Here is my current view of our reality. I think of it as based on what I have read about current scientific knowledge of this area. It seems to me that we are in the middle of a kind of unfolding of our universe. It apparently started off with a very simple, almost pure, substance. For lack of a better name I will call this initial substance “energy”?. That initial substance seems to have had built in tendencies\/potential paths of unfolding. I like to use the term “emergent qualities”? to describe these built in tendencies. The major phases in the sequence that I am aware of are as follows:<\/p>\n

First there was energy, then there was simple matter, then there was complex matter, then there was life, then there was consciousness. Each stage was an emergent quality of the prior one, sort of pre-loaded into the system as likely to come into being some day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting is to speculate about what comes after where we are now. It’s quite possible that there are many stages beyond what we call consciousness. One possible view of a future stage is that those who reach it will be able to look back on the emergence and existence of our consciousness the same way we look back on the emergence and existence of early life forms (amoebas and the like). Where matter is headed is fascinating too. Maybe the end of time, in the same sense that big bang seems to be the beginning of time, is something we cannot ( yet?) imagine. <\/p>\n

Within this view my best guess is that consciousness is a natural outgrowth of certain kinds of dynamic complex system. I’m back to “emergent” aspects of the universe… i.e things that are likely to show up given enough time. It seems very likely to me that computers can evolve into something that has as much, or more, consciousness as we do. The only reason they might not reach that stage is that is that we may destroy ourselves, and them, before they are evolving independently from us. Once they begin to evolve independently of us, and free from our destruction, it seems probable to me that they will someday have at least as much self awareness and “consciousness”? as we do.<\/p>\n

Whether they are 50 years from consciousness or 5 billion years (it did take us quite a while to get there) is not known, but my best guess is that, at the current rate of change, they are probably not more than a few thousand years away from it, and could be a lot closer. <\/p>\n

The above statements were elicited in my on-going interaction with Rick Randall in the summer of 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is my current view of our reality. I think of it as based on what I have read about current scientific knowledge of this area. It seems to me that we are in the middle of a kind of unfolding of our universe. It apparently started off with a very simple, almost pure, substance. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boppers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}