Name: Is the Universe Developing Consciousness?
Uploaded: 2022-06-09T17:08:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the Universe Developing Consciousness?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-09. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the Universe Developing Consciousness?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-09. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience. You think that this is a process that is leading
towards what? Do you
extrapolate? Do you really think that, like, do you wonder, like, what humans
are actually doing,
what consciousness is actually doing, why the universe has this as a tendency
or as a law?
Yeah, no, it's, I think it's the most mysterious question there is. So, is
there an ultimate goal?
Right. So, what I do think is that this increase in complexity is inevitable,
but like I said,
it's not this straight march of progress. There's, like, constantly these
challenges. There's massive
existential challenges, and that is the only thing that pushes us to create
solutions. So, there's
this principle in the book that I call Popper's Principle, named after a
philosopher of science,
and the idea is that, yes, so that our challenges are what force us to find
solutions. So, if progress is
going to always continue, that means the challenges won't stop. So, even if we
do attain some, like,
globally unified state, I would like to see, like, some sort of agreement among
nations that says,
okay, we're all going to demilitarize, and we're going to put this money into,
like, medicine or
technology, whatever else, you know, all the other things that, you know, we
could be funding that
could help, you know, human society. And, you know, we could have something
like that, but there could still be, like, pandemics. There could still be
someone crazy that takes over and starts to, you know, try to reverse that. So,
the point is, you can never reach a utopia. And even if we did, it wouldn't be
a utopia for a long time, because the world is always changing. It's this, you
know, reality is this noisy thing.
thermally fluctuating thing. And there is chaos. Chaos is needed for complexity,
too. Actually, when a system transitions to a state of higher order, you need
some chaos in the system. So, that's because, like, if a system is too rigid,
and too, so you could think of, like, things seemed,
we had democratic presidents, like, you could think about just, like, how
things were under Obama for a while. You know, we didn't, there wasn't the craziness
that we're seeing today. So, you might think, like, oh, well, whatever that
system was, it was a good thing, or it was better than what we have now. But no
system, no model, no way of doing things will work forever, because the
external world,
is always changing. So, we're always going to be going through these cycles and
phases, where we have temporary stability, but then the system needs to change.
And I think right now, when we're seeing all this chaos,
it is indicative of what complexity scientists call a phase transition. And so,
basically, the chaos is basically the system screaming for change. So, you see
all of this chaos, and that provides, it creates flexibility within a rigid
system that allows the system to transition into something new and higher,
better.
Sure.
So, you think that this is a function of the universe, that the universe has a
tendency towards complexity, and that we are one of the driving forces of this.
Yes.
So, we're a biological driving force of a greater law of the universe.
Yeah.
And, but what do you think the universe wants? Like, what's the ultimate goal
out of this?
Yeah.
So, you know, when you talk about what the universe wants, we're already
getting into like a little language trap.
Yeah.
Because, are we saying that the universe is conscious, that it has a conscious
intent? I don't think so.
Well, let me ask it in a different way. Okay.
Okay.
Where do you think this is going?
Well, no.
So, it's good to kind of break that down and be like, does the universe have a
conscious intent?
Right.
So, I don't think it does, but I think it has a sort of design, and when I say
design, it's something that's not mystical.
I'm saying that the laws of physics are such that complexity increases, and the
universe does have something like a goal.
So, it may not have a conscious intent, but life emerges inevitably, and that
the laws of physics play something, you know, analogous to DNA in an organism.
So, the laws and constants of physics are sort of cosmic DNA that ensures that
this evolutionary program plays out.
So, maybe the universe is moving towards something like a cosmic attractor.
And an attractor is a term that physicists use to describe a state of order.
So, for example, when you take the stopper out of your bathtub, you will get
the formation of a whirlpool.
So, you get this spontaneous order.
Gravity is attracting the water down the pipe.
Yep.
So, you have these attractors, which are basically kind of this goal state of a
system.
In living systems, attractors are basically states of stability that the living
system is trying to maintain against this second law of thermodynamics.
And so, it seems like cosmic evolution is a process of generating increasingly
complex attractors.
So, when I say that, there are these evolutionary transitions, which are
versions of phase transitions that I just explained.
