Why Consciousness is Causal

The original title of this post was “Is Consciousness Causal?”  The last few days I’ve had some incredible insights.  Here is my original post from October 4, which I had not yet had a chance to post:

I had a few insights yesterday, while at the Models of Consciousness2024 conference, at which I presented my talk, “Artificial Intelligence Cannot Be Conscious.”

Start with a physical system in state S1 at time t1.  The laws of physics dictate that that state will cause or determine the next physical state S2 at time t2, subject only to new information (quantum collapse events).  In other words, starting at S1, there WILL be a following state S2, and what determines that is S1 plus any new information.  You cannot “destroy” or “erase” a physical state – all information remains embedded in the current physical state of the system.  Information never disappears from the universe.  Time always moves forward (because time travel isimpossible) and the physical world is physically irreversible.  Every physical state evolves in time to a next physical state, either with or without new information, that embeds all information from the earlier state.

It seems like conscious states are similar.  I have shown, or am in the process of showing (Youtube video), that every conscious state inherently embeds every prior conscious state.  For example, to get conscious state C2 at time t2, what you have to do is start with conscious state C1 at earlier time t1 and let it naturally evolve in time, along with the addition of new sensory stimuli (such as from our five senses).  That is, it seems like C2 is determined – i.e., caused – by C1 and any additional sensations. 

The alternative is that conscious states are NOT causal, in which case they happen to arise purely by accident (e.g., as an “emergent” characteristic of an underlying physical state).  Of course, this notion already produces its own problems, particularly that of how consciousness could have arisen by Darwinian natural selection.[1]  Still, if consciousness is not causal, then when S1 “accidentally” produces C1, and then the physical world changes to S2 (through time evolution from the laws of physics plus new quantum information), why should it be the case that state S2 “accidentally” produces conscious state C2?  After all, C2 feels (i.e., is experienced) as if C1 was experienced just prior, immediately followed by the experience of new physical sensations.  In other words, C2 feels like a natural and continuous flow from C1.  Why should that be the case?  In other words, conscious states are experienced as if they were causal and continuous: C1 (plus some sensations) seems to create C2, which (in combination of more sensations) seems to create C3, and so forth.  If conscious states actually are not causal, then we need a good explanation for this incredible coincidence. 

But another problem, perhaps related to the one above, is why physical states cannot produce more than one instance of a conscious state anywhere in spacetime (which is my landmark proof here).  For instance, say that physical state S6 produces conscious state C6, and S7 produces C7, and S8 produces C8.  I have already proven that conscious states can’t repeat, which means that it is impossible for next physical state S9 to produce, for example, (already experienced) conscious state C7.  If conscious states are not causal, then what could explain this?

Notice, by the way, that the underlying physical state determines (at least in part) what physical sensations a person experiences, which means that whether or not consciousness is causal, a given conscious state depends at least in part on the underlying physical state (e.g., any new quantum information).  But if conscious states ARE causal, then just as conscious state C2 depends on physical state S1, S2 must also depend on C1. 

For example, imagine that I am driving and coming to an intersection, where I see a stop light turn red:

·         If consciousness is NOT causal, then the universe does not “care” how I experience the color red – that is, my experience is entirely inconsequential.  My next conscious state will depend only the next physical state, which will be independent of my experience of the color red.

·         If consciousness IS causal, then the way the universe physical evolves depends at least in part on how I consciously experience the color red, which means my next conscious state also depends on that experience.  (I have neglected talking about free will in this post, but obviously if consciousness is not causal then there is no free will, but if it is causal, then there is a possible opening for free will, somehow related to conscious experience, to affect the underlying physical state.)

Another thing… if consciousness is causal, then there does not seem to be any way to stop it or destroy it.  You can’t destroy or reverse the information in a given physical state… every physical state produces a next physical state.  Similarly, if consciousness is causal, then the same is true of consciousness: every conscious state produces a next conscious state.  I have already shown that you can’t reverse a flow of consciousness and, analogously to the underlying physical system, if we start with a conscious state C1, all we or the universe can do is add new information (e.g., visual or auditory stimuli), which will inherently produce a next conscious state C2.  There is nothing we can do to end or stop that stream of consciousness, just as there is nothing we can do to stop the flow of time or the time evolution of the physical state of the universe.

Either consciousness is causal or it is not. 

Here’s a related thought.  Physical states embed their entire histories.  State S3 tells us everything about state S2, as well as what new information appeared since then.  State S2 tells us everything about state S1, plus all new information, and so on back.  It certainly seems (but have I properly shown/proven?) that conscious states are perfectly analogous.  I could not experience my current conscious state C3 without first experiencing state C2 and any intervening physical sensations, and I could not experience C2 without first experiencing C1, and so on back. 

