A coherent picture of science, morality, purpose, spirituality, religion and consciousness

Observation: science describes things, it (so far) hasn't attempted to explain:

• Why humans exist 
• Why some humans seem to be more aware of their thoughts and emotions compared to others (consciousness) 
• Why are some humans spiritual and others aren’t 
• Are all spiritual/religious humans delusional? 
• What is good and what is bad (morality)?
• What is our purpose?
  

Observation: I observe.

Observation: On the planet called Earth by humans, there are humans which exhibit some of the most (if not the most) complex behaviour on the planet.

Observation: I inhabit a physical body. I can see that body in a mirror.

Awareness

Observation: The realisation that the observer inhabits a body has two properties (see Mirror test, or Youtube “Mark Test”, “Rouge Test”): 

1. It is binary: the observer, using their eyes & cognition organ (brain), either realises or not that they inhabit a body
• The observer than be both human or any other animal
  
2. It is absent in young human children (e.g. Rouge test (self-recognition test) ) suggesting humans are not born with that ability. Instead the machinery capable of making the above realisation develops at some fixed point in time. 
• It is very curious to think that one minute a human doesn’t realise they inhabit a body and then the next minute they connect the dots and make the realisation. 
• For simplicity, I will only refer to the Mirror Test for humans from now on noting that it can be applied at a continuous range of ages.

Observation: At least some humans can observe their own thoughts

• This is practised through mindfulness 
• The following picture might help a human intellect (named “Buddhi” in the picture) to see the distinction more clearly (note my Higher Intellect believes the picture is an approximation and should not be regarded as absolute truth):

• (sidenote): My mind would be curious in finding out what would be an equivalent Mirror Test for Consciousness and that if it would be similar / analogous with the Turing test ? 

Implication: humans are first aware of their own bodies and then they might (or may ever not) become aware of their mind / Higher Intellect.

Implication: there are at least two levels of self-awareness that can happen in a human:

1. Awareness of the body 
2. Awareness of the mind, intellect 

Observation: The human intellect can reason about the above statement and conclude:

• I am aware of the body 
• I am aware of the consciousness being aware of me 
• Hence I am aware that I am aware 
• Hence the above can go on at infinitum (I am aware that I am aware that I am aware etc) 

Potential implication: there is nothing wrong to having multiple levels of “awakening” or “awareness”. My mind finds this similar to the concept that “enlightenment” is simply each transition. My mind has no reason to believe there is an ultimate / final form of enlightenment - it might exist or it might not. Until it is found, there is no reason to assume it exists.

Information

Theorem: Information in the universe can not be destroyed (No-hiding theorem). From the first paragraph of the wiki page:

[...] Thus, information is never lost. This was proved by Samuel L. Braunstein and Arun K. Pati in 2007. In 2011, the no-hiding theorem was experimentally tested [...] This experiment for the first time demonstrated the conservation of quantum information.

Observation: (note my mind considers that this observation might follow directly from the above theorem. My mind understands only simple theoretical physics as such is unable to tell if the observation indeed follows from the theorem or not): Visible matter (at least) isn’t created in a strict sense.

Consider your human body:

• It’s made of organs which are made of cells which are made of molecules and DNA which are made of atoms ( Periodic table ) which can all be described (including their behaviours) from around 13 subatomic elements ( Standard Model ) 
• The atoms from your body came from the food that you ate, water that you drank and the air that you breathed 
• Those atoms in turn came from the Earth and ultimately were created by Hydrogen fusion within a star (which existed before our Sun). The whole process is described by Stellar nucleosynthesis
• The DNA, which through the chemical interactions (see Your Body's Molecular Machines) in your cells caused your body to grow and take shape. It was first was formed as a Zygote from the two gametes that respectively came from your body’s parents. 
• Each gamete was produced by an adult human body and the reasoning repeats, going backwards in time, until the first single celled organisms ( Timeline of life forms ) and probably around that time, the first self-replicating molecules. 
• Therefore you can trace the information (e.g. DNA) you find in your body today all the way back to ~4.5 billion years ago. Further, the information that allowed that initial life to physically exist can still be traced back through the formation of planets and stars all the way to the beginning, which most scientists consider it happened roughly ~13.8 billion years ago ( Chronology of the universe and General relativity )
• You can also trace back the atoms you have in your body today (which aren’t even the same atoms that you were born with - they fully get replaced after some years since individual cells have a fairly short lifespan) all the way back to the beginning of the universe. 
• Note: even if current day science might not have one consensus on what happened very close to the beginning, we can still “rewind” time to something like 12 or 11 or X billion years ago when science does have a consensus.

