Reality is a neglected field.
The mystery is stranger than anyone knows, and it will only get bigger.
This is the subject of the twenty-second century science of Anthropic Computing, though it probably won't be called that.
Using every interpretation of the Anthropic Principle, it will create a category shift as profound as death.
Currently such speculations are very disreputable, like religion in science or protomatter in Star Trek, but that will change sometime before the year 2050.
After all, reality is math. Existence is applied statistics.
Infinity is real, and humans happen to occupy the outer perimeter, not the best or worst place to be. The implications will eventually change humanity or destroy it.
At the moment, most people choose to believe their existence is basically a good thing, as do cattle in a feeding farm. How common is the experience of being a cow? There's a reason there are more cows than fast food customers.
Understanding that even awareness is not exempt from the iron laws of statistics is the first step.
Humans occupy the intersection of two opposing forces: extreme simplicity and extreme complexity.
The first clue is the phenomenon of induction: as far as we can tell our universe is perfectly consistent.
Incredibly complex and delicate devices work exactly the same way, every time, everywhere. And vastly more complicated systems are possible.
This raises three related questions.
Why are our perceptions consistent, when, mathematically speaking, there are infinitely more ways they could be completely random?
Why do we exist at this early point in the history of our universe, when there's nothing to prevent intelligent minds from existing forever? (Related to the Boltzman Brains problem.)
Why are our minds so simple, when they could theoretically be infinite?
These are the three paradoxes of consistent simplicity.
Many observers have subconsciously concluded that humans occupy a 'privileged' position in reality. They are right: human-level minds are almost as simple as possible, while still possessing general intelligence. This also means they're likely to exist as early as possible.
The mainstream bias has always been that reality itself is finite, meaning there is a highest number. We don't live in some infinite future multiverse because there never will be one.
If human-level mental states will become increasingly rare in the future, they are more likely to occur right now.
Alternatively, perhaps future observers can't be compared with present ones. Even if this article will be archived forever, you're more likely to be reading this shortly after it was written. Future readers, if any, would be so alien they wouldn't perceive it in any understandable way. They would experience something other than awareness.
Another explanation relies on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. This theory claims there are many more identical copies of each human-level mind than of each more complex mind inhabiting all realities. Nature finds it easier to copy small, simple minds like ours. And not just any small, simple minds, but consistent small, simple minds.
We're inevitable byproducts of relatively simple, easily generated, yet highly productive quantum universes.
These universes can also give rise to more universes, through methods that remain to be identified (perhaps quantum fluctuations, multiverse splitting, or even black holes).
This means young universes will always outnumber older ones by a wide margin.
According to this theory, we probably inhabit one of the youngest universes containing intelligent observers. All efforts to find the works of ancient alien super-civilizations will prove to be fruitless. The skies are still empty.
Human reality appears consistent because in a mathematical multiverse, some patterns are more common than others: specifically, the ones that are easier to generate and describe, using the fewest number of rules and information bits. We are among the most common and consistent mind patterns.
Then again, it could be a countability effect.
Infinity is infinitely strange. If the A's are easier to find, you're more likely to find an A, or even to be an A, even if there are really many more B's.
The fourth and final paradox involves complexity.
Physics as currently understood does not appear to be digital, but in many ways seems continuous.
All the laws of physics found so far are relatively simple procedures with an infinite number of solutions, like any self-respecting quadratic function. The solutions merge in complex groups that look simpler than they really are.
Infinities occur even inside atoms. Any atom can communicate with all others through virtual forces and fields such as quantum entanglement.
In physics, much of this complexity can be renormalized, all the extreme paths canceling out. That does not mean they never existed.
It may look smooth and simple from a distance, but seen as a whole, our universe is infinitely elaborate.
Perhaps thinking minds are also vastly more elaborate than anyone suspected, requiring bottomless metaphysical support structures, as suggested by Roger Penrose.
Our universe may be a second-order or derivative solution, combining the results of many simpler universe equations.
More likely, our universe's hidden complexity somehow amplifies the mind patterns it contains, which may be related to the fact that our universe remains in a state of low entropy at this early stage of its existence.
Human brain patterns are probably the most organized structures in this universe.
The most controversial notion of materialist science, evolved since the eighteenth century against fierce resistance, is that awareness is only a pattern, which could be defined as a list of ones and zeroes.
It doesn't matter what it's made of, but how it's arranged. To be aware, a pattern merely has to exist. That's all it takes.
A sufficiently large number written on a vast piece of paper would automatically be self-aware, if it had the right numerical pattern.
Then it gets strange.
That exact same number, but written in digits twice as big, using twice as much ink, would embody twice as much awareness. After all, twice as many atoms would participate in representing the pattern.
It appears that human brains are much bigger than they need to be - probably trillions of times bigger. At maximum atomic efficiency, it would be possible to build an intelligent bacterium.
Instead of individual atoms to store bits of data, brains use elaborate cellular synapses to accomplish the task.
A bigger brain is actually slower and less efficient, but it does generate more awareness, even if it isn't more advanced awareness.
The relatively simple human mind patterns are duplicated many times inside each brain.
Classical physics goes even further.
Brain patterns actually influence the area around them, like footsteps in the snow. Complex structures like thinking minds leave hidden but elaborate 'echoes' in their surroundings.
The atoms in the air around us no longer move quite as randomly as before, even though their temperature has increased only slightly.
In fact their motions and positions mirror our brain patterns (among many other things), the most defined structures in the known universe.
By perfectly analyzing every particle for billions of lightyears in all directions, it would be possible to reconstruct everything that has ever happened on Earth.
In practice this pattern could never be extracted or even detected, but for a pattern to be self-aware, it merely has to exist. It doesn't matter how well it is hidden from outside observers. In fact some believe that for anything to exist at all, it has to be aware.
Out of all the patterns that constitute reality, awareness will always find itself.
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