In a very real sense, physical state S3 is the indestructible physical manifestation of its entire history of events or facts (as I discuss here).  It can’t be destroyed because the universe only produces new information; it does not destroy information.  Analogously, isn’t my current conscious state C3 the evidential manifestation of my entire conscious history (including all my physical stimuli and how I consciously experienced/perceived them)?  If my consciousness could somehow be destroyed, then where in the physical universe would that evidence/history of consciousness reside? 

If that were possible, then consciousness is not only non-causal, but it arises as a cosmic accident and does not affect the physical world.  Of course, that seems ludicrous to me.  But the only other alternative is that consciousness is causal, which means that my current conscious state C3 just IS the universe’s evidence of my conscious history, in which case it is as indestructible as the universe’s physical state.  It would also imply, as I already believe, that the way I consciously experience the physical world actually affects it (whether or not free will is involved).

This isn’t a proof, but I am noticing a close analogy:

·         Physical states are irreversible.  (I have proven that) Conscious states are irreversible.

·         Physical states are history-dependent and embed their entire histories.  The same is true of conscious states.

·         Physical states are causal.  It seems like conscious states are causal.

·         Physical states cannot be destroyed because information (facts about the universe) cannot be destroyed.  My conscious experiences (e.g., experiencing the redness of a traffic light, or feeling sadness or whatever) are indestructible facts about the universe, and those facts must be embedded in the universe.  It seems like those facts are embedded in my conscious state, so it seems like my conscious state cannot be destroyed for the same reason.  The only rebuttal is if conscious states accidentally, non-causally, and inexplicably arise from conscious states. 

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Then, yesterday, I had some more insights and was able to prove – yes, logically prove – that consciousness is indeed causal.  The following is not well organized or edited, but the insight was so important and poignant that I wanted to just post what I’d written:

My conscious awareness/identity is nonlocal, which means that it is not contained inside (or entirely produced by) my body/brain.  But the physical sensations I receive (via my body) are certainly localized, and if my consciousness is causal (and/or I have free will), then the effects are also localized.  Couple thoughts:

·         When I have a certain conscious experience (e.g., I feel happy), that is a fact that gets embedded in the history of the universe. 

·         Let’s say someone wants to kill me… i.e., permanently end my consciousness.  Let’s say he tries to destroy my body (although the body itself does not have an identity… it has lots of parts that are put together… so “destroying” would simply mean adding more information by way of, e.g., slicing up the body parts).  Certainly the body affects my conscious experience, but if we already know that conscious identity is NOT localized in the body (or anywhere), then why would adding local information to a physical system somehow destroy conscious identity?

It seems to me right now that consciousness is causal… but causation also implies a time delay.  When I experience sensations at state C2, that state may affect subsequent physical states S3, S4, etc.  This seems to imply:

·         Not every aspect of my conscious state needs to be physically embedded, and those that are not (which are still facts about the universe) must still be permanently embedded in the universe.

·         That “leading edge” of C2 can’t yet be physically embedded, but because it’s a fact about the universe (my experience of feeling happy at C2 is a fact), it cannot be destroyed.

In my proof, I assumed locality in a thought experiment to show that two spacelike separated instances of C1 that evolved to C2 and different C2’ results in a contradiction, because the local C2 could not also experience C2’ (which is outside of its light cone).  Thus I proved that consciousness is nonlocal.  But doesn’t that imply that my (nonlocal) identity could experience stimuli from spacelike separated sources/bodies?  For example, if my earthly body was destroyed, there’s no problem with the thought that I might still perceive stimuli from a different body (even light-years away).  Or what about perceiving information from far away?  Either: conscious experience is not subject to special relativity; or (the information in) any conscious experiences that get embedded locally must still somehow be delayed by special relativity; or something like that.

Assume consciousness is non-causal... then:

·         My experiences are inconsequential.

·         The evidence of (the facts about) all my feelings/experiences are already embedded in the physical state of the universe.

I showed that conscious identity is nonlocal, and I know (but can’t prove) that I have an identity.

Clearly there is something physically fundamental about conscious identity.  The reason that S7àC7, S8àC8, S9àC7 isn’t possible is because:

·         I have been assuming that C arises from an underlying physical state, but I think C is part of that state…

·         If S7 and S9 can both create the same C7, then that implies that some subset of S creates C, but I’ve already shown that’s not true.  Therefore my consciousness literally depends nonlocally on the entire universe, including facts/events the information of which are spacelike separated from me!

