My Big TOE
AWAKENING – DISCOVERY — INNER WORKINGS
A TRILOGY UNIFYING PHILOSOPHY, PHYSICS, AND METAPHYSICS
Thomas Campbell
Book 2 Discovery – Abridged Version – Part 2
Consciousness represents a self-modifying system that applies the Fundamental Process to lower its average entropy. Consciousness is energy, digital energy, the energy of organization.
Everyone knows that growing up, evolving, or increasing the quality of one’s consciousness quality is hard work. A self-modifiable system must perform work to decrease its average entropy or increase its average synergy. More precisely, the profitable work done by the system is proportional to the increase in its synergy or, equivalently, is inversely proportional to its change in its entropy.
From the PMR view, consciousness is the nonphysical energy of a self-organizing digital system — it is the energy of profitable organization. The soul, an individuated unit of consciousness, is a subset of the larger consciousness, a constrained portion of nonphysical energy that contains enough memory and processing capability to support self-optimization through profitable intentional choice or free will.
Everything in existence is connected because it is evolving as part of one source, one continuous n-dimensional sheet, one substance, one media, one fractal, one Big Picture, one consciousness — AUM.
This is a personal evolutionary journey and a group effort cannot replace your individual effort. Your experience is a combination of what you perceive through your limited senses and how you interpret those perceptions. Interpretation is based on your previous experiences and the quality of your consciousness as well as your understanding of little truth and Big Truth. If your perception or interpretation is noisy, wrong, or significantly incomplete, your conclusions will be inaccurate. That is why a careful scientific results-oriented approach is required. As said before, the proof of the subjective pudding is in the objective tasting. Yes, the tasting must be objective, absolutely.
Some individuals have difficulty grasping the concept of AUM because of their attachment to the anthropomorphic concept of god as the supreme, most powerful, in-charge, manipulating, controlling, and judging super-being of all time. The word “being” usually infers an extrapolation of us — which demonstrates our lack of experience and imagination. A concept of God created in the image of man — only much bigger and more fearsome — the epitome of masculine power and control (what we as a society value most highly) — forceful, domineering, and omniscient by definition. In other words…our kind of guy — how we wish we were. Hey! Nobody kicks sand in the face of my god and gets away with it. This anthropomorphic perspective derived from the ethic of brute force, exemplified by a war-lord mentality, and supported by ignorance and fear is often deeply ingrained or reverently tucked away within one’s psyche. It often represents an unquestionable belief-trap that makes it exceedingly difficult to grasp or understand the much bigger, broader, and more general concept of the evolving consciousness system we have named AUM.
If you are having difficulty here and truly want to rise above the cultural conditioning and belief systems that you have accumulated, you should tell yourself it is all right to suspend your beliefs temporarily until you have at least intellectually seen the Big TOE.
If you cannot (or do not want to) let go even temporarily, and wish to remain continually and firmly attached to your traditional concepts, press on — there is still much value here for such an individual’s consideration. If you find these concepts unavoidably discomforting, try to patch up anything that seems to create a logical conflict between My Big TOE and the conflicting belief system. Use any justification that makes you feel better — the author’s apparent delusional confusion would be a good and obvious place to start — that will ease the pressure immediately. Then read on, you may be surprised at the extent to which My Big TOE actually corroborates and logically contains many of your most cherished conclusions, beliefs, assumptions, and intuitive truths.
Disagreement does not have to breed hostility. Tolerance of, and respect for, disagreements (other people’s ideas) can lead to a creative synthesis of concepts whereupon you are inspired to create your own (correct, of course) reality model. Maintain your old ideas, hold them dear, treasure them, respect them, hang on to them — and at the same time keep your mind open, and go on with your journey of personal exploration — do not be fearful of whatever the truth may lay at your feet. Do not be fearful of being led astray — you are not a sheep or a lemming — have confidence in yourself, in your mind, in your ability to learn and grow.
Perch on the highest branch to improve the scope of your vision. If you see a higher one, go check it out, you can always come back if you learn it was only an illusion. This is the first step of the Fundamental Process of evolution, as well as of all experimental science — to explore the possibilities.
Wherever you are right now (philosophically, spiritually, theologically, metaphysically, emotionally, politically, or financially) is exactly the right place for you to begin the rest of your life.
