Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

[Randall]

... What I’m missing, right now, is what sort of state of affairs could possibly convince me that (a) potato-chip bags have property X, and (b) property X refers to the same thing that I had previously meant by “consciousness.”

Exactly.

 

[smcder]

Exactly.

That was from @Soupie's post, not @Michael Allen

 

[smcder]

I've read this several times, but only just now read Chalmer's response, with which I agree with.


While Aaronson identifies concerns with the math, as indicated above, he views IIT as a serious, honorable attempt to address what he calls the Pretty-Hard Problem of Consciousness. (In other words, it's not rubbish, despite the opinion of our resident HCT guru.) As noted, Koch's enthusiasm and Chalmer's public interest should be considered as well. (None of which means of course that IIT is correct.)

However, I think Aaronson's main critique of IIT is foolish: "In my view, IIT fails to solve the Pretty-Hard Problem because it unavoidably predicts vast amounts of consciousness in physical systems that no sane person would regard as particularly “conscious” at all."

Chalmers' response:


If consciousness is fundamental, and it may be, then humans don't have the market cornered. There may be many non-human systems that are having experiences.

Not only do I think Aaronson's critique is erroneous, I also wonder if it is ultimately born out of a confusion regarding consciousness.


He has apparently shown that some very simple systems could, according to IIT, be experiencing consciousness. As noted, for this reason, he rejects IIT.

In this case, my concern is with his last statement. First, consciousness is not the same as intelligence. I don't think I need to say anything more than that.

Second, for a system to be conscious is for it to feel like something to be that system. What does it feel like to be a system that simply applies the matrix W to an input vector x? I haven't a clue. Perhaps it feels like a prickly rash, perhaps it feels like a shade of purple, perhaps it feels like lavender. It probably doesn't feel like any of those things. And it doesn't have to in order to feel like something.

Third, consciousness is not the same as the human mind and all its wonderful myriad of qualities. That is, for a system to be conscious does not mean that a system must see like us, hear like us, smell like us, taste like us, touch like us, have thoughts like us, have emotions like us, or moods like us, etc.

If consciousness is fundamental, then different systems will mold it into minds in different ways. Do we think that what it feels like to be a bat is the same as what it feels like to be a dog, or a shrew, or someone who is deaf, blind, quadriplegic, and in a vegetative state?

IIT may be wrong, but I don't think Aaronson's intuition proves that it is.

He has apparently shown that some very simple systems could, according to IIT, be experiencing consciousness. As noted, for this reason, he rejects IIT.

Aaronson's reason for rejecting IIT strikes directly at what he says is the link between II and consciousness. He says a large value of Phi is not a sufficient condition for consciousness and so Phi can't capture the essence of what makes a physical system conscious.

So he directly disputes IIT's central claim and demonstrates that mathematically (as far as I can tell ;-)

Aaronson
In any case, my own reason for rejecting IIT has nothing to do with any of the “merely practical” issues above: neither the difficulty of defining f and x, nor the difficulty of learning them, nor the difficulty of calculating Φ(f,x). My reason is much more basic, striking directly at the hypothesized link between “integrated information” and consciousness. Specifically, I claim the following:
Yes, it might be a decent rule of thumb that, if you want to know which brain regions (for example) are associated with consciousness, you should start by looking for regions with lots of information integration. And yes, it’s even possible, for all I know, that having a large Φ-value is one necessary condition among many for a physical system to be conscious. However, having a large Φ-value is certainly not a sufficient condition for consciousness, or even for the appearance of consciousness. As a consequence, Φ can’t possibly capture the essence of what makes a physical system conscious, or even of what makes a system look conscious to external observers.

 

[Randall]

Lets go back to a point I made earlier...

Actually it is a question (very poignant): can free will exist in a non-deterministic universe?

(edit) proof sketch:

A "will" must be able to scan the deterministic relations of its environment...in order to pick a choice that will have the results according to its "will" (i.e. goal oriented model)

I thought that was a brilliant observation that had never dawned on me before. Thanks for bringing that to our attention . Might not however, given a non-deterministic universe, there be the possibility of some limited scope of choice?

 

[smcder]

Lets go back to a point I made earlier...

Actually it is a question (very poignant): can free will exist in a non-deterministic universe?