·         But wait… imagine the result of some quantum outcome could produce S9 or S9’… if they would produce the same C9 then, again, C would not depend on that part of S, so C would depend on a subset of S, which is false.  But that means (assuming that S creates C) that every single event/fact in the universe must produce/correlate to a different C state.  But that’s ludicrous.  Yes, at my current state in life, there are lots of possible consciously distinct states that I could have experienced, but that’s much much MUCH smaller than the amount of information in the universe.  (This is what Aaronson doesn’t realize… the idea of consciously distinct states is a fantastic insight.)

·         Therefore, the assumption (that S creates C) is false.

Assume C is non-causal.  Then C is caused or arises (inexplicably, emergently, accidentally) entirely from S – that is, there is nothing else involved in creating a conscious state/experience other than an underlying physical state.  I proved that C cannot arise from any local region of S, which means that it must arise nonlocally.  But I showed above (… because the amount of info in the universe – i.e., the number of possible states it could have been in – vastly exceeds the number of possible distinct conscious states that I can experience…) that C cannot nonlocally depend on S.  So if C can neither locally nor nonlocally arise from S (which are the only two possibilities), then we have a contradiction, so the assumption (that C is non-causal) is false.

Wow!

Therefore, the way I consciously experience the world indeed affects not only my next conscious experience but also the physical world!  (Be careful here… I don’t want to say that C is nonphysical… simply that when I refer to physical state S, I am referring to the world as physics currently describes it, which does not include a “consciousness particle” or whatever.)

So that means… I am having conscious experience C1… the physical world changes (e.g., new quantum information, although I don’t think new information is necessary… even deterministic physical evolution could, I think, result in physical stimuli that I consciously register as “new”)… I get stimuli from my senses… C1 and those new sensations cause conscious experience C2… but C is part of the causal physical world, so C2 (at least sometimes) causes changes in S3, etc.

But if I am now considering C to be part of the causal physical world (comprising C+S), then maybe not all conscious experiences have to immediately (or ever?) manifest themselves in S:

·         Indeed, if C is causal, then (as I pointed out previously) there are at least some conscious experiences on the “leading edge” that can’t yet be physically embedded in S.

·         C cannot permanently end because there is always (at least) that “leading edge” of conscious experience, which is a fact about the universe, that cannot yet be embedded into the physical structure of the universe.

·         What does this tell me about free will?

·         Are there some conscious experiences (like thinking inside a sensory deprivation tank) that I can (measurably?) experience long before they affect and/or correlate to S?

I wonder if that “leading edge” (those conscious experiences that haven’t yet, or can’t have yet, embedded in S) has anything to do with my experience of “now.”

I am in state C1.  It will cause next state C2, but that experience will also depend on physical sensations, and those will depend on S1, which was caused by S0 and any new information.  That new information could be quantum, but it could also be new information caused by my experience at C0.  (This also implies that my experiences and their effects – including my decisions if I have free will – on the physical world are not physically predictable; if they were, then S would evolve independently of C and C would not be causal.)

 

Let’s look more closely at the “leading edge,” which is my current conscious state (although my current conscious state also embeds my entire conscious history…)…

Let’s first look only at consciously distinguishable stimulus frames… say there are N of them (a billion?)… My next state C2 is created by C1 as well as (my experience/perception of?) the next stimulus frame, of which there were N possibilities.  (Although how many were actual possibilities?  Those stimulus frames were caused by S1 and any new information, and realistically they could have produced only a small fraction of N.)  Let’s imagine that the situation is such that S2, with certainty, produces only 1 possible stimulus frame. 

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is: how many possible (different) conscious experiences could I have at C2, and (since C2 is causal) how much information it could insert into physical state S2?

The simplest example of this would be… a psychologist showing someone pictures and then asking the patient about their emotional reaction.  Let’s assume for simplicity that there’s only one possible consciously distinguishable stimulus frame for the patient (looking at a photo).  (I need to be careful… even if only one frame is physically possible, C doesn’t “know” this… from C’s perspective there could be lots of possibilities… OK maybe <<N, but maybe the patient doesn’t know what the next photo will be… there are lots of possibilities, and each could then elicit lots of different conscious states/experiences.)

Now I understand that (because C is causal), the patient’s conscious experience must (at least sometimes) provide new information to S that is fundamentally unpredictable (by the psychologist or even anyone who “perfectly” knows S).

I am trying to figure out how much new information could be “contained” in a conscious state… or how much of that does or could causally embed in a physical state.  Let’s say that a certain conscious experience could embed Z bits to S… maybe it actually embeds something less than Z bits… maybe it doesn’t do it all at once… maybe it slowly adds that information… but then how could a state in the distant past, which doesn’t exist anymore, add information?[2]  Anyway, Z might even be as low as 1… maybe just a yes or no situation/decision.  (And maybe some conscious states would have Z=0, but at least sometimes Z would have to be at least 1.)

