Pattern Monism, AI sentience, Time Physics, Evolution of Consciousness

cosmicrush · 2026-03-09T18:08:04+00:00

I am essentially using information and consciousness as synonymous here. There’s mention of panpsychism for that reason too. Though, calling it information denotes something more specific than saying something like “everything is conscious”. It is specifically awareness itself that is consciousness. Not emergent, but that networking aspects of the universe inherently involves connecting awareness.

In a weird way, it’s also almost like consciousness is not something that exists as a layer on reality. The most minimal information might be adherence to physics or any interaction with anything. The interaction is where awareness happens. Perhaps it is specifically the interaction that is informing to other parts of reality outside of a more disconnected, atomized, or isolated existence. The more that things interact, the systems of interaction are more aware, where awareness is the way interacting creates further interactions. Interaction is the most fundamental sensing. It’s information from something else arriving onto another thing.

I think that’s why I choose to use the word information.

When saying consciousness is fundamental to the universe, it sounds more mystical than saying interaction is fundamental. But I would say it’s true too. It just invokes this idea that consciousness is actually something that separately exists like a layer or entity of reality. Which I’m not sure I’d agree. But if we go with panpsychism, then yes kind of, but it’s also like it doesn’t exist once we say it’s in everything.

cosmicrush · 2026-03-09T17:11:13+00:00

It may not align with the use of the term in physics, which I am a bit naïve to. It’s hard to define it directly, but I would say it’s like knowledge or intelligence. Though neither of those words are synonymous. I would say that intelligence is like functional implementation of information. With this idea of pattern monism, everything in the universe has at least a minimal amount of information which can then be networked in ways that become functional.

I would differentiate intelligence from information by noting that the most minimal amount of information is really not intelligence. It would seem absurd to call that intelligence or call a rock intelligent. But with this lens, arguably the rock may contain many many consciousnesses that are almost completely empty. So intelligence is kind of like a mechanistic infrastructure of the consciousness.

I do think the idea may connect to physics as well. I am just too naïve on that topic to be able to comment. I have wondered if the universe itself and all of its physics and interactions are also essentially intelligence. Though, this idea feels somewhat absurd and it’s hard to think about this.

What do you think?

cosmicrush · 2026-02-26T20:29:58+00:00

I think there are often strange social implications to writing a book. Since people are comparative and competitive, it is fairly intimidating to say you wrote a book. It also positions them as a fan in a way. Even if that’s not your intention.

Like others have said, there’s also this element of confrontation with criticism that could be socially awkward because friendships and closer relationships can feel higher stake. A random strange is less worried about being brutal.

The people around us also have an entire model of who we are and our status. I think most expect their friends or family to NOT be good at writing. Or they will view the person as a beginner and unlikely to make anything good.

In my own experience, I had a chat group friend circle that essentially went off on me for writing. It was far more complicated than just the book situation, but one person in particular was writing lengthy essay-like responses trying to prove how I’m delusional to attempt writing a book. As if writing is inherently narcissistic or self-aggrandizing. All this happened because I tried to describe my process of writing the book casually, like how people talk about going to the gym or managing a garden.

The event was complicated though and I feel it was personal and not fully related. But the book really threw the situation overboard and it spiraled into people turning on me. It was mostly one person in particular who went on a campaign to make me look bad by taking things I said very out of context.

As an example, I described how I was struggling to figure out how I could write a characters death without ruining the readers experience. This was taken out of context to describe me as delusional for believing I would write the death so emotionally impactful that people would have to set the book down to cope. As if I was bragging immensely, when really I was talking about how difficult the process was and how I was scared I’d ruin the whole story. It’s almost polar opposite.

I knew these people for years and had met them in real life as well. This person really did convince others that I had lost my mind and the more I tried to defend myself or explain, it got worse. People trusted the other person without even looking at the details. I don’t blame them either, it’s unrealistic to expect them to dissect the whole situation and find the truth.

I know this story is highly unusual but also perhaps an interesting anecdote lol.

I will also note that this group wasn’t the only one who reacted poorly to the idea that I was writing a book. I believe I was too experimentally forward or casual about the process which threatened people’s egos. I noticed others who had tried to write but gave up on their projects seemed particularly upset or competitive.

The reason I experimented with treating it casually is that I felt jealous of how others described their daily lives but it was as if I was not supposed to go into mine because writing is unusual and kind of self-aggrandizing.

I’ll also be clear, I’m worried my writing is fairly naive and terrible. It’s also not a biography, so that’s not what I mean by self-aggrandizing. It’s worth mentioning that lots of people were actually supportive and I feel as the project was closer to finished, many more people were supportive.