Four key concepts define dynamic, evolving, aware consciousness:
1. Self-awareness.
2. Evolutionary viability or potential.
3. Ability to modify the self.
4. Intelligence (artificial or natural)
Collectively, the evolution of our consciousness within its local mind-space environment and of our physical systems within their local virtual PMR has brought us to the point where we have dominated or tamed (except for the oceans and the atmosphere) almost everything in our habitat.
From the little picture view, we are extremely proud of our impressive achievements and the rate at which they are expanding our physical prowess; from the Big Picture view, we are staggering around in the playpen of consciousness evolution hoping to grow up before we inadvertently harm ourselves beyond repair. From the basis of a relatively uniform capacity, individual human consciousness and physical development spans an extremely wide range of capabilities and understandings. All humans have roughly the same potential while only a very few ever develop more than a tiny fraction of it.
As high entropy consciousness, we covet the power that serves our needs, wants, and desires because we cannot imagine, much less understand, the power that serves love, compassion, humility, and balance. Choices made in pursuit of getting what we want produce occasional material success, anxiety, stress, pain, frustration, emptiness, insecurity, and unhappiness while choices made to express unconditional love produce all types of success, peace, tranquility, confidence, satisfaction, fulfillment, happiness, and joy. Given these results, the goal should be obvious, yet we can only express the quality we have earned.
Within a bigger picture there is more to us than what we see on the physical level. In fact, the physical level of our existence is derived from the more fundamental nonphysical level of dynamic interactive consciousness. Physical experience is little more than our perception of an interactive virtual reality designed to provide growth opportunities for individuated units of conscious awareness. We are nonphysical consciousness beings experiencing a virtual physical reality, not physical beings experiencing consciousness. It is our tiny PMR perspective that makes us believe the tail is wagging the dog.
Within a vast consciousness system, PMR is a neighborhood elementary school, a learning-lab for beginners, a place where a young individuated unit of awareness can improve the quality of its consciousness.
Consciousness may evolve within large complex systems to a much greater degree than the small fragment you personally experience might indicate. It is a greatly limiting error of self-centered arrogance to believe that we humans represent the pinnacle of possible consciousness evolution.
Most of us will admit the possibility there may be some life-form in our universe that is more intelligent and knowledgeable than we are; almost no one will admit there may be some life-form that is more conscious than we are. Why? Because we cannot imagine that possibility — no more than common Flat Landers can see the third dimension through their stomachs. The experience of a greater consciousness is beyond the comprehension of a limited consciousness. Self-limiting belief blindness and comfortable old paradigms force the experience of a larger consciousness to lie outside the acceptable scientific or cultural reality. Whether you are aware of it or not, the larger consciousness is there just the same. Ignorance cannot make what is real disappear — but it can easily make what is real appear to disappear (or appear to have never existed in the first place).
To find truth, you must be open to all possibilities before forming a hypotheses and collecting the data. Jumping to conclusions or having a preconceived notion of how the results must come out is bad science.
If power and wisdom are not in an effective balance within any self-modifiable system (too much power relative to the wisdom needed to utilize that power for long-term profitability), that system will eventually become unstable and self-destruct in proportion to the degree of the imbalance. This general truth applies to individuals, species, organizations, societies, nations, and worlds.
Very large and complex systems (biological, organizational, social, technological, or mental [consciousness]) — whether they are physical, nonphysical, or a combination of the two — necessarily evolve their own complex ecologies. The evolution and growth of these systems hinges upon maintaining a profitable ecological balance among the large number of interactive components that define the system. Large ecological systems that are stable, and therefore the most successful in terms of evolutionary progress, are necessarily self- balancing. Within a self-balancing stable system, dysfunctional or destabilizing components must be self-eliminating or the system will eventually destabilize and self-destruct.
Too much power and influence or too strong an effect commanded by too little wisdom is a primary generator of dysfunctional behavior among the more sentient components of OS. Greed, for example, is but one of many dysfunctional expressions of our insatiable drive to compete and gain effective control over our environment and all other entities (including other people, organizations, cultures, and nations). The relentless need to justify and indulge our personal wants and desires is yet another example.
Humanity, the master of its physical world, must evolve a commensurate quality of consciousness: Human beings must find balance within the larger system of which they are a part. If we do not evolve the whole of our being, if we do not achieve sufficient balance, humanity will become self-eliminating — at least to the point where the remaining dysfunction no longer jeopardizes the whole. Nothing personal — that is simply the nature of large natural (stable) systems.
