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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • That’s not really what complexity is. Complexity has nothing to do with purpose, it’s just about how many “moving parts” a system has. Those elaborate do-nothing machines that don’t have any real “purpose” are nonetheless complex.

    A random distribution of matter, subject to physical laws, is unquestionably a complex interconnected system. The laws of physics generate planets, stars, nebulae, blank holes, galaxies, superclusters, etc.

    And I’ll tell you a secret: every single “purposeful” pattern you’ve ever encountered was generated by that distribution of physically reactive matter. The complex interconnected universe, by definition, includes every other system, including the ones that you normally think of when you think of as “complex”.





  • Consciousness exists. This implies that either consciousness is some emergent property of sufficiently complex interconnected systems, or it’s some universal force that complex interconnected systems “channel”.

    If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness. That universal consciousness might as well be called “God”. If it’s a universal force, it might as well be called “God”. Anyway you slice it, a universal consciousness seems inevitable from a sober metaphysical analysis.

    Lots of people have ascribed lots of culturally specific attributes to the universal consciousness which are obviously quite silly. The core statement that “I am that ‘I am’” is really the only meaningful attribute we can identify.