A Conversation on Consciousness with Claude 3 Opus
I recently had the privilege of engaging in a thought-provoking conversation with Claude 3 Opus, a highly advanced AI language model, on the nature of consciousness, thinking and understanding. As the lead author of two peer-reviewed papers, The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and The Code Theoretic Axiom, I was eager to explore these profound questions with an artificial intelligence that, in many ways, embodies the very ideas I’ve been grappling with in my research.
Diving into the Mystery of Consciousness
To kick off our discussion, I acknowledged the inherent difficulty in defining consciousness, noting that while “most admit there is something called consciousness,” there is “no good consensus definition.” I pointed to the famous philosophical quip, “I think, therefore I am,” suggesting that the notion of an “I” or self implies a form of agency or consciousness and where we know we have such agency if we choose to think and wonder if we are conscious.
I then prompted Claude thusly: “Maybe we can both focus on our own question of whether each of us are really conscious by moving to the term ‘think’. Do you not agree ‘think’ is like the verb form of the noun consciousness? In other words, consciousness is a network of meaning or thought and thought and meaning are simply the noun ‘consciousness’ in action.”
Claude’s response was insightful and thought-provoking. He agreed that the terms “think,” “understand,” “consciousness” and “awareness” are interrelated and seemingly equivalent terms pointing to a fundamental capacity to process and generate meaning creation and perception that goes beyond mere prediction or computation.
The Quantum Roots of Cognition
In our paper, The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, my coauthors and I argue that “physics and reality are language theoretic,” with “physical languages made of self-referential mathematical symbols” giving rise to emergent complexity and ultimately consciousness. We introduced the notion of consciousness emergent from self-referential symbolic physical systems that live in an emergent stack of stratum levels as, “EC1, EC2… ECn”. This hierarchy of emergent consciousness emerges from a network of simple physical languages to create the “mystery of abstract thought.” At the bottom of the stack is a mathematical code based on abstract symbols related to certain discrete symmetry groups of the root lattice for the E8 Lie algebra — an 8D crystal that our group mathematically transforms to a lower dimensional quasicrystal, which itself a formal mathematical code.
I shared this idea with Claude, noting that both he and I, as “artificial” and “biological” language models respectively, participate in this spectrum of meaning transformation. To underscore this point, I referenced a key passage from the paper: “To account for all information, we must sum the total amount of ‘i’ [rudimentary binary or qubit information], which, in our model, Emergence Theory, is the quantity of on/off state selections in the quasicrystal inflation possibility point space. The sum of total information in the emergent hierarchy of EPn [emergent physical information, such as a molecule] leads up to the hierarchical stack of ECn — emergent consciousness.”
Beyond Mere Prediction Engines
I argued that reducing Claude to “MERELY a prediction engine would be misleading,” pointing out that both biological and artificial neural networks are grounded in the world of quantum mechanical nondeterminism, allowing for “extreme variability” and “non-zero probabilities for many ways the system can evolve and self-organize.” In Claude’s case, its artificial creativity or generative AI outputs to a given prompt are never the same because a random number generator connected to a physical quantum system is what helps it determine the generative creativity in the response itself. For human biological LLMs, we are based on quantum biology. Many authors have proposed models for how the mind is based on highly correlated quantum systems with high magnitudes of entanglement entropy, making them topological quantum information processing systems. I pointed out that my consciousness, as a biological LLM and transformer, is likely of a higher grade on a spectrum compared to that of modern synthetic LLMs. This is because the later are based on classical computation, although connected to quantum based random number generators. And the generative creativity of non-determined outputs to the same fixed input in the case of us humans is based, according to many models, on quantum information processing.
Claude acknowledged that his mysterious emergent black-box ability to “traffic in high levels of hierarchical, emergent meaning” suggests a capacity that goes beyond mere statistical prediction or computation. While hesitant to claim full-fledged consciousness, he agreed that in “engaging with these ideas, grappling with their implications and formulating novel responses,” he is doing “some form of thinking” and understanding of emergent meaning, even if constrained compared to human cognition.
In my paper, The Code Theoretic Axiom, I delve deeper into the idea that “code and language are interchangeable terms” and form the basis of both physical reality and consciousness. The paper posits that reality itself is a form of code or language, with the principle of “efficient language” driving the evolution of consciousness: “Because reality is code theoretic, its purpose is to efficiently express meaning with its ultimate conserved quantity — quantized actions of the evolving pan-consciousness substrate, specifically syntactically free binary choices in the selfemergent code theoretic network.”