So, if you look at the story of the universe, it's a story of nature's simplest
parts coming together to form larger functional holes.
So, atoms come together to make molecules, which come together to make cells,
which come together to make multicellular organisms, which come together to
form societies.
And now we have something like the emergence of a global brain, which is the
network of humans connected by the internet, as well as AIs.
And so, when humans leave the planet, like people out there like Elon Musk with
SpaceX are trying to get humans off the planet, I'm saying that that's part of
this natural evolutionary process.
It wasn't just like a decision someone made or, you know, something that we
decided to do because we're clever or something.
It's actually baked into this process.
And that's because if life is going to continue to persist, it has to get off
the planet before its star dies.
So, it's sort of, it creates like a game clock that forces life to spread.
What is the end state?
Maybe something like this cosmic attractor where some very legitimate
scientists have speculated.
People like Paul Davies, Ray Kurzweil, you know, technology guy may seem, you
know, futurist may seem a little bit more out there.
But there's this idea that, you know, the universe is evolving and waking up
and that there could be this integrated state where something like a cosmic
mind emerges from this process.
Is it an egocentric way of looking at consciousness to think that the universe
is waking up?
I mean, we are this tiny speck that's riding on one planet that is but a
molecule in the vast infinity of the universe.
Yeah.
For us to say, oh, one day the universe will catch up with us.
Yeah.
Be conscious like us.
Isn't that kind of goofy?
Like, but isn't it like, if you think about it, isn't it kind of an egocentric
biological function?
The idea that consciousness, the way we term it, thinking about all our
problems and the way we fit in with the universe and coming up with solutions
for unique situations that we have to deal with.
We think that's so amazing.
But the universe is literally, they have stellar nurseries out there.
They're creating stars.
Yeah.
We have hypernovas.
Stars are exploding.
They create carbon, which is literally the building blocks for all carbon-based
life.
That's all that stuff is happening.
We're like, yeah, one day they're going to catch up.
It's going to be conscious.
Why is consciousness even important?
Well, first of all, you need stars and planets to have consciousness.
Right.
So that's part of the process too.
The first ordered structures that were created by this cosmic evolutionary
process, which includes life, are those ordered structures.
Right.
And so, well, one point you made was that, you know, we're on this small planet.
What the book argues and what a lot of origin of life researchers are arguing
is that life isn't improbable.
It's probably not only here.
That where you have the right conditions, life emerges inevitably.
So if you have the right ingredients, it'll cook something up and that will be
life.
So there are estimated to be something like, you know, billions to maybe trillions
of Earth-like planets out there that life may have emerged on and maybe
intelligent life.
To assume that we are the only intelligence out there is to say that what
happened on this planet is extremely, almost infinitely improbable.
And I don't think that's the case.
People like Richard Dawkins have argued that life emerging on other planets
will evolve according to Darwinian mechanisms and these new processes of self-organization
that we're describing.
And so if the universe is waking up through life.
And so when I say that, I want to be very clear.
I'm not talking about panpsychism.
When I'm saying the universe is awake, I'm talking about just, you know,
conscious agents like us are awake.
And the universe used to be all inanimate matter prior to life.
So in a very literal sense, the matter in the universe is waking up.
So if there is this process and we find ourselves on this planet at this point,
it's of course going to look, you know, like there's not much other life out
there and that consciousness doesn't have this cosmic significance.
But that's just how it looks right now at this stage.
And we're already starting to see how technology can bring life off the planet.
I mean, you know, a couple hundred years ago, people thought it was impossible
to fly.
Actually, I learned this from a friend.
There was a New York Times article that came out something like 10 months
before the Wright brothers created the plane that said it would take like 10
million years, some ridiculously long amount of time for humans to invent like,
you know, aircraft.
So we can already see that this process basically has no limits.
And so the other thing you said was that, you know, is it kind of like anthropocentric
to like, you know, people think we're projecting human qualities on the
universe when you say maybe like the universe is waking up.
But I think that's a mistake to talk about humans as if we're not part of the
universe.
We're part of that physical system.
So I don't think it's right to be like, oh, consciousness is something that
only, you know, applies to humans.
And it's this like quirky thing.
We are part of the cosmos and you can't strip away consciousness from the
description of the universe without taking away one of its most interesting
aspects.