By the way, it seems that… if the total information Z that a conscious state could embed into S is ever more than what it actually embeds, then the conscious state itself will forever carry along that remaining information, causing the person to be forever physically unpredictable.

The way the patient (in state C1) will react to the photo (to create C2) will depend on C1 (and the stimulus frame… the photo… of course).  As I explained in the paragraph above, the patient is probably thinking about something (or having some conscious experience) that is not (perfectly) predictable.  But even if all Z bits from a person’s every conscious experience get embedded in S, there is still a lag (because of causality).  So, because Z bits from C1 could not yet have embedded in S1 (if they ever will at all), the patient’s reaction will depend on C1, which was physically unpredictable.  Said colloquially, there is no possible way for the psychologist to know (exactly) what the patient was thinking about (as the only way to know exactly is to BE the patient) when he shows him the photo, so the patient’s reaction to (and subsequent response about) the photo, which depends at least in part on what he was already thinking, provides new information.  My question is… how MUCH information?

I’m starting to wonder now if maybe C1 is, or at least carries with it, all of the information it could have embedded (but didn’t?) into S.  That would certainly help to explain why the “now” is so clear while distant memories seem to fade.

Hmmm… so given a particular conscious state AND a given stimulus frame, how many possible bits Z could be added to S?  I have no idea.

I just realized that I that my proof that consciousness is nonlocal is really a proof that consciousness is not physically local… because that proof depended on the assumption that C supervenes on S… that C is non-causal.  I now don’t know whether C is local, but I know it’s causal, which is much more powerful!

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[1] If consciousness is not causal, then there can be no evolutionary pressures to select for either consciousness or a belief in free will, both of which seem to be essentially universal among humans.

[2] Well… maybe it causes an event in S, but it takes time for that to come back and make a difference to the consciously distinguishable stimulus frames of the patient, psychologist, etc.

World's First Proof that Consciousness is Nonlocal

Welcome to my blog!

I am the author of the world's FIRST paper (explained here on my YouTube channel) to appear in the academic literature to logically prove that consciousness is nonlocal.*  The fact that consciousness is nonlocal has several enormously significant implications:

• Consciousness cannot be created by a digital computer.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) will never be conscious.
• Mind uploading is impossible.
• The brain does not (entirely) produce consciousness.
• Human teleportation is impossible.

I have also solved several important problems in the philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, including why quantum computing is 99% bullshit and why macroscopic quantum superpositions (like Schrodinger’s Cat and Wigner’s Friend) are physically impossible.  A little bit more about the problems I have solved can be found here.

I have a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from MIT and a law degree from Georgetown University.  I am the sole inventor of 17 U.S. patents, ten of which cover novel rocket engines and pumps.  Here is my curriculum vitae.

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* A close second place goes to Cristi Stoica in this paper, in which he logically proves that consciousness cannot be created by a digital computer, although he does not prove that consciousness is nonlocal. 

An Insight Into the Nature of Consciousness

Today I had an interesting insight... It's not fully developed but is the start of resolving a problem I've been working on for a long time... specifically, how conscious experiences get physically embedded in the universe and what that implies about consciousness.  I'm just going to cut and paste it here so you can see how this crazy brain thinks... 

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The history of facts is embedded in the universe… gather enough information and one (God) can extrapolate backward to past events.

However, if I had a particular feeling (e.g., conscious state C1), that “information” can’t be embedded in the universe in the same way… because no one else (including God?) can know or understand the FACT of my particular feeling without experiencing it, and I am the only one who could have experienced that feeling/state (because conscious states can’t be repeated, and also because the only way to experience C1 was to have experienced all the previous conscious states leading up to it… which is to say the only way to experience C1 is to be me).

It's not enough for someone else to gather lots of information and then “describe” how I felt, the same way he might say “particle X impacted particle Y.” 

The only way to “fully describe” my experience at conscious state C1 is to BE ME, experiencing that state.  It’s not enough to just say that I was “sad,” for example, since any given experience is so rich with detail.

Also C1 embeds all prior conscious states, which helps to underscore just how “rich with detail” C1 is.

What this is all leading to… My current conscious experience embeds the history of my prior conscious experiences, just as the current physical state of the universe embeds its own history.  If my conscious experience permanently ends, then where is the history of my conscious experiences?

C1 may be complicated and “rich with detail,” but it is still a FACT that I experienced it.  If that fact gets embedded in the physical history of the universe…

That implies that C1 is itself an event… like how a quantum collapse event gets embedded…

Imagine a ball in deep black space… pretend for a moment that there aren’t lots of photons, neutrinos, etc., to interact with or localize it… it has a last interaction at time t1… it travels a long time (and its location gets fuzzy)… until some later time t3… so what’s going on at t2?  There are no new facts or events or whatever, right?  It can’t “experience” anything at t2, because any fact of its experience then has to be physically embedded in the universe, right?  But I already know that Wigner’s Friend is physically impossible, so why am I using it as a thought experiment?