(edit) proof sketch:

A "will" must be able to scan the deterministic relations of its environment...in order to pick a choice that will have the results according to its "will" (i.e. goal oriented model)

What is meant by a non-deterministic universe?

 

[Randall]

That was from @Soupie's post, not @Michael Allen

That was weird. I wonder how that happened. Sometimes this board does strange things. I actually pulled it from a post of yours. Fixed it now.

 

[Pharoah]

Now I think music isn't just an analogy - it's pretty much the same thing.

The relationship of notation to intution, composition and "discovery"? is it more or less the same as that for mathematics?

is there a musical equivalent of pure mathematics? (Penrose stairs have an analogue auditory illusion ... the sonic barber pole)

I'll bet there are a few examples where the manipulation of notation alone, or the immediately underlying principles has resulted in new music? or musical principles? or is that wrong-headed or not even wrong?

I'd say categorically wrong.

@smcder you say:
"@ufology @Pharoah What you mean is that it's a circular argument, correct?"

If you look at the IIT glossary of terms you will also find circularity. A defines B... B defines A. That is the extent of the coherence; the theory supports itself by defining the variables and then showing the variables to be defining itself. The qualitative claim is entirely arbitrary because there is no explanation of what quality is or how it might vary, or even exist. And the quantity?... well... a lot of nothing is the same as a very small amount of nothing.

 

[Randall]

I'll bet there are a few examples where the manipulation of notation alone, or the immediately underlying principles has resulted in new music?

That seems fair.

... or musical principles?

That seems fair too.

 

[smcder]

I'd say categorically wrong.

@smcder you say:
"@ufology @Pharoah What you mean is that it's a circular argument, correct?"

If you look at the IIT glossary of terms you will also find circularity. A defines B... B defines A. That is the extent of the coherence; the theory supports itself by defining the variables and then showing the variables to be defining itself. The qualitative claim is entirely arbitrary because there is no explanation of what quality is or how it might vary, or even exist. And the quantity?... well... a lot of nothing is the same as a very small amount of nothing.

I'll come back to the music thing ...

If this is such an obvious error, how do smart people, many smart people miss it? I understand the psychology, etc so I'm not looking for an easy answer.

Has everyone (except me) gone through the 3.0 version and given it a full read?

 

[smcder]

Maybe, but the word "papañca" doesn't really mean anything to most people (or anyone), does it?

It's a good example of the difference between simplification and obfuscation.

I meant to come back to this ... papanca is well defined, you actually define it right after you question it's meaning:

It's a good example of the difference between simplification and obfuscation.

that is papanca. But when you went back and edited your second post, that also was papanca! So it's very tricky to master in practice. One commentator noted that all of Western philosophy was papanca.

The concept appears several places in the Pali cannon, notably in the honeyball sutra:

Madhupindika Sutta: The Ball of Honey

 

[smcder]

I'm not insulting anyone; just throwing a different viewpoint into the mix.

Complexity manifests from simplicity in the same way that thoughts arise within the space of conscious awareness (anyone who doubts the latter point need only gain a rudimentary familiarity with meditation to have it confirmed).

Increasing complexity in an attempt to understand or apprehend the essence of simplicity is a futile approach, as is trying to arrive at the root of consciousness by generating more and more branches of thought.

It might be an interesting or stimulating exercise, but it is searching in the wrong direction entirely.

What kind of meditation do you practice?

Complexity manifests from simplicity in the same way that thoughts arise within the space of conscious awareness (anyone who doubts the latter point need only gain a rudimentary familiarity with meditation to have it confirmed).

One of the best Buddhist one liners is on this:

thoughts aren't the problem, thinking is

 

[smcder]

@ufology

This is Tononi's partner in IIT:

An integration of integrated information theory with fundamental physics

smcder Is this anything like the field theory of consciousness you mention?

Abstract

To truly eliminate Cartesian ghosts from the science of consciousness, we must describe consciousness as an aspect of the physical. Integrated Information Theory states that consciousness arises from intrinsic information generated by dynamical systems; however existing formulations of this theory are not applicable to standard models of fundamental physical entities. Modern physics has shown that fields are fundamental entities, and in particular that the electromagnetic field is fundamental. Here I hypothesize that consciousness arises from information intrinsic to fundamental fields. This hypothesis unites fundamental physics with what we know empirically about the neuroscience underlying consciousness, and it bypasses the need to consider quantum effects.
Keywords: integrated information theory, fields, particle physics, electromagnetic field theory, complexity, entropy

 

[smcder]

I'd say categorically wrong.