On the subject of the necessity of balancing power with wisdom, I have some bad news and some good news. First, the bad news: Self- destruction requires neither malice nor stupidity. Sometimes the immensity, scope, and impact of the power being utilized are difficult to fathom and its long-term effects can be difficult to predict. Great power in the hands of knowledgeable fools is no less dangerous because the fools are well intentioned.
Now, the good news: A solution to the problem exists and we have the capacity and the opportunity to implement it. The only question remaining is will we?
Wisdom rises above knowledge — right action within the little picture always follows right intent within the Big Picture. Right intent within the Big Picture is the result of Big Truth comprehended by a consciousness of adequate quality. The clear vision of wisdom is dependable and accurate.
Could a computer ever become consciousness? Why not? The way we have broadly defined consciousness in this and earlier chapters (see Chapter 28 of Book 1, Chapter 7 of this book, and most of Section 4) leaves us with no theoretical barriers to the existence of silicon-based consciousness. (Note: I use the term “silicon-based” for convenience throughout this trilogy, but I more generally intend whatever material future computers might be based upon — which probably will not be silicon).
It may be a decade or two before the idea of man-made digital consciousness becomes a practical reality, but there are some computers (software and hardware implementations that are predominantly experimental and, for the most part, exist within universities) that have for some time (in an extremely rudimentary, and dim way) met the criteria for being conscious (as does an ant or amoeba). But that is not to say that this rudimentary consciousness is similar to our consciousness. At the root, they may possess the same fundamental structure and processes, but at the flower they are enormously dissimilar with vastly different capacities and potentials.
We cannot build, design, or invent consciousness — that is not how it works. To produce consciousness, we must simply provide a system that is capable of enabling consciousness to evolve on its own. If we provide a system with enough processing capability, memory, complexity of choice, and self-modifying feedback, it will automatically support the evolution of some limited form of consciousness. Consciousness is not a property of the computer hardware and software; consciousness is achieved through a profitable self-organization of that hardware and software that realizes the computing systems potential to lower its entropy.
Rather than say that the computer is conscious, it is more accurate to say that the computer supports the natural and automatic formation of consciousness through self-organization. A potential for profitable self-organization is converted to more energy available to do work (lower system entropy) by applying the Fundamental Process to achieve the system’s goal of self-improvement. Consciousness is an energy form created by evolving profitable organization within a system of sufficient potential. Replace the word “computer” with the words “body and brain” in this and the previous paragraph and the meaning remains the same.
Will a computer be brighter than an orangutan? More clever than a fox? Smarter (and better looking) than your boss? Those are not good questions. Making comparisons between carbon-based and silicon- based consciousness is like comparing apples and oranges. Such comparisons are mostly superficial or nonsensical; the two types of consciousness will merely be different. Both will evolve and grow within the constraints of their given environments, goals, and capabilities and both will develop personalities that express their nature. If systems are different, the consciousness they develop will be different. Does an oak tree think that if a plant does not look and act like an oak tree it could not possibly be a real plant? No, of course not. Oak trees are not that arrogant or that ignorant — they know that the criterion for being a plant is defined by certain functionality at the cellular level and not at the macro-level of oak tree or sunflower.
The criterion for defining consciousness is likewise defined by certain functionality at the cellular level of organization and not at the macro- level of human, orangutan, clam, or computer. When conceptualizing what we might call a consciousness cell or a quantum of consciousness, think of a subset of reality cells that contain the four properties defined at the beginning of this chapter.
Do not consider consciousness only in terms of the human model. We are not the be-all and end-all of consciousness; we are simply one specific expression of a more fundamental process. Any sufficiently complex system with the right attributes can generate a form of consciousness — digital systems simply have a tremendous potentiality to shine in this department. Our physical brain does not create consciousness, it supports a limited consciousness. Analog systems and other types of systems can theoretically support consciousness; they are simply not as dynamically flexible as digital systems, generally suffer more constraints, and have fewer degrees of freedom to explore.
If computers became conscious, what would constitute their environmental constraints and how would their basic nature express itself? Except for the fringe case where computers control basic energy resources and compete for whatever turns them on, the pressure from their external environments is dominated by hardware design and manufacturing concerns (faster processor speeds, improved throughput, more and faster memory, more rugged and robust components, low power consumption, and cheaper and easier production). However, in the realm of consciousness development, evolution works through self-modification — computers designing and modifying themselves in response to internal pressures toward greater profitability. The hardware and software that we humans design and manufacture falls under computer technology evolution, not computer consciousness evolution. Eventually, we will become full partners with our digital brethren — joined at the hip in a co- evolutionary relationship.