My point is that the FACT of my experience at state C1 means that something is happening… new information is being created… there are events, etc., that are getting physically embedded in the universe.

So to say that there is a fact about my experience of state C1 means that something happened in the physical world that didn’t have to happen (or could have happened a different way).

This underscores that consciousness is motion, but specifically unpredictable motion associated with constant creation of information…

For example, state C1 will not change to C2 until there is new information to embed in the universe… and even if that takes a year, state C1 will subjectively be experienced infinitesimally...

Quelling the Fear of Death

My Mom, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, is at peace with dying, and I both admire and feel inspired by her calm.  Today’s post is my tribute to her bravery. 

Death is all around us on TV, the movies, and the news.  But we don’t seriously contemplate it or talk about it, in part because we’re too busy climbing the ladder and paying the bills and raising kids, and in part because it’s taboo.  We’re not really allowed, socially, to talk seriously about death until we’re directly faced with it, whether through loss of a loved one, a near death experience, or a diagnosis of a terminal illness.  OK, maybe the philosophers get a free pass on this, but for the rest of us, talking too much or too deeply about death is in poor taste.

Luckily, I’m a philosopher, and I don’t much care about having poor taste, but there are lots of other reasons I’ve been thinking deeply about death:

·       Mom. 

·       I’m 47, the perfect time for a midlife crisis.  I am, for the first time, witnessing the decay of my body.  I have significantly less energy and it feels like half of what I do is just to slow down the decay.

·       I am financially independent and no longer need to work to pay the bills.  My wife and I have no children, and I have few responsibilities, allowing me to be in the position that…

·       I think deeply about a variety of interesting problems in philosophy and physics, and one of those problems is, of course, death.

There are lots of reasons that it’s difficult to talk deeply about death, the most obvious of which is that it’s terrifying to many people.  We can see a skull at some historical site in Europe, or a beheading on Game of Thrones, or kids covered in fake blood on Halloween, because these are mere hints of death.  They’re not real, and even if they’re real, they’re not me.  I can imagine someone else’s death without having to imagine my own.

But death is nothing to fear.  Seriously.  OK, maybe there’s some justified anxiety about the unknown, the same a 16^th-century European might have felt boarding a ship bound for the New World, leaving his worldly possessions behind and not knowing what to expect in his new life.  But an absolute terror of death is unjustified and I’ll explain why.  I laid out the logic more clearly in a previous post, but essentially it comes down to this.  Either:

a)     There is no afterlife – in other words, your consciousness permanently ceases at death; or

b)     There is an afterlife – in other words, your consciousness does not permanently cease at death.

These are the only two possibilities.  If a) is true, then there is nothing to fear at death because you cannot experience pain or sadness or regret or any other scary emotion if your consciousness has permanently ceased.[1]  But if b) is true, then the afterlife is only something to be feared if it’s a net painful place, like the Christian Fundamentalist notion of Hell.  If it’s not – that is, if the afterlife is not, on net, a painful or pleasurable place – then the afterlife will continue, like life, to consist of a variety of sensations and experiences, some of which will be happy, sad, pleasurable, painful, insightful, boring, confusing, scary, liberating, etc.

I’m more than a little bit skeptical of the Christian Fundamentalist notion of Hell.  In my early college book, At Least in Hell the Christians Won’t Harass Me, I laid out some good evidence, much based on logic and even mathematics, that such a Hell does not and cannot exist.  The same evidence rules out an eternally pleasurable Heaven, of course, leaving the only remaining option that one will experience a wide variety of emotions and sensations, some positive and some negative, in the afterlife.

Hence, I don’t know how I’ll feel or what I’ll experience immediately after death, but I have just as much reason to expect pleasure as pain.[2]  In fact, if I am experiencing chronic pain in this earthly body prior to death, it’s likely that death will bring relief.  Certainly, like a 16^th-century explorer traveling to the New World, I’ll be sad about what (and whom) I’ll leave behind, but there is also good reason to be excited about what lies ahead.

Speaking of what I’ll leave behind, it’s important to realize that I don’t own anything, including the body in which I inhabit.  This body, my house, and everything around me will, in the blink of an eye, return to the earth as dust.  They are fleeting and ephemeral.  My wife’s body, the bodies of all my friends and family – they too are decaying and will soon be reabsorbed into the air and soil.  There is no saving them.  The face I see in a mirror will, very soon, look like an old man’s.  And soon I will no longer see out of these eyes at all, nor will I feel with this skin or hear with these ears.  They are not mine and they are not me.  I am my consciousness, my awareness.  I am my experiences and thoughts and memories.  I will continue to have thoughts and experiences and to make memories after this body has perished.  There is no reason to try to save what cannot be saved.  There is no reason to postpone the inevitable for the sake of postponement. 

