Notes from Izi: Questioning our reality and our purpose

2020 has given us a lot to think about - not only how to handle a crisis in the present moment, but how to live with existential crisis.

This year, a lot more people than usual experienced their lives turning upside-down. In times like these, we really begin to think about what we are and why we are here. In retrospect, my own life falling apart several years ago provided me with the opportunity to dig deeply into these questions. And even though it was difficult to get through that period of my life, I am so grateful that I engaged with it rather than turning away.

It is simply not helpful to ignore the hard questions – they will only continue to itch at the mind until they are addressed. Considering these ideas – and being open to new answers – is hard work, but it is also incredibly rewarding.

An intense conversation

A friend of mine recently confessed that she had been questioning reality lately. She is a poised, intelligent, professional woman – normally impervious to existential doubt of any kind. But 2020 has gotten to a lot of people. And even before this crazy year began, there has been a serious movement in philosophical circles to question whether reality is an illusion. So those experiencing doubts can take comfort that it is certainly a legitimate question, albeit one that has taken on more urgency with 2020.

“Do you think maybe this world is a computer simulation?” my friend asked me one day, as we drank wine and pondered modern life over Zoom.

“Yeah, probably,” I replied. “But even if we are living in some kind of computer program, that doesn’t mean it’s not still reality for us.”

“Seems like a weird reality, though,” she said, referencing the monolith that had just appeared in the Utah desert. “Lots of strange stuff happening. And what’s the point of it all anyway?”

I enjoyed this line of questioning. “Maybe it’s our job to figure it out,” I suggested.

“Maybe. I guess that gives us something to do with our lives,” she replied, smiling.

Another intense discussion

Another friend of mine has been struggling with the same set of questions. He is a neurologist, treating patients with dementia and other disorders.

“It just seems that nothing is real,” he complained the last time we spoke. “I mean, atoms are mostly empty space.”

“But that doesn’t mean that physical reality doesn’t exist,” I countered. “It’s just sparse.”

“Sure,” he reasoned. “But then most of our reality is non-physical.”

“No,” I argued. “Most of our reality is empty. It’s still a physical emptiness.”

My friend sighed. He is a deeply religious person, and he wanted to find our world absolutely bursting with life and meaning. To find it mostly empty was disheartening.

I wanted to cheer him up. “Is it enough though? Does our physical world give us enough to be grateful for?”

He brightened. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I think it does. And it certainly gives us a lot to think about.”

I liked that attitude, and I found it constructive myself. In deriving the principles of Conifold Theory, I found that we are essentially truth engines – we take in data and we convert it into meaning, through thermodynamic cycles of information generation and compression. By engaging in this computational work, we continuously strive to understand our environment and navigate more effectively within it. While I am mostly concerned with the mechanisms by which we do this computational work, I cannot help but notice that the philosophical implications are quite interesting too.

Digging deeper

My friend emailed me a few hours after we spoke over Zoom. He had clearly continued thinking about our conversation.

“Do you think the physical universe can just be resolved into a mixture of order and chaos?” he wrote.

“The way I understand it,” I wrote back, “The universe holds a balance between order and chaos. Consciousness, then, is the constant effort to weave order from chaos. We pick up threads of reality and manufacture a tapestry - an understanding or model of the world. That tapestry is itself part of reality.”

I continued on. “Our words and actions, which result from our mental models of the world, have consequences. In speaking and acting, we convert probable states in the present to actual states which immediately become the past, thereby defining the most probable trajectories into the future.

“And so, in each moment, we cause others to have more or fewer opportunities to survive and thrive. And in every moment we interact with each other, we weave a much bigger and more complex tapestry. As every sentient being is woven together, our first-person perspectives are combined into a larger truth – one that must accommodate each individually-derived truth.

“Most importantly, we cannot understand our world fully unless we take into account every perspective and the path by which it was derived. So seeking truth is not at odds with relieving suffering in our world – our efforts to seek truth are best served by taking into account all perspectives, and taking into account all perspectives means valuing all conscious life.

Finding a path forward

“This is good,” he wrote back. “But then how do we seek truth?”

“Well, we just have to put the work in,” I replied. “And when I say work, I mean thermodynamic work. Energy expenditure is required to generate an information set. So building an information set that comprises data from the world means expending energy and paying attention. It means doing work.

“According to Conifold Theory, information is a physical quantity, existing in physical space. And parsing information to glean meaning is a physical process, which necessitates doing physical work. If we engage with this effort, we grow closer to the truth. If instead we constantly set aside inconvenient information, we grow further from the truth. And if we refuse to put any work into considering what it all means, then we may start to accumulate a bunch of unresolved, conflicting information.”

The very nature of consciousness and reality

He wrote back, “Then do you think consciousness is just this mathematical space in which all that information is held?”

“I think so,” I replied. “That's why I have trouble engaging with the philosophical position that consciousness is equivalent to God, like some people say. In my understanding, God is the creator of the universe and is therefore necessarily outside the physical universe. We cannot possibly know what this entity is like, what is its structure, what are its rules of operation, what is its purpose.

“As far as I can tell, all we can do to serve this creation is to follow the rules of operation as best we can. These rules seem to be: 1) Explore the world to gain knowledge about it, and use this knowledge to effectively navigate within the world; 2) Ensure that others may do the same, so there are many computations running in parallel.

"In other words, the rules are: 1) Always seek the truth. That way, we can understand ourselves, our world, and our purpose; 2) Always take good care of the world and each other. This way, every individual can survive, flourish, and contribute to creation.”

My friend wrote back again. “I like your rules for life, Izi – seeking truth is also in line with love, because it’s a yearning to unify one’s mind with creation."

I liked that concept a lot. My own search for truth, as a scientist, certainly fuels my love for creation and everything in it - along with a deep gratitude for life and a curiosity for further discovery.

My friend agreed. "It’s all a wonderful mystery, and I’m just grateful to be able to contemplate it.” Amen to that.