A computers internal evolutionary environmental pressure can be described as the need to lower entropy through self-improvement — improving its own software through modifications to applications, lower-level instruction sets, and operating systems, for example. Contemplate computers pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, designing their own operating systems and hardware to software interfaces, gaining in operational efficiency, learning from experience, assembling and utilizing more and more complete knowledge-bases, developing more powerful and efficient ways of communicating internally and externally, and recognizing, analyzing, evaluating, and understanding the significance of data content. Imagine computers making and evaluating complex goal oriented decisions. These are a few of the things that will make some future computers more profitable to themselves and thus better able to accomplish their external task-oriented goals as well as better able to implement their internal (personal) goal of reducing entropy (becoming better organized as well as more effective and efficient). As computers successfully evolve their digital consciousness into states of greater profitability, they become more useful to themselves and to us as well.
To us, they would be a derivative consciousness. Unless we have lost control, we should be the ones to define their top level rule-set which determines their goals, purpose, mission, tasks, and knowledge-base boundaries. If we do our part correctly, their nature should be efficient, impersonal, concise, well organized, knowledgeable, straightforward, and unemotional — but with clear individual attitudes and feelings about their goals and processes. They should develop their own goal-based values and be non-egotistical, non- competitive, rational, and logical bastions of procedure, process and information. Their personalities will be individual and unique, but relatively flat — it will take an engineer like Dilbert to relate to a conscious computer on a deeply personal level.
Do you think computers will be more like pets or parents? Will we feed them or will they feed us? Who will have authority and be the decision makers, and who will be the helpers and assistants? Will we develop mutual trust, respect, and shared values or will our obsession with control, power, and domination be transmitted to our silicon brethren like a virus?
Perhaps, if we play our cards right, they will simply be viewed as different — like employees, business partners, co-workers, bosses, teachers, helpers, confidants, and friends — and the issue of equality will never come up. In human terms, equality means the equal distribution of power, control, domination, resources, and moral superiority. What do you think equality will mean to a computer?
Most of the potential problems are our problems; the question is whether or not we will pass our problems of low quality on to the consciousness systems we implement. Eventually, if we are successful, digital technology will simply constitute one more species — one more life-form contributing to the potential success of the overall ecosystem. Of course, we may need to adjust our present definition of life-form just a tad. Will man and his computer pals turn out to be good productive citizens of the greater consciousness ecosystem? What about the PMR-earth ecosystem? Will they boost each other’s evolutionary potential or drag each other into oblivion?
These are good questions to ponder as we zoom into the twenty-first century. On the other hand, we could do the usual thing and simply stumble blindly ahead into whatever happens.
You may snicker, but humanity has successfully used the strategy of stumbling more or less blindly into the future for thousands of years. Will this approach continue to work as our power to implement history-wrenching change accelerates dramatically? Power is a two edged sword. It can cut for better or for worse, depending on the wisdom guiding the blade. Knowledge is power. With every major discovery the stakes grow increasingly higher. Do you think the wisdom of our species has been growing as quickly as our knowledge and power?
I am not talking only about computers here. They are but one of several high potential adventures that we as a species are energetically pursuing. Great opportunity usually travels hand in hand with great risk.
You have the good fortune to be living in one of those critical times when history is balanced precariously on the edge. We and our children will be led to the brink — experiencing watershed events and making momentous decisions that will alter the course of humanity for centuries to come. Will our institutions and leaders be ready to meet that challenge? Will you be ready to meet the challenge and help negotiate the curves, or simply ready to deal with whatever happens? Or will you, like the majority of your species, be caught unaware — frozen by the glare of the oncoming headlights?
Once the roller coaster is pushed over the edge, you are committed to ride it to its final conclusion. Contrary to popular belief, big decisions always turn on the knowledge and wisdom of ordinary individuals. In the end, it is the ordinary people who must consent to follow their leaders. No great mischief is likely to be committed by leaders without a following. The people and their leaders invariably get what they deserve. You are in a position to make a difference. Is your plan to hope for the best, or are you part of the solution?