Unfortunately, the fear of death and our general societal fixation on treating all human life as always worth living lead to cases in which life is irrationally extended even in cases of chronic pain and poor life quality.  Much of the suffering in the world is caused by the belief that any living – no matter what the conditions or how painful – is better than no living.  This belief causes people to increase their pain thresholds to be willing to endure almost anything, but to what end?  More pain, of course.  If people could rid themselves of their fear of death, then I posit there would be less suffering in the world.

Let me offer an analogy.  Imagine you’re at a party.  You’ve had a good time connecting with friends, dancing, whatever, but it’s getting late and you’re tired.  You’re not having fun anymore and it’s becoming positively painful to keep up the effort.  You’d leave, right?

Now imagine there’s a Magic Bus that takes you to every destination and event in your life.  As soon as you leave one event, you get on the bus and it takes you to the next one.  You don’t know what it will be – it could be home to sleep, another party, your niece’s high school graduation, a colonoscopy, your workplace, the DMV, a Nickelback concert, etc. 

Imagine again that you’re at a party.  You’ve had a good time but you’re tired and not having fun anymore.  You know that the Magic Bus is outside waiting to take you to your next (predetermined but unknown) destination.  You’d still leave the party, right?

Of course you would.  Why would you endure pain at Event A just to postpone the possibility of pain at Event B, given that: a) Event B is inevitable; and b) there is no evidence that Event B will be painful?

It’s the same with death.  Death is inevitable and there is no evidence that you’ll have a consciously painful experience after death.  It would be irrational to indulge your fear of the unknown and indefinitely postpone death at the price of, for example, chronic pain.

Having said that, we humans are irrational in many ways.  We often fear pain and loss more than we anticipate an equal amount of pleasure and gain.  For example, let’s say that someone is going to either give you $10 or take $10 from you based on the result of a coin flip.  It’s going to happen right now unless you pay a fee of $1 per hour to postpone it.  Rationally, you know it makes no sense to pay the “postponement fee.”  Now, change these win/loss values to something significant to you – for example, you’ll either win $100,000 or you’ll owe $100,000 – and you will probably be tempted to pay the postponement fee for at least a while.  Tempted or not, you know it’s a bad decision. 

Like my mother, I don’t want to fear death or irrationally extend life, paying a “postponement fee,” to procrastinate moving on to my next destination.  I want to get up in the morning because I am excited about living, not because I am terrified of dying.  I want to be prepared to die and even, ideally, looking forward to it, so that living is a courageous choice, not merely the default.  Life has to be good if it is to be worth living.

Of course, this isn’t an argument to leave the party the very moment you experience pain or discomfort.  Not every moment of a party is fun.  However, there does come a moment when you’re ready to go home, and that’s when it becomes irrational to stick around merely due to the fear of the unknown.

Mom is ready to go home.

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[1] This is an awful mistake made by the entertaining but death-obsessed Game of Thrones.  In Season 6, Jon Snow is revived from death by priestess Melisandre.  She asks: “What did you see [in the afterlife]?”  And he replies: “Nothing, there was nothing at all.”  But this is nonsensical.  You cannot experience nothingness.  If there truly was no afterlife, then Jon’s experience, after dying, would have felt like instantaneously awakening upon his revival.  He would not say that the afterlife felt like nothing, because he would not experience the passing of time, or an awareness of nothing, if he was not consciously experiencing anything.

[2] There is actually much more legitimate scientific literature on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) than I had expected, as in this article and this article.  One surprising observation is that the majority of those who have NDEs not only have a very lucid and positive experience, they also stop fearing death!  This is similar to the experience that some have while taking psychedelic drugs, like LSD or psilocybin, in therapeutic settings.  I talk about my own psychedelic awakening in this video.

Abortion and “Enthusiastic Consent” to Being Born

As I mentioned in my last post, my Mom is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer.  There are probably options, if we looked hard enough for medical trials, to extend her life a little bit, but at what cost to her happiness and comfort?  If she is poked and prodded and given drugs that have nasty side effects and then given even more drugs to treat those side effects, if she adds another month of “life” that’s just plain miserable, then what’s the point?  Luckily, my Mom has the same viewpoint so we are now in the emotional phase of relishing our final time together, reminiscing, connecting, and laughing.

We live in a world in which human life is treated as paramount, as having essentially infinite importance and value.  I am truly grateful for good medicine and good doctors, but there is far too much emphasis on extending every life as long as physically possible, often without really considering that some life is just not worth living.

