[analog]

Hey Dave,

I’m glad to see my humorous side came through in my writing. There’s nothing like a good lighthearted ego boost to kick off, what I hope will be a productive friendship for us both, even though I know your ego was big enough already. LOL!!! Just kidding.

On a serious note, I’ve been thinking of what you said about life. It’s not my intentions to stray from the purpose of this thread, and get all into philosophy, but I would like to share some thoughts I recently had.

I, too, find life/consciousness to be the hardest concept to understand, or be explained by a physical framework, whereby a GUT would take its first steps to becoming a TOE, in my opinion. I feel this is the real hurdle most GUTs face, if they ever are intended to become the foundation of a TOE, but even though it would appear that a GUT has no need for life/consciousness to define the laws that govern motion, and that an entire universe can seemingly be built without any implication of life/consciousness, I’m not sure it can.

It would seem that our “free will” and the laws that govern the planets and stars are in no way related, but I can’t help but feel as though they are. Is not consciousness merely an entities awareness of what to do if? The fundamental particles within my world know how to react to each and every collision no matter where in space it takes place, as the same effect is produced each time, and there isn’t any definable volume of your fundamental substance that doesn’t know how it must interact and transmit the waves that build your universe. Are not even the most fundamental substances conscious of what they must do if acted upon? Is not life merely the same game of cause and effect, just a better hidden and more complex version?

Just as the density of your wave interactions and my particle collisions increases to form biological formations such as ourselves, so, too, wouldn’t the density of the consciousness held by the many fundamental units that make them up increase? I guess what I’m trying to say is, isn’t life/consciousness just a more complex version, due to increased density, of the same cause and effect that tells our material world how to act and react, whereby it’s greatest compliment is its ability to create the illusion of “free will”, even though life is essentially the same cosmic action and reaction?

Would this not give us a measurable definition of consciousness, as it would now be relative to the same particle/wave density that forms our world? Perhaps the total amount of consciousness within a closed universal system is also static, finite, and absolute, and can’t be created or destroyed. This would be the Law of Conservation of Consciousness. Perhaps, it can only be redistributed, and the measure of its density within a given volume of space could also be measured in units of complexity/intelligence, as the interactions that make it up become more frequent, thus complex. Complex consciousness is where complex motion interaction is, and where is there more complex motion interaction than biological life?

Perhaps the greatest life lesson of a true TOE will be, rather than viewing life as a mind dictating to a body where to go and what to do, the mind is merely acknowledging where the body went and what it just did, due to being governed by the same laws of action and reaction as the rest of our wonderful world. Perhaps, we misinterpret our ability to be aware as an ability to control, thus causing our complications in understanding the true essence of life.

Does this even make any sense? Probably not. Anyway, that’s enough abstract thought for a while. I’ll get back to the purpose of your thread. I should have some good ideas to exchange with you about your framework soon.