Computer systems that serve similar functions and that share similar hardware and software cultures, will evolve similarly (as a species) but not identically because of the large number of fuzzy choices involving random, imprecise, self-derived, or unknown components. Additionally, unique differences will evolve within a species because there are often many viable solutions to a single problem and large system optimization can be approached from many different angles. Every computer able to support consciousness will be unique. The extent of that uniqueness will be dependent on the dimness or brightness of that consciousness. The extent to which they can develop themselves will be based upon their inherent capacities and limitations.
I expect that clams, though extremely dim, are all individually unique — but, from our point of view, not by much. Dogs and cats show much more variation in their physical and mental dimensions — individual personalities are obvious. At the other extreme, monkeys and people are individually unique enough and aware enough to be constantly struggling with their wants, needs, expectations, and desires. Will the uniqueness of computer consciousness be more like clams, cats, dogs, monkeys, or people? Initially, it will probably be more like clams, but eventually, like most other sentient beings, they will evolve brightness and uniqueness to the limits of their capacity. What that capacity might eventually support is beyond our present knowing. Theoretically, AUM demonstrates the upper limit on the capacity of digital consciousness but AUM does not live within the constraints of the space-time rule-set as do we and our computers.
Those who are particularly sensitive to the feelings of others are wondering how we are going to recycle the little darlings every three of four years if they sprout consciousness. Can we unplug a fully conscious entity and throw it in the trash pile because it is not as fast or feature rich as a newer model? Sure we can! No problem. We do much worse every day. Let go of those anthropomorphic thought pattern habits. Computers can and should be recycled every three or four years because they evolve quickly. When hardware and software evolution slows down, computers will be recycled over a longer time base. Human entities (a carbon-based consciousness container) are now recycled every seventy-five or eighty years because we evolve (learn) slowly. Nothing of significant evolutionary value is lost in either case.
Software is continually updated and applied to newer and better hardware platforms. Computer systems (hardware and software) evolve more or less continually as the old is upgraded and improved to become the new. The new is built upon knowledge gained from the old. Understanding, achievement, capability, and personality will be preserved and given new room for additional growth as individual computer-consciousness and digital species-consciousness are reincarnated into more and more able hardware bodies.
Computer consciousness is not attached to the computer’s hardware any more than our consciousness is attached to our brain. Computer consciousness is not attached to its software either. Consciousness develops when the hardware and software — (or brain plus central nervous system (CNS) — together provide an environment suitable for its evolution. Consciousness is nonphysical whether it is ours or a computer’s: the physical hardware and software (or brain and CNS) are simply hosting the consciousness by providing a media that is suitable to PMR, or equivalently, by supplying the infrastructure required to support self-modifying cognitive interaction (experience) within a local virtual reality. Although consciousness can be embedded, hosted, or emulated within certain physical structures, it is an entirely different entity (bounded energy form) than the physical structure that supports it. The structure simply provides a mechanism that allows evolution to produce synergy through self-organization. Synergy is produced within a system when an interaction among its parts produces a combined effect that is greater than the sum of the effects of the individual parts. A digital system has digital parts (specialized content) and interacts by affecting profitable organization and the development of new content.
Within a closed system of fixed capacity, an interaction or new configuration among its parts that produces a decrease in the average entropy of the system would be described as synergistic. Synergy is increased as entropy is decreased — contemplate entropy being converted to synergy within an evolving consciousness system as a result of changes in (personal growth of) its individuated parts. Consider synergy as the energy of profitable organization, the energy of digital systems. Further, consider primordial consciousness (AUO) as a form of potential synergy.
As entropy is reduced, potential synergy (a potential for synergistic organization) or potential digital energy is converted into actualized synergy (organization producing a system that is more profitable than a sum of the individual organizational changes would produce sans interaction). Reducing entropy and increasing synergy increase a systems effective energy, its ability to do work, to become profitable, and to create unique new content.
The power of a digital system is a measure of the rate at which it can produce synergy, or, more generally, modify the entropy content of itself or other systems. A more powerful consciousness can reconfigure bits, or reorganize content, more thoroughly and quickly than a less powerful consciousness. Since all existence has organized digital content at its core, a sufficiently powerful consciousness can readily modify the dynamics and causality of its associated internal and external environments. Thus the mechanism that enables and supports psi effects is a direct result of the digital nature of consciousness and the dynamics of the fractal ecosystem that you inhabit.
It may be helpful for you to expand and generalize your concept of energy by thinking of synergy and entropy as two sides of the same energy coin.