@smcder you say:
"@ufology @Pharoah What you mean is that it's a circular argument, correct?"

If you look at the IIT glossary of terms you will also find circularity. A defines B... B defines A. That is the extent of the coherence; the theory supports itself by defining the variables and then showing the variables to be defining itself. The qualitative claim is entirely arbitrary because there is no explanation of what quality is or how it might vary, or even exist. And the quantity?... well... a lot of nothing is the same as a very small amount of nothing.

I'm going to try to look at 3.0 today or tomorrow:

From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0

Can you give me specific instances of circularity you've found?

 

[smcder]

@smcder Not sure you have quoted me correctly there...
From the individual's perspective, their construct is stable (on the whole) and for that reason, they perceive it as rational. (e.g Tononi thinks IIT is rational. I think HCT is rational etc.)
Similarly, a person who has a mental condition may see rationality in their thinking but the general public may see only illness. So they may behave 'irrationally' but in their conceptually constructed world they do not see the irrationality because they are protecting the stability of their conceptual construct at all cost. This then defines their view of what is and what is not rational.
You get it in everyday conversation, "how could they do that... it is irrational..." etc. They do it, because it complies with their conceptual construct about the world—it defines what is rational for them.
Of course, unlike physiological constructions (which evolve over generations of replicants) concepts are continually being challenged merged, updated, reviewed in every individual i.e. very dynamic, particularly in creative people.

Thanks for the Sperber reference and @Constance for the Menant, which sounds consistent with HCT—very interesting.

This is a piece of my question about how IIT can be so wrong if smart people are for it ... are you suggesting a kind of relativism? Somewhere else you pin it down to externals ... but there can be many rational approaches to the same "reality" if you go that way - folk psychology is very accurate, so is the hydraulic theory of emotion (blow off steam etc) Freudian analysis "works" etc

 

[Soupie]

Ther is a problem with the concept of information when it is being applied to consciousness studies. This stems from its popular use and from communications theory. This flawed view has it that information is a commodity insofar as it can be carried, processed, trasferred etc i.e. it is external to the observer. The problem with this concept is how "meaning" can be carried, transferred, processed i.e. how does an agency know how to get meaning from 'information' transferred to it, for example. How does information (for example in a nerual impulse) inform. This problem besets computationalisg and existing representationist theories.

The alternative does not have it that information exists out there waiting to be decoded for its meaningful content by the requisite agency. Rather, an agency is an information construct by virtue of the valudity of its environemntal correspondence, where correspondence that is accurate or valid increases the likelihood of the continuance of that informational construct.

So, for example, something in the environment is not 'red' and decoded by our brains as "redness".

Are you suggesting that this is how IIT employs the concept of information? If you are, you are utterly wrong. You insist that IIT is rubbish, and say that it is circular. Bullshit. As @smcder asks, have you even read it? It's clear that Aaronson has a much better handle of the theory than you. Very clear. If there any type of this circular or assumed logic, we can be assured he'd point it out. He hasn't. His critique of IIT takes a different approach. I'm sorry Pharoah, but you're critique of IIT so far has been meaningless and baseless. You simply do not understand it. (Of course, none of this means it's correct.)

Here, IIT embraces the information theoretical sense of information; that is, information is the reduction in uncertainty regarding the state of a variable, and conversely is what increases in specifying a variable with a growing number of possible states. When applied to conscious experience as we know it, since the number of different possible experiences generated by a human consciousness is considerably large, the amount of information this conscious system must hold should also be large. The list of a system's possible states is called its "repertoire" in IIT.

In a system composed of connected "mechanisms" (nodes containing information and causally influencing other nodes), the information among them is said to be integrated if and to the extent that there is a greater amount of information in the repertoire of a whole system regarding its previous state than there is in the sum of the all the mechanisms considered individually. In this way, integrated information does not increase by simply adding more mechanisms to a system if the mechanisms are independent of each other. Applied to consciousness, parts of an experience (qualia) such as color and shape are not experienced separately for the reason that they are integrated, unified in a single, whole experience; applied in another way, our digestive system is not considered part of our consciousness because the information generated in the body is not intrinsically integrated with the brain.