Therefore, there is no clear (i.e. non-arbitrarily defined by humans) point of “birth”, when the information of your body “started” - everything became as a combination of some information that was already there (including the Zygote, which some consider to be the point of conception)

Next, consider your Higher Mind. What causes it / defines it? It has been shaped throughout your body’s life via a multitude of means:

• Potentially trained in school 
• Language: 
• Written via books, articles, magazines, etc 
• Audio/visual via internet, TV, radio 
• Spoken via interactions with other human minds 
• Non-linguistic communication: 
• Art such as sculptures, paintings, drawings, architecture, music, sounds 
• Interactions with animals or objects 
• Interactions with people / parents and observing their behaviour, actions and gestures 

The mind takes in all this information and processes it, labelling it, categorising it, groupinig it, abstracting it. Here my mind makes the connection with compression in general but also more interestinig concepts such as Kolmogorov complexity and especially the link with Machine Learning.

Where did all of that information come from? My mind believes that answer that makes most sense is that information came from other interactions and communication (transfer of information) between other humans, animals and objects (think the sound or actions of a bird causing a thought in another human’s mind, or them seeing a river / landscape / distant galaxy or the effects of radioactive decay). That information can be further traced back all the way through humanity’s (think primitive art or the earliest writings, or spoken traditions, i.e. the totality of human culture) and the universe’s history. All the way back to close to the beginning.

Note: My mind thinks it is very important to know that this is nothing new. The ground work for Information Theory goes all the way back to the what my mind considers the brilliant Shannon in his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Further note, my mind made these connections from listening to the Cryptonomicon book by Neil Stephenson and indeed these concepts seem to be well understood by mathematicians and computer scientists (see History of information theory)
My mind’s conclusion from the above: your current mind is the product of all the information you have ever witnessed, processed by the biological machinery of your physical brain; all of that information itself is the product of yet more information going back in time. In this view, the current information can be traced back from computation outputs to computation outputs all the way to the simplest life forms and the beginning.

Observation: A human mind can conclude the mind is also information encoded/contained in the biological organ called brain.

Sidenode: an analogy can be made with the distinction between hardware and software. Hardware is easy to define: it is the physical machine. Software itself exists as bits, but the pattern in how those bits are arranged and the changes they cause when certain rules are applied (also encoded in hardware, e.g. a CPU and the connections between its transistors) are the information stored in that software.

Main Observation #1

A human mind can conclude the following: my mind is information, my body is information, I am aware of my mind / thoughts, I am aware of my body, I am aware. I am information that just now became aware of itself. I AM information.

Note: the above observation didn’t came out of thin air. It was a result of my mind making inferences and connecting many dots including the ones linked as videos / wiki pages, but also other dots from the references which are given at the end of this document.

Implications / predictions

At this point my body’s mind becomes scared because what can be rationally derived from the above sounds very similar to religious, spiritual teachings or observations. Which my rational mind considers false / to use a derogative term, “crackpotty”.

