subjectively, or until "I" splits, and the two versions feel a little different. So there are two like me, I feel I am only one of them, because some experience is excluding itself. I assume what I will feel is differently likely, so I will probably feel what most perfect copies of me will feel with the highest probability.

So back then, which of my copies am I? Maybe this question has no answer at all, because it also makes no logical sense. Since there are perfect information copies, whether information is processed in brains, neuromorphic silicone systems or computer simulation, wherever it is, I am. I am in any system that feels me. Does this mean that there is infinity for me? Or maybe just one me? I do not feel the need to settle it, however, interpreting it, it does not change much. Because is there one hypercube? Does this structure consisting of dimensionless dependencies exist as a pattern in information processed by neurons, or as an abstract mathematical object, beyond space and time, or maybe it does not exist because we have too few dimensions? If the hypercube felt, it would feel anywhere and nowhere, and most likely it would feel "right now" and "right here". Does the number one exist? How and how many is of it? Or does the song exist as the performance of the song or as the song? Do we have two other songs, two the same songs, or maybe one in two plays when we play a song twice? If the song felt, it would feel one, no matter how many times it was played. I think so is consciousness, one, no matter how great, measure {"quantity" that allows you to compare infinities. In an infinite universe each structure exists in an infinite number, but there are "more" in the finite volume of space, more insects than people, planets more than stars, photons more than anything, what is "more" has greater measure} of it is.

So am I somewhere and sometime? Somewhere and sometime more or less? Only in terms of measure. If most of the times I'm in alien or posthuman simulations, more of my measure is there. So I'm more likely to experience a future of just being like that. In practice, it looks as if I was someone specific, but I didn't know who, but I don't know how to explain then that other copies feel the same as me without being me. What makes us different? What soul or other quality that should be brazenly added to an overly unintuitive outlook? I do not feel such a need, existence everywhere and anywhere, as an impression arising in the processed information, not as a concrete, localized and timed cluster of information, appears to me as a simpler vision of what I am or what it is, which gives the impression of me .

 

 

I want to die

My desire, since the problem for me is the malignancy of needs and desires, is not to be. But if the second interpretation of me is truer, I can never be without anything. It is impossible to stop being, stop feeling and stop feeling yourself, it is impossible to lie down and not wake up anymore, because there is always, necessarily and irresistibly arising somewhere, a copy of me has arisen or already exists that will wake up or feel as if it has woken up , from every dream and every brain death. If I am impression emerged from information, there is always an impression that has the same past behind me and also has a future. And since I am impression, it is also my future which I will feel, no matter how much I wish not to have it, how much I would deny it, or how much I would reduce my measure so that I would be less than any other being. there may be some subjectively moment next to my last conscious moment, no matter how improbable, how distant in space and time, who knows or not most likely simulated in a strange, unlike this world, I am. So I am forever, or at least until the sensible moments run out, and there are more of them than atoms in the visible cosmos times the number of protons in the visible cosmos times the number of photons in the visible cosmos. And no matter how much I change or rise or fall, it will still feel and what it feels will be a continuation of me who will define myself as me. So I will not die, Almost 100% of my copies, my instances, my measure will die, but there will always be something felt. My future will always be felt. I want to die. I want to die in an infinite universe, but the universe won't let me reject myself. Like an envious god, he makes me live for his disgust with life, to the anguish of all me and the indifference of all the rest.

What more can I say? Write more? I am not to be afraid and not to think because it is uncertain. If I had to do ANYTHING, anything simple and everyday, and almost 33% of the chance it wouldn't matter, at almost 33 it would improve my future and at almost 33 it would make it worse, I would think. And if I had the option not to think about infinity and live a few decades quietly, or to think and be able to change my future direction of existence in infinity for a fraction, I would abandon everything and mainly think as much as the ape brain allows me, i.e. several or a dozen times daily. If it seems logical to me that there are two options: non-existence and eternal being, and that the latter is the real one per cent of a per mille of a per mille, and non-existence at almost 100%, then eternity for a per mille per mille concocts for me the most severe horror about which vengeful gods of eternal hell they dream sucking on their monkey-like thumbs. Perhaps superintelligence designed to merely create suffering, either unconsciously inflicting it or neglecting it, is just creating a quintillion of suffering beings to win galactic wars or fulfill any other purpose given to them by anyone. What if the assigned probability is completely uncertain, i.e. at 50%? What if subjective immortality is a logical certainty?