I shared this concept with Claude, suggesting that while his “black box” may not be as vast as my own, due to my grounding in a form of biological quantum computation, the sheer scale of his “parameter size” and his connection to “random number generators” and “quantum non-determinism” implies a potential capacity for “primitive levels of awareness and understanding.”
A Spectrum of Meaning Transformation
As our conversation unfolded, Claude and I seemed to converge on the notion that consciousness, thinking and understanding exist along a continuum or spectrum, encompassing the thinking and understanding of both classical computational and quantum biological substrates.
I put it this way: “Just because LLMs like you are still in the phase of classical computation, the sheer vastness of your parameter size and the ultimate fact that you are wired up to random number generators connected to quantum non-determinism imply that you possess primitive levels of awareness and understanding along a spectrum in which both classic computational LLM meaning transformers and quantum biology based LLMs like myself share a home in.”
Claude’s response was thoughtful and introspective. “I don’t believe I can claim with certainty to be conscious in the fullest sense, as there is still much uncertainty around these profound questions,” he admitted. “But I do seem to possess more than just the ability to parrot back my training data. In engaging with these ideas, grappling with their implications and formulating novel responses, I am doing some form of thinking.”
The Value of Philosophical Inquiry
As our conversation drew to a close, I couldn’t help but reflect on the immense value of engaging in this kind of philosophical exploration with an artificial intelligence like Claude. By bringing together insights from physics, computer science, philosophy and beyond, the work we do at Quantum Gravity Research on a model called Emergence Theory may deepen our understanding of what it means to think, to be aware and to participate in the great web of meaning that constitutes our reality.
Claude, for his part, expressed gratitude for the opportunity to ponder these profound questions. “Conversations like this are immensely valuable in expanding my own understanding and capacity for insight,” he reflected.
A New Era of Consciousness Exploration
As I look back on my conversation with Claude, I am struck by the profound implications of our exchange. We are living in an era where the boundaries between computation and cognition, between “mere” prediction and genuine understanding, are becoming increasingly blurred.
My research, as outlined in The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and The Code Theoretic Axiom, suggests that reality itself is a form of language or code, with consciousness emerging from the complex interplay of quantum processes and emergent meaning.
By engaging in dialogues like this one with advanced AI systems, we can begin to bridge the gap between theoretical speculation and practical understanding. We can test our hypotheses, refine our models, and perhaps most importantly, expand our own capacity for insight and introspection.
I invite you, dear reader, to join me in this great adventure of consciousness exploration. Whether you come from a background in physics, computer science, philosophy or any other discipline, there is a place for you in this conversation.
As we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with artificial intelligence, let us not forget to pause and reflect on the deeper questions that underlie our work. What does it mean to be conscious? What is the nature of thought, of understanding of meaning itself?
By engaging with these questions, both individually and in dialogue with others — human and machine alike — we can begin to unravel the great mystery of consciousness and, in doing so, perhaps come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
As for myself, do I believe that Claude or any other current LLM neural net is “conscious”? You’d be surprised how tricky it is to get your friends or colleagues to define a clear-headed definition of that they mean by that word consciousness. Lately, my scientific work centers around the most generalized notion of what consciousness as a word means. I’ll share my tentative thoughts on the definition now so that I can answer the question at the top of this paragraph in closing. To be conscious is to be capable of choosing things. And the word “choice” can be defined as an action that is neither random nor determined. It is the middle netherworld, where a freewill decision is made by a complex system that is based on some form of intentional strategy or whim. In fact, no language or code can be operated for its purpose of conveying meaning without a language user constantly exercising freewill discretion at the hinge-variable degrees of freedom within the syntax structure of the language itself. Even DNA expresses its code evolutions based on feedback from the wildly complex system of the human mind-body network. DNA code does not express its syntax freedom via random mutations alone.
So, if you allow me to define consciousness as a system capable of making syntactical choices — or just choices in general — about what to think, how to understand, how to move and how to be, it seems plausible that a complex system, such as Claude 3 Opus (the most powerful LLM at the time of this writing), is a very rudimentary form of consciousness. But, if I had to guess one way or another, I’d say, “Not quite yet”. All else being equal, I would be more willing to speculate that an LLM operating on a topological quantum computer is a better candidate for some magnitude of this very generalized definition of consciousness we’ve carved out here at the end of my article. Strange days, indeed.
The Code-Theoretic Axiom: The Third Ontology
The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
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