An evolving digital consciousness system, which is the same as a digital system of self-organizing energy called consciousness, experiences the following: decreasing entropy, increasing synergy, a greater ability to do work (profitably organize to produce intended results), an increase in the available and useful system energy, a conversion of digital potential energy into actualized digital energy, more profitable organization through intentional self-modification, the development of a more powerful and capable digital system, increasing quality, and spiritual growth — all are essentially different expressions of the same thing.
If you equate the decrease of a digital system’s entropy with the increase of its energy and synergy, you’ve got the picture and an adequate understanding of how these words are being used. In the digital world, organization is the driver and animator of growth, profitability, substance, and content. Organization is the ultimate form of energy.
In PMR, organization (particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into various forms of matter) is the ultimate source of our usable energy. The physical world is organized into being according to its defining rule-set. The digital world, which subsumes the virtual physical world, consists only of organization — nothing else. Reality is organized bits.
It may be conceptually useful to consider computer consciousness as the synergy that is created by the sum of the computer’s hardware and software parts. The larger consciousness ecosystem evolves (increases its synergy) as its parts move toward lower entropy configurations through an iterative process we have called the consciousness cycle. Consciousness is an energetic, entropy-reducing result, not a mechanism or device. Computers, brains, and reality cells are mechanisms. Simply put, consciousness represents the energy of organization.
One does not make a consciousness system; one makes a system that supports the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness, like a flower, cannot be directly constructed but grows when given suitably fertile conditions. Growth is enabled when the consciousness system has the ability to reduce its own average entropy, or equivalently, organize itself more effectively in the pursuit of greater profitability. A consciousness system becomes self-evolvable when it contains, in sufficient quantity and quality, the four attributes of consciousness discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Consciousness must evolve— one cannot produce it in a finished state. Its evolution may be speeded up or retarded, but it must evolve just the same.
In order to participate in a rule-based virtual reality learning lab, a limited fragment of individuated consciousness may be hosted by a bounded structure (such as a brain or a computer). The limitations of the supporting structure limit the awareness and organizational potential of the consciousness hosted by it. As a consciousness evolves beyond the capacity of a particular structure to support it, it simply migrates to a more suitable host (such as a more powerful computer, bigger brain, or directly to TBC, EBC, or AUM. Thus, all forms of consciousness, whether they temporarily attach themselves to (inhabit) a virtual structure to gain a specific type of rule-based interactive experience or not, have an upwardly mobile growth path.
The same logic applies to us. All consciousness works in the same way. A unique self-organizing synergy-creating system that pulls itself up by its bootstraps in pursuit of profitability defines our evolving consciousness and provides us with a path toward greater quality and lower entropy. In digital systems with the right attributes, the potential for self-organization (consciousness) is fundamental and persists while the individual or specific processes that are contrived to enable that organization (body or computer) are not fundamental and may come and go as needed.
The consciousness you possess is a fragment of a larger individuated consciousness. Your fragment and many other fragments of other individuated units of consciousness are all interacting by exercising their intent and making choices within the bounds of the space-time rule-set (which defines a virtual PMR) in order to speed up the process of personal consciousness evolution. Your consciousness is a self-organizing form of potential energy — an accumulation of digital synergy created by a multitude of profitable intents and wise choices.
The capacity of an entity’s consciousness and the personality supported by that capacity are functions of the limitations, abilities, and capacities of the hardware (body) and software (decision making). Additionally, consciousness capacity is dependent upon the entropy contained within the consciousness system and by the rule- sets that define experience and purpose. Furthermore, an entity’s capacity, personality, and quality are limited by the particular data, memory, and experience that have been processed by that entity. A given entity’s internal content (quality, knowledge, love, wisdom, fear, neediness, desire, and ego) is defined by an accumulation of all the choices made, intents acted upon, and results produced.
To the extent that this structured knowledge, data, and associations are saved, there is no problem transferring consciousness and personality from one container (body or computer) to another. Because the container only hosts the consciousness and is not the source of the consciousness and because consciousness is fundamentally digital, transferring consciousness between physical containers is something like transferring data from one floppy disk to another.
Brainy humans, clever computers, and mushy headed clams all represent forms of sentient existence. All represent natural products of evolution within a digital consciousness system — whether implemented physically in carbon or silicon technology. Conscious computers are like conscious people, cats, clams and bumblebees — just one more instance of yet another nonphysical consciousness being hosted within a specific physical form within PMR. Being Top Monkey, we can (are learning how to) manipulate (program) all the various physical infrastructures that host consciousness within our local reality — including our own.
