As a small comment, I believe discussions of consciousness and moral value tend to downplay the possibility that most consciousness may arise outside of what we consider the biological ecosystem.
It feels a bit silly to ask “what does it feel like to be a black hole, or a quasar, or the Big Bang,” but I believe a proper theory of consciousness should have answers to these questions.
We don’t have that proper theory. But I think we can all agree that these megaphenomena involve a great deal of matter/negentropy and plausibly some interesting self-organized microstructure- though that’s purely conjecture. If we’re charting out EV, let’s keep the truly big numbers in mind (even if we don’t know how to count them yet).
As a small comment, I believe discussions of consciousness and moral value tend to downplay the possibility that most consciousness may arise outside of what we consider the biological ecosystem.
It feels a bit silly to ask “what does it feel like to be a black hole, or a quasar, or the Big Bang,” but I believe a proper theory of consciousness should have answers to these questions.
We don’t have that proper theory. But I think we can all agree that these megaphenomena involve a great deal of matter/negentropy and plausibly some interesting self-organized microstructure- though that’s purely conjecture. If we’re charting out EV, let’s keep the truly big numbers in mind (even if we don’t know how to count them yet).
See also Brian Tomasik on fundamental physics.