Where am I from?

What is the world?

• Everything in our universe is either matter or energy, following either deterministic (classical) or random (quantum) laws of physics in the flow of time.
• There are rules followed by matter and energy at the smallest scale. The rules are simple and universal.
• Large quantity of small elements following simple rules can build up hierarchies of complex systems with properties not observed in the subsystems or elements. This is called Emergence.
• The properties, patterns and behaviors of a complex system are just appearances, outcomes and results. They are highly simplified descriptions of the chaotic movements of the system’s elements in quantity. Fundamentally, a system cannot offer more than its components. Our universal is a swarm of elements moving deterministically and/or randomly when examined closely, with colorful patterns and beautiful structures when looked in a distance.
• The above argument applies to human consciousness. The matter in human brain constructs magnificent appearance of consciousness and free will by following the same deterministic and/or random processes like everything else.

What am I?

What is the human being?

• We are complex surviving machines and mind is part of the algorithm.
• There are 4 types of algorithms we developed throughout the evolution of life, listed below in sequence of appearance time in life. They are all consequences of evolution to make us better surviving machines.
  • Motivation – basic drive of life to survive and expand.
  • Emotion – internal algorithms to increase synchronization of all our internal component.
  • Relationship – internal algorithms to increase alignment and synergy with external entities for survival as a group.
  • Intelligence – simulation capabilities developed lately which took many steps to reach what we have today.
    • First as an advanced simulation mechanism to anticipate what could happen in the future or to reflect what could have happened in the past. It is a simulation of reality in our brain with fake sensory input.
    • Second as simulation tools to imaging scenarios and events not in reality (e.g. god, soul)
    • Third as analytical tool to create abstract concepts, generalizations, models, causal relationships and simplification of the world

Good and bad are fairy tales. We have evolved to attach an emotional significance to what is nothing more than the survival strategy of the pack animal. We are conditioned to invest divinity in utility. Good isn’t really good, evil isn’t really wrong, bottoms aren’t really pretty. You are a prisoner of your own meat.

Eurus from TV series “Sherlock”

What is consciousness?

• Self-consciousness appears when we developed the ability to simulate and analyze oneself from the perspective of another individual. It is creating a simulation object in one’s brain which is a simplified replica of himself. It is like running a simulation on a computer to simulate the operational condition of the same computer. “I am aware of myself” means “I can construct, observe and analyze a simulated self”.
• This simulated object is highly abstracted and simplified compared to the true self. No machine can fully describe the details of itself, which will result in some self-pointing dilemma. Our self-simulation is constrained to such a high level that any type of self-understanding or self-prediction is severely limited. On the other hand, this small degree of self simulation went a long way in our task of survival.
• Simulation within simulation is possible – I can think about what my simulated self is thinking about. The details of the simulation, however, quickly deteriorate to a highly abstracted level after a few layers of simulations.
• Like anything else, this simulated self is the appearance of patterns and structures above the simple physical process of the matters we are made of.

How to define “me”?

• In a wide and objective definition, I am consisting of everything I am able to control. I am a complex system with many levels of subsystems. I am appearance of structure out of chaotic movement of fundamental particles following deterministic and/or random laws. I am a surviving machine produced by evolution with simple and complex algorithms driving my behavior.
• In a narrow and subjective definition, I am my simulated self extending into past and future. I am a construct of ever-evolving concepts striving to put a fuzzy boundary between me and the rest of the world. I can never draw a clear line of this boundary, but I can always assign a clearly defined subject to one side, even though the assignment is also changing with time and context. I am what I think I am.

Do I have free will?

• “Free will” means we can choose our action between different options. In order for the “will” to be “free”, there has to be a soul, a spirit or some “core” of myself to make choices. Because there is no such thing inside myself and I am fundamentally just a complex machine following physical laws, “free will” does not exist.
• My self-consciousness and “will” are merely patterns born out of chaos. They are not fundamental or initial, but high-level description of a system (human)’s operational status. Self-consciousness is nothing about a simulation in our brain about ourselves. “Will” is merely a high-level description of the result from the chaotic physical processes.

Where do I go?

What is the meaning of life?