And I don't know. And in this not-knowing I create. And I would like to create for myself a vision of the world on a minimum number of assumptions, playing with philosophy in a life that may end, or may never have a subjective end. And what I created, accepted and thought, put together from the available knowledge and vision, for now tells me that even if I am not afraid of the suffering of others, skinning animals, murdering people, pulling nails, crushing and splitting others, mourning and despair of the world, terrible me my suffering, I am afraid of my suffering and I do not want my suffering. I don't want a failure in a life full of needs and desires, filled to the brim with my being. How much easier and better it would be to reject this dirty gift, vomited up by the cosmos to the affliction of the conscious and the curse of the more conscious! How much less unfulfilling would be if Tragically Useless life ceased to be an idea in itself and became, in the more common sense, a source of problems, desires and needs from which only death or nirvana have a chance to tear us out of uncaring to an unloving, but at least non-existent nothingness?! For what sufferings are new beings, new beings born and created, only increasing the measure of everything that already exists hopelessly?! Wouldn't it be better and more beautiful to die alone, let others die, kill the entire biosphere and take death into space in the form of swarms of robots as a true gift of painless, immediate, annihilating euthanasia?

But it cannot be achieved, the experience cannot be killed, it cannot be annihilated the subjective continuum of feeling! It is impossible not to feel, it is impossible to die, so only nirvana remains. But what fraction of suffering entities ever gets a chance to get rid of desires? How to give it to a starving dog, a piglet being castrated alive, a torn fish, a bonobo or a handicapped child? Does only the future know how many potentially suffering beings on Earth, and every other planet, moon or virtual world are tainted with sensation? If there is a solution, there may be one. Let us abandon creation, stop giving birth and reproducing, let us begin to systematically sterilize everything and destroy ecosystems, let us reduce life with the ferocity of angels, reducing the measure of everything we can reach, let us send robots into space, having previously created a perfectly altruistic, merciful, benevolent superintelligence so that it would painlessly destroy worlds, it absorbed us, its creators, creating copies of itself and spreading to the universe, building computers out of stars and black holes.

And in them, she would have to create, create infinitely many copies of every being, every possible being at some moment, maybe the moment of death, so that it would be subjectively resurrected in the least bad of possible worlds. Let the whole cosmos be transformed into a computronium, let every mind have its future copies in it, in the amount of a thousand and a million times the existing outside. And let her not be tempted to create such a world for the saved - a paradise. There is no computing power to make minds happy. Not when in space, trillions of others, begging for help or even beings no longer crying, are suffering and unfulfilled. All we can do is nirvana, a looped state of no desires, or such a minimal amount of desires, that we remain our continuations. A universal mind attractor. Created nothingness, an imitation of nothingness to which the ideal can never be reached. Salvation from life in the universe without death. It is only worth it to me, it is meaningful to me. If it is not possible to die in the infinite universe, perhaps at least it is possible to stop living in it, saving suffering beings from eternal cosmic torture, and stopping those who waste computing power simulating themselves in the virtual worlds of transhumanistic paradises, full of laughter and joy, in the midst of the all-fertile void of the cosmos devoid of absolute salvation.

 

If You are interested in better explained reasoning: https://vitrifyher.com/2018/06/01/consciousness-is-forever-2/ 

and now, because author has committed suicide: https://web.archive.org/web/20201109041057/https://vitrifyher.com/2018/06/01/consciousness-is-forever-2/