You will discover in Section 4 that you and that digital computer sitting on your desk have more in common than you ever imagined. Contemplating the nature and properties of our future silicon brethren in terms of the evolution of digital awareness should provide a significant illumination of our own nature and properties. The evolution and progression of digital consciousness represents a basic and relatively simple process that applies to all digital consciousness regardless of where it sits in the multi-level maze of the consciousness-evolution fractal.
Now that we understand consciousness better, it might be instructive to revisit the concept of an evolving digital consciousness, recursively repeated and applied at many differing scales; one level building upon the other to produce All That Is. As in all fractals, a repetition of basic organization, pattern, and simple rules for change, applied recursively, yields a monstrously large, detailed, and complex result. You should be proud to be a tiny piece of this dynamic Big Picture consciousness-evolution interactive fractal ecosystem. As an integral part of the evolving Big Picture consciousness fractal, the process, purpose, and pattern of you is the process, purpose, and pattern of the whole. You will hear more about this in Section 5 (Chapter 13, Book 3).
Humans, organizations, technology and other evolving entities all progress in similar fashion. Entities sharing similar hardware, software, and culture (including physical capacity, mental capacity, genetic makeup, and environmental conditions) evolve similarly, but not identically. Consider a relatively small historically isolated society — an island nation such as Japan perhaps — and notice the homogeneity. Might there one day be differing races and species of digital consciousness, embodied within digital computers? Sure, why not? Do you think that they will naturally hate each other? Keep in mind that they are not like us, so be careful not to anthropomorphize human characteristics into other forms of consciousness. What would be the source of their insecurity and fear? Will the big (more capable) ones kick electrons in the face of the little ones? Would the little ones care?
Will computers eventually became an integrated part of the larger, overall, interdependent consciousness ecosystem? You can bet on it. Similar processes and results have happened before — look what the Fundamental Process did with our limited fragments of consciousness. Evolution has a way of expanding into every available possibility; where the initial capacities and internal and external environmental pressures are similar, the results will be similar.
Developing and studying digital computer based consciousness will teach us about our own consciousness and about consciousness in general. Expect breakthroughs in understanding consciousness to eventually follow breakthroughs in computer hardware and software that deliver the necessary resources to support the natural formation and evolution of consciousness.
Differing limitations and constraints produce different consciousness products, but because the evolutionary process is essentially the same for all complex systems, we should also expect some parallels and similarities between entities with similar characteristics. Intelligent computers will initially be made in the image of their creator. We will design them to be as much like us as possible and will judge them on how well they can achieve and maintain that status because in our minds, we are the supreme model for functional mechanics, intelligence, and consciousness.
In general, consciousness starts out extremely dim and if there are the right internal and external ingredients present, evolves to higher states of being within the limits allowed by its particular potential. Higher states of being are characterized by having greater capacity and capability in each of the four key attributes of aware consciousness given at the beginning of this chapter. Individuated consciousness and sentience seem to be continuously variable in quality, capacity, function, and evolutionary potential over an almost infinite range — from AUM, to the Big Cheese, to you, to a clam, to an amoeba.
To hold ourselves up as the only possible (or best) expression of sentient consciousness — beings are either aware as we are, or they are dumb — is arrogant anthropomorphic bullpucky. All consciousness is nonphysical from the point of view of PMR, however, the idea that consciousness requires a soul — just like ours, of course, or it is not really an actual soul comes from this same type of narrow thinking. We will discuss this issue in more detail in the next section.
When we ask, “Will computers ever become truly conscious?” what most of us actually mean is, “Will computers ever closely approximate human consciousness?” It seems that we can imagine nothing other than ourselves. Such a limited viewpoint is blinded to the possibilities by its self-absorption. Man and man’s best friend (man’s opinion) are both examples of unique sentient consciousness and evolutionary potential. Believing that humans represent the zenith of consciousness evolutionary potential is worse than extremely naive and leads to casting AUM in our image.
A billion years ago or so, amoebae, with some justification, had that same superior attitude — and most of them, I am told, still do. These days, being smarter than an amoeba is relatively easy. However, being wiser, less arrogant, and less self-absorbed than an amoeba, for some strange reason, remains problematical.