• “Meaning of life” refers to “purpose” of “me” defined by either myself or an external entity (e.g., god, fate, human society or universe). It is another abstract concept generated by our simulation machine.
• Purpose implies causality – Something will happen because of me or I am here because of something.
  • This something could be forward-looking (e.g., my purpose is to raise my child) or retrospective (e.g., my purpose was that I built a great company)
  • Human mind likes to simplify causality to a few linear relationships- everything has a single cause or a few causes. Thus my life should be both the consequence and reason for something else.
  • In reality, causality is not linear and easily mapped because a human being and the world around it are chaotic systems. Everything has influence on everything else and predictability is limited even at a small time scale
  • As a result, nothing has any purpose, at least not in a clearly defined way. Everything is just part of the universe’s process in the flow of time, being and changing, influencing everything else.
• So “meaning of life” is another question asked by our simulation machine which relentlessly pursues certainty and simplification of the world. The answer can only be obtained subjectively within our mind, based on our simulated simplified model of the world. Objectively, “meaning of life” is a bad question and there is no answer.

Why shall I live on in a meaningless world?

• Hope is hidden in the imperfection of our knowledge. No matter how desperate the idea is and how certain we are with the idea, there is always a glimmering hope that the idea might be wrong. What if I am just a simulation or brain in a vat? What if the universe is a simulation or an experiment in the lab? What if there is a way out of our current situation to explore a totally new world with rules and logic unknown to us today? It is a blessing that we can only prove things wrong, but can never prove things right. Because we cannot know everything, there will always be a light of hope in darkness of all our knowledge.
• The first thing we need to get salvation is time – if we live long enough, we might discover new knowledge that proves us wrong. We don’t even need to contribute individually, to benefit from the ever-growing knowledge of human race. Our time is the best of time in history because we are experiencing unprecedented speed of change in our world and our understanding of it. The explosion of technology might in our lifetime grant redemption to humans from the darkness of the  meaningless universe. When our current understanding of the world is a desperate one, rapid change is welcomed as hope lies within.
• The second thing we need is quality of life, more precisely, condition of mind. Our rational mind, which we rely on to absorb and create new knowledge, is an advanced cognitive algorithm emerged from the outdated mechanical machine called human body. As prisoners of our meat, we have to well maintain our mechanical container for both mental and physical health, so our rational cognitive mind have a good condition to operate. Deteriorating physical/mental conditions lead to more “reaction” than “thinking”, more animalistic response than intelligence. Well maintained physical/mental status gives us more “room” to think and more time to explore intellectually, which in return further strengthen our physical/mental condition because of better decisions.
• The third thing in line is the actual effort of expanding our knowledge. This is optional for the individual, but a necessity for the human being as a group. The work can include both expanding the fundamental science itself, or creating tools, social structures and civilizations that motivate and speed up the discovery of knowledge. If we accept that we are machines and algorithms, we should try to create better version of ourselves, artificial intelligence, to speed up the science and technology development.
• Suicide might sound an attractive gamble to rapidly change our desperate situation and explore another possibility. Maybe we would go into a total different afterlife world? Although death is the biggest change we can make, it might not be the best strategy after careful consideration. It is very likely to be the end of conscience permanently, and we lose all the opportunities to explore in our lifetime. Since we all die anyway in the end, it is probably worth it to explore, experience and discover while we still have the chance. It is possible that something will happen in our lifetime to completely change our view of the world. Hope should be cherished.

How shall I live?

• Target is to live as long as possible, with good condition of mind, to enjoy the new discoveries of human knowledge.
• The key is to keep a balanced level of desire and satisfaction to maximize the freedom of mind. Many things our human body needs to thrive can also be toxic when overdosed. The human body was built by evolution and is outdated in modern environment. The mind needs to accept, appreciate, train, adjust and improve the body to get into a better condition and more freedom for operation.
• Examples of good practices are below
  • To keep good physical condition, we shall stay safe, exercise, eat well, build habits for long-term health, reduce risk of permanent physical damage.
  • To keep good mental condition, we shall make friends, build a family, have desires, stay motivated, make achievement, find the “flow”.
  • Break free from our outdate survival machine built by evolution. Escape from the auto-responsive, dopamine driven and stimulation seeking behavior, such as eating high sugar food and “time-killing” entertainment.