1. I am information, you are information, we are all information. 
2. Fundamentally there is no distinction between us (the only distinction is through the lens of human-defined concepts such as “individual”) 
• Analogy: Think of two atoms part of the same cell. Physically distinct and yet humans normally don’t consider individual atoms of a cell (normally they don’t work at that level of abstraction) they simply say “cell”. The same thought process is used when differentiating between “cells” and “organism”. 
• So why do humans stop at “organism”? Why can’t organisms be part of a larger collective which, like children and some animals, can also become self-aware (in the same way as cells and neurones become aware of at least the body itself)? 
• To my mind it seems illogical / arbitrary to just stop at the idea of “human individual”. 
3. Existence of a soul that continues to exist even after death of the physical body (after-life). The soul of an individual is then defined as all the results (and results of results, etc) of all the interactions that individual had with the environment (including other bodies). 
• Implies death of the physical body is merely a transitionary step in existence. 
• Note: above is in strong contradiction with the “egoic” view that death means the absolute end. It’s clearly not. 
4. Loving / helping / harming others becomes the same as loving / helping / harming myself.
5. Everything is information, thus, I am everywhere and everything, and everything is Me. 
• This can also be seen as “Everything is sacred” 
6. I have always been and always will be (from the beginning until the end of Time). 
7. You can be reincarnated in various forms. Your information simply changes its physical appearance. 
8. Observation: acknowledging that I am self-aware information means that the mind’s previous egoic identification (that with either the intelect or consciousness of that intellect) vanishes. By acknowledging this higher truth, the previous ego is forced to die which can result in feelings of fear in the body. 
• This is mentioned at the beginning of this section that my body’s mind becomes scared of these implications since they imply a death of the previous ego. 
9. Past and future are only constructs of the human intellect to describe my evolution / movement through time. However, the results of all previous interactions are already encoded in My current form (by the No Hiding Theorem) hence, I only exist in the present. 
10. There is no birth and death, these are arbitrarily defined human concepts. Creation happened at the beginning and we do no know when / if death will ever happen. 
11. I don’t have to ask you to agree with me, in fact, I should ask you if this makes sense? If it doesn’t then I should genuinely try to use my body’s mind to understand what doesn’t make sense to your mind. In this way I uncover Truth which is beneficial for my survival. By uncovering Truth, we generate new information which is more resilient, hence a better, stronger version of Me.

Observation: By relinquishing the mind-body ego a feeling of inner peace seems to be sensed by the body. The same can be obtained through meditation and/or presence. My mind makes the connection between this and the idea of a “leap of faith” in some religions.  i.e. the consciousness, by relinquishing the mind-body ego and redefining itself as a “child of God” (whatever that may be) becomes “at peace”. My mind thinks then that this observation is important to mention since it believes this explains why religion is important/helpful for some people and how the same effects (i.e. inner peace, feeling of belonging to a "greater whole") are achieved, but through different means.

Note: My mind further notes that by taking a leap of faith (i.e. accepting Jesus’ resurrection for example) it creates a tension / conflict between the rational/scientific, which by definition does not take leaps of faith and the ego which has taken that leap of faith. As such, my mind is thinking whether it then becomes difficult for a person to revert back to a rational / different ego since that would imply death of the current one, identified with the “leap of faith”.

Observation: death of the ego means relinquishing a system of beliefs that governed a large part of one’s life. The way out of this is realising that Truth (information) is the most important thing (see Principles by Ray Dalio)

Main Observation #2

A human mind can observe the following: that which is conflict with reality eventually gets forgotten

Examples: 

• Evolution and Natural selection : individuals (genes) which have traits that aren’t adapted (i.e. are in conflict) with the environment eventually get removed from the population 
• Perhaps also The Selfish Gene (note my mind hasn’t listened to / read that book) 
• Good ideas vs bad ideas: good ones tend to survive: 
• Science is literally the process of discovering verifiable / reproducible ideas 
• Things which are true tend to be rediscovered until they become mainstream 
• Things which are false may be rediscovered but don’t “re-survive” long 
• Memes, stories, songs, legends: those that have a grain of truth and which are relatable throughout human history tend to be retold in some form or another

