A short excerpt of an interview (Vsauce: Consciousness | AI Podcast Clip with Michael Stevens) where the interviewer and Michael Stevens discuss speculative views on consciousness. Michael Stevens expresses skepticism toward panpsychism as necessary, argues consciousness will likely be explainable within known physics and complex configurations of the brain/universe, and references Julian Barbour’s "time capsule" idea (universe states that contain memories). The dialogue emphasizes speculation and uncertainty rather than settled conclusions.
There's ideas of panpsychism where people believe that whatever consciousness is, is a fundamental part of reality. It's almost like a physics law. Do you think, what's your views on consciousness? Do you think it has this. This deep part of reality, or is it something that's deeply human and constructed by us humans.
Starting nice and light and easy?
Nothing I ask you today has actually proven answer. So we just hypothesized.
So, yeah, I mean, I should clarify. This is all speculation and I'm not an expert in any of these topics, and I'm not God, but I think that consciousness is probably something that can be fully explained within the laws of physics. I think that our bodies and brains and the universe and at the quantum level is so rich and complex, I'd be surprised if we couldn't find a room for consciousness there. And why should we be conscious? Why are we aware of ourselves? That is a very strange and interesting and important question. And I think for the next few thousand years, we're going to have to believe in answers purely on faith. But my guess is that we will find that, you know, within the configuration space of possible arrangements of the universe, there are some that contain memories of others literally. Julian Barber calls them time capsule states. Where you're like, yeah, not only do I have a scratch on my arm, but also this state of the universe also contains a memory in my head of being scratched by my cat three days ago. And for some reason, those. Those kinds of states of the universe are more plentiful or more likely, when.
You say those states, the ones that contain memories of its past or ones that contain memories of its past and have degrees of consciousness.
Just the first part, because I think the consciousness then emerges from the fact that a state of the universe that contains fragments or memories of other states is one where you're going to feel like there's time. You're going to feel like, yeah, things happened in the past, and I don't know what will happen in the future, because these states don't contain information about the future for some reason. Those kind of states are either more common, more plentiful, or you could use the anthropic principle and just say, well, they're extremely rare. But. But until you are in one, or if you are in one, then you can ask questions like you, you're asking me on this podcast, why questions? Yeah, it's like, why are we conscious? Well, because if we weren't, we wouldn't be asking why we.