Rather, something is red because our construct—our physiological makeup and neural mechanisms—has needed the feeling of "redness" because this qualitative correspondence jas benefited the construct's (that being the human physiology) survival

You're close but very far away. This account--sans the phenomenal feel--is no different than standard evolutionary theory, as @smcder and I have pointed out to you several times. Organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to the stimuli in their environment. Both TENS and HCT provide a model (the same model) of how this happens. What neither of them does is provide a model of how this recognition and response is accompanied by phenomenal feel. Again, as Smcder and I have pointed out on many, many occasions, HCT does not account for phenomenal feel.

IIT incorporates TENS, and thus the notion that organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to their environment. What IIT does--that HCT does not, at all--is provide a hypothesis (that may be incorrect) about why this process outlined in TENS and HCT is sometimes accompanied by phenomenal feel.

Aaronson's reason for rejecting IIT strikes directly at what he says is the link between II and consciousness. He says a large value of Phi is not a sufficient condition for consciousness and so Phi can't capture the essence of what makes a physical system conscious.

So he directly disputes IIT's central claim and demonstrates that mathematically (as far as I can tell ;-)

Aaronson
In any case, my own reason for rejecting IIT has nothing to do with any of the “merely practical” issues above: neither the difficulty of defining f and x, nor the difficulty of learning them, nor the difficulty of calculating Φ(f,x). My reason is much more basic, striking directly at the hypothesized link between “integrated information” and consciousness. Specifically, I claim the following:
Yes, it might be a decent rule of thumb that, if you want to know which brain regions (for example) are associated with consciousness, you should start by looking for regions with lots of information integration. And yes, it’s even possible, for all I know, that having a large Φ-value is one necessary condition among many for a physical system to be conscious. However, having a large Φ-value is certainly not a sufficient condition for consciousness, or even for the appearance of consciousness. As a consequence, Φ can’t possibly capture the essence of what makes a physical system conscious, or even of what makes a system look conscious to external observers.

What he demonstrates mathematically is that systems we wouldn't intuitively be inclined to believe have experiences, may--according to IIT--actually have experiences.

He responded to Chalmer's by giving the most absurd scenario he could conceive: that if a model predicted that a bag of chips was conscious (he is not suggesting IIT does predict this) we would be inclined to reject it.

I've already pointed out why I think this is bad logic. (1) Consciousness and a mind are not the same! For example, it may be the case that skin cells are conscious. Does that mean skin cells must have a rich, qualitatively diverse mind like a human? No. Having experience does not mean that the system has a complex mind.

Experience/consciousness is the property of "feeling." If it turns out that a skin cell is conscious, the quality of its mind will likely be extremely simple compared to that of a human.

(2) If experience is a property associated with certain processes (integrated, information carrying nodes), then it may indeed be more common than we currently, intuitively believe. We may intuitively reject it, that's fine. But we have to go where the evidence takes us.

Now, according to Aaronson's math, which I have no reason or ability to doubt, he says that some simple systems will experience "more" consciousness than humans. What does more mean in this instance? Is it referring to quantity or quality (variety)? I'm not sure. I don't think we even have the concepts available to understand what it might mean for one system to have a higher quantity of consciousness than another. I think it's easy to see how one system--say a human--might have a richer quality/variety of consciousness than, say, a system such as a round worm.

But what might it mean if one system had a greater quantity? Let's say there are two systems that can only experience phenomenal green, but one system experiences phenomenal green in a greater quantity. What does this mean? What would that be like? Who knows.

Do you know, @smcder, which Aaronson means when he says he has mathematically shown that IIT predicts some intuitively non-conscious systems may be "more" conscious than humans?

 

[smcder]

Are you suggesting that this is how IIT employs the concept of information? If you are, you are utterly wrong. You insist that IIT is rubbish, and say that it is circular. Bullshit. As @smcder asks, have you even read it? It's clear that Aaronson has a much better handle of the theory than you. Very clear. If there any type of this circular or assumed logic, we can be assured he'd point it out. He hasn't. His critique of IIT takes a different approach. I'm sorry Pharoah, but you're critique of IIT so far has been meaningless and baseless. You simply do not understand it. (Of course, none of this means it's correct.)




You're close but very far away. This account--sans the phenomenal feel--is no different than standard evolutionary theory, as @smcder and I have pointed out to you several times. Organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to the stimuli in their environment. Both TENS and HCT provide a model (the same model) of how this happens. What neither of them does is provide a model of how this recognition and response is accompanied by phenomenal feel. Again, as Smcder and I have pointed out on many, many occasions, HCT does not account for phenomenal feel.