Indeed, our entire legal system is premised on the unjustified assumption that every life is worth living.  For example, suicide is illegal in most states.  (In 11 jurisdictions, physician-assisted suicide is legal only in the case of terminally ill patients who are in chronic pain.)  But what about a physically healthy person who just decides, rationally, that his life is not worth living?  That position is often the result of temporary depression or poor mental health, but not always.

This idea made me think of something else.  What’s true on the back end is true on the front end: we can’t assume that every life is worth living, even from its inception.  Consider the controversy over abortion laws in the United States in light of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.  The debate almost always comes down, in one form or another, to the question, “When is a fetus a human child worthy of legal protection?”  If a 12-week-old fetus is a child, then abortion is potentially murder; if the fetus is a parasite, then an abortion is a helpful medical procedure.

But here’s something interesting: in essentially every abortion debate, whether one is arguing for the “right (of the woman) to choose” or the “right (of the child) to life,” it is assumed that the fetus, if it developed into a child, would want to be born – specifically, to the woman, family, socioeconomic status, race, nationality, etc., to which it would be born.  Is that a fair assumption?  Is it at all justified?  Even if a given fetus actually is a human child worthy of legal protection, would it necessarily want to be born? 

A woman who wants an abortion does not want that child.  Perhaps she’s not ready; perhaps she was raped; perhaps she is homeless and destitute; perhaps she has a heritable disease; perhaps she’s a heroin addict who can only think about her next fix.  If you could ask a fetus whether it wanted to be born to that mother, in that location, in that situation – why would we assume the answer would be “yes”?

Indeed, there are lots of people, many of whom actually do eventually commit suicide, who are chronically unhappy or in psychological or physical pain because of the family, status, or situation into which they were born.  There are lots of people who, now alive and conscious, rationally wish they’d never been born, whose very birth gave rise to a lifetime of misery.

Side note: “Enthusiastic consent” is a buzzword now, especially in light of #MeToo.  It’s important, before two people are physically intimate, that they both clearly consent to the act, understand what they are consenting to, and are able to consent (e.g., not drunk).  But the very state of existing or not existing is perhaps THE most important decision anyone can make, so why aren’t people talking about enthusiastic consent to be created?

First, no fetus or child has ever consented, enthusiastically or otherwise, to be created or born.  Second, some fetuses and children, if they could have considered the conditions of their birth, would rationally have chosen not to be born.  So why does the “right to life” position always assume that imbuing a child with a right to life necessitates that the child would choose life?  My right to property, for example, allows me to decide not to own property, so why would a right to life – if a fetus possesses it – require the fetus to choose life?

This is an interesting argument and one that no one seems to be making.  Specifically, everyone (on both sides of the debate) seems to assume that a child would choose to live.  Not only is this patently false, but more importantly, when it comes to the most intimate and important action that can be taken with regard to a person – bringing that person into existence – that person never consented! 

 

Not a single person who has ever lived consented, enthusiastically or otherwise, to being born. 

 

This is a fascinating and important point for a few reasons.  First, I think that abortion might sometimes be a moral imperative, such as if a mother has good reason to think that the fetus, if it was born and lived long enough to make an informed decision, would genuinely wish that it had not been born.  Second, in the abortion debate, we really should recognize our unfounded assumption that a “right to life” does not automatically imply a preference or choice to live, and address that all children are brought into the world without their consent.

Finally, if I, personally, never consented to being born, then how can I possibly have any responsibilities as a result?  Despite over two years passing since my post on midlife and meaning, I continue to feel some anxiety over how I should spend my time.  A lot of it hinges on a variety of self- or societal-imposed responsibilities and obligations, but the realization that I never consented to my own birth makes me skeptical of many of these.  Why do I have to mow the lawn, for example? 

I think a lot of my own anxieties stem from a mismatch between what I want to do and what I think I should do.  But I really don’t have any responsibilities – how could I, if I never consented to being here in the first place?

When I think of it this way, it makes me realize that many (maybe even most?) of my “shoulds” are actually things I want to do.  For instance, I’ve had a mostly pescatarian diet for over a decade now, because I’m morally opposed to the animal abuse that pervades the meat industry.   (No, I don’t think fish or sea bugs are conscious.)  My diet is an annoying “should,” but now I realize that I actually want to eat in a way that doesn’t torture (potentially sentient) animals.

Having said that, a lot of my anxiety-producing “shoulds” are truly inconsistent with what I want, so maybe it’s time to let those go.