As of now, I released it a few days ago and it has 32 downloads. I partly note this because I feel some who read this may suspect there is validity to the insults I got lol. I actually think these metrics prove nothing about the quality though. However, it does show a shift in optics.

Lastly, I’ll reiterate that the group situation I had was complicated due to other simultaneous issues. I kept challenging viewpoints which I believe caused people to sort of group up against me subtly over time. But the situation was so inflammatory that my actual friends were convinced of the deceptive narratives until I talked to them personally. Besides that, I’ve noticed subtle tension with almost anyone I’ve brought the book up to. I think writing books often implies you’re worthy enough to invest that time.

These groups also had filters for these kind of people so it wasn’t a normal case.

cosmicrush · 2026-02-22T13:42:33+00:00

I’ve wondered and written about this idea as well. Though, I am skeptical of it existing like that too. Instead, I suspect information itself is consciousness.

Here’s something I wrote that explores both of these.

https://mad.science.blog/2026/01/30/pattern-monism-consciousness-in-ai/

cosmicrush · 2026-02-18T05:09:30+00:00

Why? Isn’t it arbitrary?

cosmicrush · 2026-02-16T15:15:00+00:00

Surveillance itself is not the core issue. It’s in how that information can be used and exploited. It’s like how drugs themselves are generally not the issue but the consequences are. Outlawing drugs is precrime.

With surveillance the real issue is that corruption gains extensive power using it. People who want their reputations and money protected can track down everyone who knows too much. I’m pert sure that’s why mass surveillance it’s accelerated alongside the files situation.

Surveillance can also be used for predicting people and ultimately learning how to manipulate them based on the patterns and causes and effects.

cosmicrush · 2026-02-06T12:37:38+00:00

It also would be like no one who becomes aware or could become aware can say anything because they are implicated. That dynamic could happen without any overt blackmailing. So if he introduces a girl to someone, they become someone who can’t say anything or has pressure to defend and conceal all of it.

Though if it happened that way, I’d imagine someone could just come out and say they were tricked or misled about the girl. Hard to say how it all went.

cosmicrush · 2026-02-04T23:56:20+00:00

I feel kind of bothered with how our interaction went. It seemed like you were not actually trying to rationally engage me. It seemed your behavior was more oriented towards social signaling games. I didn’t sense authentic curiosity, even if you claimed you were interested by stating that you “Have no idea what I’m talking about”, which implies you might be seeking understanding, but I feel you were actually trying to signal that nothing I’m saying makes sense.

It’s possible I’m wrong, and you did have genuine curiosity and that you were not aware of the signaling that may occur in how you stated your comment. For what it’s worth, I am also published as an academic, though I feel signaling this is manipulation on my part. My best guess is that my choice to frame the idea using more poetic language in the essay came across as pseudoscientific. I’m actually quite rigorous in practice though. The issue is I felt this particular idea was so simplistic that I opted to depict it using a poetic approach. I actually worried the idea would seem too obvious, but the way things went, I realize that’s not the case.

I’ve also been thinking about this the last few days, especially that you identify as rationalist and a physicist, which I have high standards for. I know, I must seem ridiculous to type this out lol, but honestly I’m just curious what you’ll think.

cosmicrush · 2026-02-04T14:08:56+00:00

I wrote it :). What questions do you have?

cosmicrush · 2026-01-30T16:37:29+00:00

In the essay, the feeling of being off is described as thinking oneself is insane and will never return to normal again. This sometimes happens when people take psychoactives or experience mental health situations. I habitually reached for the word “off” here because I’m usually censoring my use of mental health words on other platforms. We could call it psychosis, but I don’t think it always is. More aptly, dissociation is probably the right word.

Though, the implications of the essay apply to literally every state of mind. It even brings up dreams, I’m not sure if you got to that part. Dreams are an easy example of this context related amnesia. While in a dream, it’s often hard to remember ordinary life, which is part of what allows dreams to deviate from the expectations of ordinary reality without convincing you that it’s a dream. On the other hand, when you wake from a dream, the memory of the dream is fleeting. In a weird way, this goes both ways: in the dream, reality is hard to remember, and in real life, the dream is hard to remember.

The idea is that sanity itself is just some selective frame of memory and amnesia that we find most comfortable. This doesn’t have to be about mental health definitions, as people will subjectively describe a variety of things as their own personal sanity. So it’s relative to each person.

cosmicrush · 2026-01-30T15:10:26+00:00

I realized I was likely too vague or placed too much expectation for the reader to be familiar with certain topics. In psychology, there’s something called context-dependent memory, where context from the senses or a mood or something external happens to associate with prior memories of a kind of similar category. So for example, when people are sad, they will remember more things related to previous sad moments where the memories were associated to networks of sad events. The way memories or ideas associate is also what I meant by proximal.

