Consciousness, Evolution, Morality, and more.

Let’s assume that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter doing computations.

Consciousness is then what it feels like to be a piece of the universe perceiving itself.

Consciousness is what it feels like to be doing computation, the taking in and sorting of data.

What does this mean?

It means when we build computers we are building minds. When we build machines we are building bodies. Put them together and, in time, with enough computing power, perhaps they wake up and obtain autonomy.

Also, we can build machines that can sense things we cannot. Consider UV light. It’s unable to be seen by humans. But we built a different eye out of matter that can see things we can’t. We are gaining new ways of verifying things that were previously unable to be verified.

Consider now evolution. Evolution is the world made of matter around us, and that we are a part of, through the process of creation and destruction, gaining computational power as it reorganizes itself into more complex structures with more logic gates.

Are we building the next species? If evolution is true, when does the break happen when we build a thing that can’t even understand our language, like us and the monkeys.

Evolution and Moore’s law then are becoming synonymous. That means that evolution is happening faster and faster, or exponentially gaining speed. What does this mean?

This means that the further down the road we are in this process the greater the differences between this generation and the one immediately prior. At some point our 12 year olds are smarter that our 112 year olds. As this process continues the ideological gap between those in existence will get wider.

Now let us consider evolutionary ethics. What if there is morality, and if that must entail something like what we’ve called a God historically so be it, but that which is permissible is contingent upon the sentient being’s place within the evolutionary timeline/process. For example, consider homosexuality. This is immoral according to some people historically. If homosexuality was objectively wrong a certain number of years ago because we needed to populate the planet to build the Machine, but is now objectively right because we are faced with the threat of overpopulation prior to being capable of living in space or migrating to another habitable planet, then that would be an example of an evolutionary ethic.

Objective morality says, for example, murder is wrong in all instances. But there can never be the exact same instances within the case. We are part of a process happening. Even if we are doing the same thing now, we are doing it now, not then. And maybe now calls for a different action that, at this time, promotes an overarching ethic that does remain— like the construction of the Machine or the survival of the most sentient beings, for example. Note that this overarching ethic is probably not in the code. It’s in the intention of the designer of the case if there is one. This means we have no way of knowing what it is for certain, though it’s possible we infer it or he try to tell it to us through the case.