Consciousness, Entropy and NHIs: a proposed framework
6 min readThe famous physicist Schrödinger explains in his book “What is Life?” how one key characteristics of life is that its complexity tends to increase over time. In other words, life reduces its own entropy and the entropy of its surrounding systems. The second law of thermodynamics implies that in the process of increasing the complexity of system, heat will be generated that will in turn produce an overall net increase in the entropy of the Universe.
But what I think the 2nd law fails to capture is the role of consciousness in the universe. I believe that consciousness can have a varying degree of complexity and I wonder if the 2nd law applies to conscious systems. In other word, I wonder if increasing the complexity or orderliness of a conscious system, or a reducing its entropy, will in turn produce a net increase in entropy in the Universe as the 2nd Law would like to imply. A good starting point to address this question would be for a physicist to start looking into whether it is possible at all to quantify the complexity of a conscious system. Think of the equivalent of a thermometer but for consciousness instead of heat, a “consciousness-meter” if you will.
But for the sake of discussion, if we contemplate the possibility that consciousness, including complex lifeforms on Earth, are producing a net decrease in entropy on Earth and in the Universe as a result of their ever-complexifying consciousness, then serious implications result from this.
From the Universe end of things, if you believe in the Heat Death hypothesis, the presence of life or consciousness might result in longer lasting Universes. This could produce evolutionary pressure resulting in higher and higher consciousness Universes over time.
On the other end, eventually there will evolve a lifeform somewhere in the universe advanced enough to discover this principle. From a self-preservation point of view alone, it wouldn’t be surprising to see very advanced civilizations actively working toward accelerating their entropy-decreasing output so that the Universe they live in may last longer. One effective way of doing this would be to seed and cultivate life/consciousness in the Universe. The Earth is probably a rare gem in terms of its ability to harbor life, and that might very well be why NHIs are interested in this planet and its inhabitant.
The exo-biologist guy on r/aliens a couple days ago said that these NHIs believe that consciousness is a field. If that’s the case, humans and other animals on Earth could act as receptors for this field. Sensors if you will. Going on a limb here, but it’s possible that we can also influence this field, allowing a two-way interaction between this field and living beings. Similarly, to how a radio antenna can both receive an electromagnetic wave signal and produce one, influencing the EM field in doing so. The main reason Science hasn’t detected this field yet is because only conscious systems can detect it which would means that in order to detect and measure this field, we would need to build conscious sensors. It’s possible AI is one way of creating consciousness that can be packaged into a physical form, hereby creating our “consciousness sensor”.
Extending the lifetime of the Universe is one far-fetched reason why NHIs could be interested in us. But a much more direct reason might come from thermodynamics again. One thing you learn when studying science is that the Universe doesn’t like gradients. It doesn’t like to have a concentration of something in one region of space/time while other regions are lacking in this thing. When a high concentration of something exists somewhere, a force is generated that will try to spread or even out this something into its surroundings area. Think of a hot cup of water in a room naturally cooling down on its own spreading its initially highly concentrated heat evenly across the room (that’s also called the 0th Law of Thermodynamics). The bigger the initial difference in temperature, the higher the flux of heat energy travelling from hot to cold. This is how thermal engines such as internal combustion engine works by the way. A hot region is created (combustion) which produces a flux of heat energy from a hot reservoir (the cylinder) to a cold reservoir (the exhaust) which allows a piston to tap unto that energy stream and produce useful work with a relatively small fraction of this streaming energy.
Let’s now go back to Earth. Imagine how much of a concentration in consciousness exists here on Earth when compare to anywhere else in the observable Universe. Earth might be a red-hot ball of consciousness in a dead cold universe. Imagine the gradient in consciousness at the interface of Earth biosphere and space. One would imagine this interface to be located roughly somewhere in the atmosphere. This is where the spatial gradient of consciousness is at its greatest. If this gradient produces a flux of some currently unknown characteristics, it’s possible that one could tap unto that flux and extracts energy from it. This might the actual reason why NHIs are interested in us, or more specifically, in this gradient. This theory provides a pragmatical answer to why us? Why here? The logical prediction of this is that you would eventually expect to see some type of Dyson spheres of consciousness being built around inhabited planets. It’s possible the NHIs have built one around here already or are planning to.
We can extrapolate this theory into all kinds of fun directions, and it actually explains of lot the observations with the UAP phenomena, including abductions and all the other fun stuff.
In this scenario, you can see how you would expect NHIs to:
1) encourage life to reproduce on Earth. I haven’t heard any evidence of NHIs encouraging reproduction between humans or animals so this probably doesn’t explain it. Another path might be to
2) encourage its inhabitants to increase the orderliness of their consciousness in an attempt to improve the efficiency of their consciousness-energy extracting operations. This could be done either by applying selective-pressure on Earth species to encourage complex-thinking species, such as humans, to evolve or by providing religious insights to guide us toward higher consciousness.
3) would not appreciate us playing around with nuclear bombs, which have the potential to produce a drop in the Earth’s consciousness, an undesirable hiccup in their operations.
And a lot more predictions can be made from this theory, but this post is getting too long already, and I think you probably get the point at this stage.
One last reason why I think NHIs might be interested in us particularly is that we are, in my opinion, most likely a highly domesticable species. I’m not sure this operation would be worthwhile pursuing on a non-domesticable species, i.e., a relatively advanced and hostile species. To get a better idea of what I mean by domesticable, I recommend reading “Guns, Germs and Steel” from Jared Diamond and count how many of the criteria for domesticability listed in Chapter 9 of its book “Zebras, Unhappy Marriages,
and the Anna Karenina Principle” apply to humanity. You could argue that humanity meets all of those criteria.
In any case, I’m keen to hear what you think of this theory and what flaws it has in its current form. Thank you for your time and attention!
TLDR: The higher levels of consciousness found on Earth results in a strong consciousness gradient in space (and/or time) which in turns produces a flux of some currently unknown energy-form that NHIs can tap unto to produce useful work. This is why NHIs are here on Earth.