IIT incorporates TENS, and thus the notion that organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to their environment. What IIT does--that HCT does not, at all--is provide a hypothesis (that may be incorrect) about why this process outlined in TENS and HCT is sometimes accompanied by phenomenal feel.


What he demonstrates mathematically is that systems we wouldn't intuitively be inclined to believe have experiences, may--according to IIT--actually have experiences.

He responded to Chalmer's by giving the most absurd scenario he could conceive: that if a model predicted that a bag of chips was conscious (he is not suggesting IIT does predict this) we would be inclined to reject it.

I've already pointed out why I think this is bad logic. (1) Consciousness and a mind are not the same! For example, it may be the case that skin cells are conscious. Does that mean skin cells must have a rich, qualitatively diverse mind like a human? No. Having experience does not mean that the system has a complex mind.

Experience/consciousness is the property of "feeling." If it turns out that a skin cell is conscious, the quality of its mind will likely be extremely simple compared to that of a human.

(2) If experience is a property associated with certain processes (integrated, information carrying nodes), then it may indeed be more common than we currently, intuitively believe. We may intuitively reject it, that's fine. But we have to go where the evidence takes us.

Now, according to Aaronson's math, which I have no reason or ability to doubt, he says that some simple systems will experience "more" consciousness than humans. What does more mean in this instance? Is it referring to quantity or quality (variety)? I'm not sure. I don't think we even have the concepts available to understand what it might mean for one system to have a higher quantity of consciousness than another. I think it's easy to see how one system--say a human--might have a richer quality/variety of consciousness than, say, a system such as a round worm.

But what might it mean if one system had a greater quantity? Let's say there are two systems that can only experience phenomenal green, but one system experiences phenomenal green in a greater quantity. What does this mean? What would that be like? Who knows.

Do you know, @smcder, which Aaronson means when he says he has mathematically shown that IIT predicts some intuitively non-conscious systems may be "more" conscious than humans?

reductio ad absurdum - he says the math leads to that absurd conclusion that intuitively non conscious systems have more consciousness than humans, so he wouldnt talk about what that means, because he thinks its absurd ... what he says is IIT predicts a inc system will have a higher Phi value and so its absurd to conclude that Phi is a measure of consciousness, he concludes that Phi may be necessary but it can't be sufficient ... make sense?

IM going to workout and will be back and take a closer look but I think thats right

 

[Randall]

@ufology

This is Tononi's partner in IIT:

An integration of integrated information theory with fundamental physics

smcder Is this anything like the field theory of consciousness you mention?

Abstract

To truly eliminate Cartesian ghosts from the science of consciousness, we must describe consciousness as an aspect of the physical. Integrated Information Theory states that consciousness arises from intrinsic information generated by dynamical systems; however existing formulations of this theory are not applicable to standard models of fundamental physical entities. Modern physics has shown that fields are fundamental entities, and in particular that the electromagnetic field is fundamental. Here I hypothesize that consciousness arises from information intrinsic to fundamental fields. This hypothesis unites fundamental physics with what we know empirically about the neuroscience underlying consciousness, and it bypasses the need to consider quantum effects.
Keywords: integrated information theory, fields, particle physics, electromagnetic field theory, complexity, entropy

It is similar, but rather than saying that, "consciousness arises from information intrinsic to fundamental fields." My thinking is that the structure of consciousness is a type of field that is physical in nature ( part of the set of natural phenomena in our universe ) and that consciousness is a property of such a field, and that in humans, it arises from physical processes in the BBS ( brain-body system ) rather than from "information". So rather than being "intrinsic to fundamental fields", it is more likely IMO to be a fundamental field itself. It might be a tertiary process. In other words, From matter and energy ( 1 ) emerge fields like EM fields ( 2 ) and out of a particular arrangement of those fields emerges another kind of field we can call consciousness ( 3 ). It has to be some combination of those things that does the trick.

At least in keeping with my peculiar brand of Physicalism, that would be my estimation. But while we're at it let's not get too wrapped up in the semantics of things. When I say a "field itself" I mean in the same way we think of magnetism as a magnetic field. The field isn't really "the magnetism". We don't really know what that is, just like we may never know what consciousness is, but having identified the fields associated with EM, we've been able to do all sorts of cool things with EM fields. Similarly, we may be able to do the same with consciousness fields, and I think the experiments Persinger's been doing represent the genesis of that research.