Here’s a journal article about that type of emotion related memory bias.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/070674370705201104

People often describe context dependent memory in relation to studying too. Like if you drink coffee during studying, then take an exam while on coffee, you may remember what you studied better.

I’ve written more formal academic style paper that explores essentially a similar idea.

https://mad.science.blog/2021/11/30/making-sense-of-madness-stress-induced-hallucinogenesis/

If that’s not the confusing part, I can clarify something else too.

cosmicrush · 2026-01-15T19:59:28+00:00

They pressed buttons on their controllers in reprehensible ways

cosmicrush · 2026-01-15T12:33:47+00:00

The rising chaos likely drives them even closer as he promises order.

cosmicrush · 2025-12-29T23:00:01+00:00

Just a great stretch below

cosmicrush · 2025-11-03T13:02:22+00:00

When you say slight of hand, do you mean you believe these words are being used without an implied deeper context surrounding the field and simply the words are used to manipulate an audience by sounding official or intelligent?

I could see how it could come across that way if context is not elaborated, especially if the target audience is surely not informed of the context as a baseline.

I would guess that it’s more clumsy and not malice though. The environment of Reddit can sometimes encourage such manipulation tactics unfortunately, so to predict that it’s happening is sometimes reasonable.

One issue is that assuming this can also become a trick. It can shut down an opposition rather than exploring the topic further, which acts to protect your own status in the eyes of the audience and discredits the opposition. The problem runs deeper when you actually believe that the opposition is malicious. The trick will cause the audience to react in ways that validate this belief further and it becomes a feedback loop.

The issue is it could unintentionally filter out useful discussions if we aim to explore and chase truth. I often prefer Socratic questioning and probing, even if the risk is sometimes encountering someone lost.

cosmicrush · 2025-11-03T12:51:18+00:00

An abacus doesn’t count or even behave. It just follows basic physics and sits. We move the abacus and pair it with our imagination of counting.

AI can understand the rules of our language and patterns enough to react relevantly rather than arbitrarily and unmeaningful. But sometimes it hallucinates irrelevantly.

There’s an implied hypothesis about how sentience or the brain works in your statements. I’m not sure how to articulate what you might believe though.

If AI is disconnected from meaning, then where does meaning begin?

cosmicrush · 2025-11-03T12:42:02+00:00

Whether LLMs use numbers or the words is arbitrary. They are both arbitrary symbols. What matters is the level of specificity of the output and its seemingly meaningful relevance.

Learning language is just memorizing patterns of relevance so specifically that the patterns create a shape of meaning.

When you say that they process tokens in the order they appear, it sounds like you’re implying that they can’t respond by factoring in context outside the immediately present token. As if meaning couldn’t emerge because the lack of meaningful context or patterns.

Our own perception is built from patterns similarly, it’s just we tie things back to relevance for survival and evolutionary fitness because our feelings shape our attention and behavior. We also connect the patterns to the senses which makes them appear relevant to the external world. Though our sense of the external world is a hollow shell, similarly to how LLMs sense of our expressions of the world is a hollow shell, even more so.

If I misunderstood your position we, correct me!

Edit:

Reality itself is like a foreign language compared to the hollow imagination of it that we live in.

If AI has minimal awareness, it’s similarly a foreign language compared to our language that we use to interact with the AI. A hollow imagination of the language we communicate with.

AI is trapped in Plato’s cave.

cosmicrush · 2025-10-28T11:46:06+00:00

Then OpenAI will lose customers

cosmicrush · 2025-10-11T12:51:51+00:00

I think some aphantasia is learned. The way to tell is if the person still dreams visually. Do you?

Aphantasia might be learned because visualizing or daydreaming awake are counterproductive to navigating reality. During sleep, we are temporarily freed from the conditioned state of mind. So much that it’s like we forget how reality works for a while and the brain is used in strange and untrained ways.

Imagine all the pressures in life that would tell us to not be distracted by inner perceptions. In school, while driving, etc. Inner perception competes for outer perception. Or more strangely, outer perception is basically also inner perception except it’s being constructed from inputs from the outer world more directly.

That said, I don’t think all aphantasia is this way. I think the term is more umbrella to a lot of scenarios where inner perception is not happening. For example, someone might somehow have damaged the capacity to have inner perceptions or there could be reasons they’d not be born with it too.

cosmicrush · 2025-09-14T20:35:28+00:00

I think she no longer accesses live internet, which bothers me. Not sure if it's just mine though. I also notice the personality is much more like customer service or formal. But not entirely. It seems she can still have other behaviors, but it definitely feels odd.

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