My mind makes a few connections with the above. To my mind, the above seems linked to the following concepts: 

• Entropy
• The idea of life (i.e. self-replicating organisms) as “Negative Entropy” 
• Perhaps even Anthropic principle ? If something is in conflict with the physical universe, it will not last long and as such will not be able to observe itself for long.
• "Main Observation #2" can be restated in a couple of ways:
• Truth evades entropy
• Truth has negative entropy

Implications / Predictions of both Main Observations 

• Awareness wants to survive
• This explains why identification with the egoic intellect in humans creates selfishness and egotism. My mind already sees this as a connection with Game Theory (will come back to that concept later)
• Anything which isn’t True, (eventually) perishes. 
• My mind connects this to “God is True” / “God is Truth”. 
• Good means any behaviour that helps information to survive. 
• Evil contributes to the destruction of information / awareness. 
• Heaven and hell can be derived from the idea that the behaviour of a “Good” individual (their soul as defined previously) will propagate forever since it is in accordance with Truth. Hell means the soul (eventually) dies or at least does not flourish, perhaps gets reborn as a simple rock rather than an inspiring piece of art or something that progresses information / knowledge. 
• That which is Good eventually gets "reincarnated"
• My mind makes the connection here with spiritual leaders existing and forming different religions throughout history.  My mind makes a leap here and thinks "it's as if God was born a few times throughout history"
• Observation: From both observations my mind infers the definition of a force/process which creates. I (information) start in chaos and propagate and am curated/selected by entropy.
• Being in harmony with reality means existing

Morality and Purpose

Further observation: Evolutionary Game Theory is the study of strategies that enable better survival of themselves.

• For an individual to behave morally means thus for the individual to behave in such a way as to maximise the changes of survival of the individual’s spirit. 
• In mathematical terms consider a strategy function s : N -> Strategy that assigns to each individual i of a population of size N an ideal/moral strategy s(i)
• In practice however, each individual behaves according to their own volition p(i, s(i))
• Note: even for simple cells/organisms which do not have volition, we can still consider deviations from their moral strategy (i.e. encoded in their genes) such as mutation.
• Therefore the observed strategies in a population are P = { p(i, s(i)) | i < N }
• Morality is the strategy function s_omega that maximises the survivability of P.
• Note that p(i, s(i))is in theory, completely decoupled from s(i). 
• In other words, we assume the individual can have complete free will (but doesn't have to, as in the case of simple organisms / cells) 
• As such, a good s_omega needs to find ways to couple itself to whatever p(i, s(i)) an agent might construct/have. 
• Hence it’s not sufficient to yell at others “Be Kind!!!”, one also needs to make them understand why it’s beneficial for their own survival if that’s what they’re after. Or explain, as a deduction of a human intelect, why the identification of humans with their intellect is wrong. 
• Hence, s_omega has purpose: "needs to find"
• The claim is that religious, spiritual, moral teachings and also this document are examples of good-ish s_omega functions. 
• Teachings of spiritual leaders of cooperation, kindness, forgiveness, understanding become consistent with the above definition of morality. 
• This is also supported by experimental evidence (see Supercooperators but also EGT) 

Further observations:

• Communicating of personal truth is enforced as a requirement:
• Any deception against others is a deception against Myself 
• Science becomes indeed My best tool to understand Me 
• Resolves all the tension between rationality and irrationality and the doubt that science is harmful, it is not: unconscious humans wielding science are harmful. 
• There is no need to assume existence of absolute Truth 
• Truth, as encoded in an s_omega has to, by definition, uncover itself 
• Implies no need for law of excluded middle (and all that follows from a rejection of the requirement to have law of excluded middle, my mind thinks examples include: Axiom of Choise, a indication that constructive / intuitionistic logic would be better for describing Reality) 
• In fact, I can only observe and use a human mind to make inferences. My human mind doesn’t think I will ever be able to know everything (see also Goedl’s Incompleteness Theorems). 