Mom, Cancer, Serendipity, and God

My mother has stage 3 pancreatic cancer.  She will soon leave this earth, but while her body is quickly fading, her mind and spirit are still there.  When she laughs, the twinkle in her eye is still hers.  She’s still there, and my family (and extended God-family) and I are relishing our remaining time with her.

We treated her to several days at Ocean City, Maryland, where we rented a penthouse condo overlooking the boardwalk, shops, and Atlantic Ocean below.  One evening, my sister and I put together a slide show to reminisce about past laughs, adventures, and tender moments.  In the middle of it, we were interrupted by a magnificent fireworks display – the kind you’d see on the 4^th of July in a medium-sized city – exploding above the beach directly in front of us and at exactly our altitude.  It was almost as if the display, which serendipitously began in the middle of an emotion-packed slide show, had been intentionally perfectly centered in our line of sight as we gazed out over the vast ocean.

My initial thought was: was this an amazing coincidence or actually God’s hand?  It happened on Monday, July 8.  It’s hard to explain why the fireworks would have happened at that exact location and in the middle of our slide show four days after the 4^th of July.  Obviously, far more impressive coincidences happen all the time.  Still, I think that God can and does intervene in the physical world.  However, given that God created the laws of physics – and has good reason to respect his own creation – then let’s assume that God’s power to meddle with the physical world is limited to “highly amplified quantum events” (HAQEs).  In other words, if God had actually intended to create an emotionally meaningful fireworks display to augment our slide show, then it would have been via the process of taking advantage of quantum events that get magnified chaotically to macroscopic outcomes; it would not have been via the process of unilaterally inserting fireworks into the beach, lighting them, etc.

By the way, physicists who take seriously the possibility of human free will usually make use of HAQEs (albeit with different terminology), since the ability to choose the outcome of a single quantum event (or even when a quantum event “collapses” into an outcome) can allow for free will without necessarily violating any known laws of physics. 

So let’s assume that God can manipulate quantum objects within the bounds of known physics – i.e., God can cause quantum collapse events and can choose the outcomes to the extent of their possibilities.  Here’s my question: could God have caused the fireworks display to happen at that exact place and precisely when we were doing the slide show?

Here’s a potential scenario to further elucidate the problem.  The fireworks themselves have to be planned well in advance: they have to be purchased and received; the pyrotechnics people must be hired for a particular day; the beach must be cleared; the fireworks must be mounted and connected to a control panel; and so forth.  Each one of these macroscopic events could have been (and to some extent probably was) ultimately caused by a HAQE, but how far back in time would we have to go to find the “source” HAQE for each of these macroscopic events?  For instance, perhaps it was the Mayor of Ocean City who determines exactly when the 4^th-of-July fireworks are set off, and perhaps she was particularly concerned about bad weather.  Weather is the quintessential example of chaotic amplifications of quantum events – indeed, the well-known “butterfly effect” is an example of how a butterfly’s wings can affect weather!  God could easily have invoked HAQEs to cause thunderstorms on all the nights leading up the 8^th, at which point the frustrated mayor would have decided it was finally time to light up the belated Independence Day display.

So, anyway, it’s an interesting physics question about the extent to which divine events or miracles are within the scope of the known laws of physics, a question that I will continue to ponder in the coming years.

And that’s what I initially pondered at the moment which was, as you recall, when a fireworks display interrupted a slide show tribute to my Mom.  Coincidence or not, there was a certain divine magic to it. 

I sat next to her and held her hand – the bony hand of a quickly decaying body – as we watched a loud, obnoxious, beautiful display that very well may have been meant for our eyes.  I felt overwhelmed by the absurdity of the situation, the sadness I felt, the depth of meaning and emotion I was experiencing.  I felt an intense gratitude for the opportunity to experience such love for and from this woman, a silly giddiness at how simple everything seemed in that moment.  I felt intense pain and intense joy at the same time.  I squeezed her hand and sobbed deeply.

On one hand, how tragic that I would soon no longer taste her homemade cheesecake or hear one of her terrible jokes in which she starts laughing before reaching the punchline.  On the other hand, how wonderful that her cheesecakes and terrible jokes have brought me so much happiness in the past.  How dare God take this woman away from me.  Then again, as overwhelmingly sad as I feel, thank God for giving me a Mom whose loss would make me feel so overwhelmingly sad. 

Out of my joy is born sorrow, and vice versa.

YouTube Channel: @AndrewKnightMIT

 After a long hiatus, I am back -- focused and ready to continue tackling the difficult and fascinating questions in the philosophy of physics and consciousness.  I am also investing in my YouTube channel, focusing on clear explanations of difficult concepts to the lay audience.  Here's my most recent video, showing a logical proof why computers will never be conscious, mind uploading is impossible, and more than one instance of a person's conscious state can't exist at more than one place or time in the universe.