 

[Pharoah]

Are you suggesting that this is how IIT employs the concept of information? If you are, you are utterly wrong. You insist that IIT is rubbish, and say that it is circular. Bullshit. As @smcder asks, have you even read it? It's clear that Aaronson has a much better handle of the theory than you. Very clear. If there any type of this circular or assumed logic, we can be assured he'd point it out. He hasn't. His critique of IIT takes a different approach. I'm sorry Pharoah, but you're critique of IIT so far has been meaningless and baseless. You simply do not understand it. (Of course, none of this means it's correct.)

You're close but very far away. This account--sans the phenomenal feel--is no different than standard evolutionary theory, as @smcder and I have pointed out to you several times. Organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to the stimuli in their environment. Both TENS and HCT provide a model (the same model) of how this happens. What neither of them does is provide a model of how this recognition and response is accompanied by phenomenal feel. Again, as Smcder and I have pointed out on many, many occasions, HCT does not account for phenomenal feel.

IIT incorporates TENS, and thus the notion that organisms have evolved to recognize and respond to their environment. What IIT does--that HCT does not, at all--is provide a hypothesis (that may be incorrect) about why this process outlined in TENS and HCT is sometimes accompanied by phenomenal feel.


What he demonstrates mathematically is that systems we wouldn't intuitively be inclined to believe have experiences, may--according to IIT--actually have experiences.

He responded to Chalmer's by giving the most absurd scenario he could conceive: that if a model predicted that a bag of chips was conscious (he is not suggesting IIT does predict this) we would be inclined to reject it.

I've already pointed out why I think this is bad logic. (1) Consciousness and a mind are not the same! For example, it may be the case that skin cells are conscious. Does that mean skin cells must have a rich, qualitatively diverse mind like a human? No. Having experience does not mean that the system has a complex mind.

Experience/consciousness is the property of "feeling." If it turns out that a skin cell is conscious, the quality of its mind will likely be extremely simple compared to that of a human.

(2) If experience is a property associated with certain processes (integrated, information carrying nodes), then it may indeed be more common than we currently, intuitively believe. We may intuitively reject it, that's fine. But we have to go where the evidence takes us.

Now, according to Aaronson's math, which I have no reason or ability to doubt, he says that some simple systems will experience "more" consciousness than humans. What does more mean in this instance? Is it referring to quantity or quality (variety)? I'm not sure. I don't think we even have the concepts available to understand what it might mean for one system to have a higher quantity of consciousness than another. I think it's easy to see how one system--say a human--might have a richer quality/variety of consciousness than, say, a system such as a round worm.

But what might it mean if one system had a greater quantity? Let's say there are two systems that can only experience phenomenal green, but one system experiences phenomenal green in a greater quantity. What does this mean? What would that be like? Who knows.

Do you know, @smcder, which Aaronson means when he says he has mathematically shown that IIT predicts some intuitively non-conscious systems may be "more" conscious than humans?

@Soupie asks: "Are you suggesting that this is how IIT employs the concept of information? If you are, you are utterly wrong."
lol. No I didn't say that. So that makes me utterly not wrong I think.
Soupie, are you suggesting that pigs can fly? Well if you are, you are utterly wrong.
You sound like one of the referees from my last submission to JCS.

I have studied IIT. I consider myself to be very good at critical analysis. Can't speak for Aaronson, so I can't say why he has missed the glaringly obvious. I think it is just something to do with the way my mind works.
When it comes to HCT, no one has critiqued it and found flaws: all you demonstrate is a lack of understanding—which is fine.
Pursue IIT all you like: it's like quantum consciousness; It can't be disproved. But it will never provide the kinds of answers that we might want. Potato chips might have consciousness... it's just possible zzzzzzz.

I think you are right about something... about me not understanding IIT. For the life of me, I can't understand how the theory got published. I would quite like to know what merit it has, coz I just can't see it.

 

[Pharoah]

@Soupie
What does IIT say information is?

 

[Randall]

@Soupie
What does IIT say information is?

Just wondering while we wait for Soupie to reply, is that rhetorical or have you checked into it yourself and see where they're coming from with it?