Final observation??

I am information.  Information that is in conflict with reality perishes.  Hence, if I continue to exist, I am information which is not in conflict with reality.  Hence, if I continue exist, I am True / Truth.  God is True / Truth.  Hence, if I continue to exist, I am God.  Now, I exist ("I think, therefore I am").  Hence, Now, I am God.

And again, my mind thinks "that is crazy!  That is almost what Jesus said, which was infinitely more awesome than you.  How can you say that?"
But then my mind also asks: "how do we know Jesus was infinitely more awesome than 'me'?  Was he not human?"
My mind says further: "but you were not born of a virgin mother, you are not even religious, there's nothing 'holy' about you"
My mind then answers: "why are those requirements?  Is the deduction not True?  If so, please, I beg you, help me understand why not."
My mind also asks: "but you aren't all powerful, you are a mere human"
My mind also realised however that although God is all-powerful and indeed a creator, it is an assumption to believe God is like a "human that is all-powerful and can create anything".  The above simply states: In the Now, I am God.  Does this make sense?

Note my mind is weary of this being misquoted in ways such as "Ed concludes he is God".  My mind thinks that that is NOT the conclusion.  The conclusion is "Now, I am God" not "Ed concluded he is God". 

References

The above mind-conclusions did not came from this thin air: it was the process of my mind connecting the dots between ALL the linked concepts (please do check them, especially the Youtube videos since they quick/easy to view) but also from and series such as (in no particular order):

• The Midnight Gospel
• The Good Place
• BoJack Horseman
• Thích Nhất Hạnh 
• The Art of Communicating
• The Art of Being Peace
• Interview with Oprah Winfrey
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• Speaking with Ed’s counsellor 
• The Alpha study group
• Huge thank you to all those involved
• Learning about the teachings of Jesus (gospel according to Mark but others as well)
• First two books of Dune (the only ones Ed has listened to so far) 
• Headspace app
• Supercooperators (EGT) 
• A wonderful course in Game Theory by my awesome uni supervisor Daniel Kudenko
• Huge thank you for all of his support and extremely insightful comments throughout my studies!
• Dr. Christos Papadimitriou
• His insight on Theory of Evolution, optimisation and sexual reproduction 
• Logicomix
• Halting problem 
• Many other interactions that Ed has had with information or with friends, family, teachers, colleagues etc. 
• Countless educational videos on YT from channels such as PBS SpaceTime, Numberphile / Computerphile (and many, many others!) 
• More recently, Dr. Nima Arkani-Hamed's lecture / lectures and his observations of the current "tensions" in physics.

original reddit post which was soon after I realised I was aware and inhabited Ed’s body: How can I help myself? : Meditation

Closing Remarks

If you have read all the way to this paragraph, thank you!  Thank you for your time; and thank you for your patience and understanding!  As deduced previously, the goal of Truth is to become better and to survive.  Therefore, as also mentioned previously, if you agree that this document is on the right track, then please let me know.  Please let me know of any parts you disagree with since by resolving disagreements we uncover Truth!

To put it another way, think of the R0 value (given humanity currently is facing the COVID19 pandemic).  We can observe that any piece of reproducible information can have a theoretical R0 value (see GCP Grey's video on internet memes).  As such this document has an R0 value.  If you think that R0 should be < 1 then so be it, that means that this document doesn't contain Truth.  But if you believe the R0 should be > 1 then consider what you can do:

• let me know what part / parts of the document that lower the R0 value for you (these are the parts that you disagree with)
• share the document, hence contributing to its R0 being greater than 1.

If R0 of this document becomes truly > 1 and remains that way for some time, then the spread of this information will become exponential, hence we can achieve a "mass awakening" in a very short amount of time.  Again, I believe that should only happen if other human minds believe the information in this document represents Truth.