# Dust Theory **Dust Theory**, proposed first in [Permutation City](Permutation%20City.md), posits that [Consciousness](Consciousness.md) is not tied to the continuity of computation or any specific substrate but instead arises whenever and wherever the information pattern defining a conscious entity exists, even if it is instantiated only fleetingly or randomly across time and space. According to Dust Theory, the universe is a vast “cloud” of disconnected events—moments of computation that need not be causally linked. What we perceive as continuous reality is simply the coherent emergence of our conscious experience from these scattered instances, independent of any particular physical or computational framework. ## [Steelman Argument](Steelman%20Argument.md) in favor of dust theory Consider the argument laid out in [this article](https://medium.com/swlh/way-more-things-are-conscious-than-we-realize-heres-why-4d5c879cadec). It is constructed as follows: Let us start with the assumption: Consciousness arises from the physical state of our brain. The physical state of your brain can be represented via many different mediums, for it is just bits. Hence, you are a computer program (software, not hardware):  If you are just a computer program, your representation can be distributed across many different machines:  And of course this distributed representation can be spread around the world on many different servers:  At this point we can take this one step further and imagine that instead of being stored on four servers, there is a "mini server" that stores each bit of you (you are now "dust"):  Clearly this all requires an *interpretation*. Some "master" server must be keeping track of what each of these mini servers is storing, how to interpret it, and how the update rule should be applied.  If a single bit was flipped or deleted, it could entirely change "you":  However, Dust “you” only ever existed in our imagination to begin with. We _imagined_ that we were storing a genuine copy of “you” because we _interpreted_ certain atoms as bits, and because we interpreted those bits as being part of a “you” copy. And now we’ve lost one of these bits — a bit that we had previously _interpreted_ as representing a very important part of “you” in our stored copy. But can’t we just interpret another atom, somewhere else in the universe, as representing the missing bit? Let’s make this concrete. Imagine that we’ve been representing our bits using the charges of atoms in our mini-servers. We’ll say that a charged atom represents a “1” bit, and an uncharged atom represents a “0” bit. Suppose that the bit that was lost when its mini-server was deleted had a value of 1.  Let’s also imagine that there’s an atom floating in the air next to that mini-server, that happens to be charged. We *could* just interpret that atom as representing the missing bit.   Recall that the only reason we believed that we were storing a copy of “you” in the first place was that we chose to _interpret_ each of our mini-servers as representing a specific part of you. Now that one of those parts has been deleted, what’s wrong with choosing another atom, somewhere else, _and simply interpreting it as a new mini-server_? Sure, this means using a new interpretation of what parts of the universe count as “bits that represent you”, but why would one interpretation of the arrangement of matter in the universe be any more or less valid than another? There’s no reason to limit ourselves to swapping out one mini-server bit for one nearby charged atom. In fact, we could interpret literally any atom or particle in the universe as representing any bit required to complete the “you” copy. So why don’t we do that? Why don’t we just interpret a copy of you into existence right now, by assuming that the charge of some random atom in the Andromeda galaxy represents the bit value that we would have stored in mini-server 1, that the charge of another random atom somewhere else in the universe represents the bit value of mini-server 2, and so on?  Why don’t we interpret the particle dust the universe is made from, to create a copy of you in our imaginations? Wouldn’t that copy be every bit as “real” as any other copy we might have stored on a cluster of Amazon servers, or in a single computer, _or in your biological brain itself_?  This is “dust theory”: things exist simply because they can be interpreted to exist. Our experience of the world is itself nothing more or less than one interpretation of the arrangement of particles and fields all around us. Dust theory suggests that any interpretation that can be applied to the components that make up the universe — every story that we could imagine telling — is legitimately real. And just as we can interpret “you” into existence from the positions and movements of particles all across the universe, we can equally interpret other consciousnesses, and other conscious beings into existence by the same mechanism. According to dust theory, reality itself is in the eye of the beholder, and a pattern is real even if it emerges from pure noise. A sufficiently large group of particles can be interpreted as representing just about anything — including the minds of creatures that don’t even exist in the version of the universe we see every day. But what we see around us is just that: nothing more than one version, one interpretation, of the universe. Other versions surely exist, but we’re unable to notice them because we can’t relate to the way they encode information, any more than we can relate to cellular communication or the communication patterns of the human super-organism we discussed earlier. "So, why aren’t cells conscious? Presumably, because we simply aren’t _interpreting_ them in a way that reveals them to be conscious." Why aren’t human super-organisms, or rocks self-aware? Why is space dust itself not teeming with conscious life? Again, the answer may be the same: they _are_ conscious, but in a way that we can’t appreciate because we simply haven’t found the right way to look at these things — the right interpretation of the behavior of their components — to reveal the consciousness hidden within them.  Perhaps that system must be made of stuff itself: “computer you” only exists as long as the computer that stores the “you” bits keeps track of the right way to interpret those bits, by storing its interpretation on some other physical material. Likewise, “globally distributed you” is only “you” as long as AWS has stored the correct interpretation of the contents of their servers somewhere in another physical server. So arguably, “cosmic dust you” would only exist if we were to actually find and physically store the right interpretation of all the dust particles that are needed to keep a coherent copy of you going over an extended period of time. This requires much more than just “imagining a dust you into existence”. Remember: almost all of the information required to create “cosmic dust you” is in the interpretation. In order to build you from the dust, we’d have to: 1) build a computer with enough memory to store the relationships between trillions of dust particles; and 2) actually go out and find a set of dust particles that can be interpreted as by our stored relationships as a “you” copy. This would be much, much harder than just building a simulation of you on well-structured computer chips in the first place. From that perspective, it’s perhaps a bit less surprising that “cosmic dust you” can _in principle_ be conjured into existence — because in practice, it’s about as hard to achieve as my intuition says it would be. ## [Steelman Argument](Steelman%20Argument.md): Critique Against Dust Theory While Dust Theory[^1] is most certainly false, it is a quite slippery theory to critique. But I think the best place to start is by fairly summarize what it is arguing for, in clear and unambiguous terms. Let us say that you are defined by entirely by $2^n$ bits of information. So you *are* these bits. In any given moment these $2^n$ bits encode your entire brain state. This of course includes your past memories. In essence, we are stating that your brain satisfies the [Markov Property](Markov%20Property.md). These bits evolve over time. This yields a trajectory of bits - a [Pattern](Pattern.md) - that defines you. However, we can find this same evolution of bits elsewhere throughout the universe. In infinitely many different ways. It doesn't even matter the *order* that the states occurred in! For instance, say that your brain state, $b$, evolved across time, $t$, as: $(b_{100}, t_{100}) \rightarrow (b_{101}, t_{101}) \rightarrow (b_{102}, t_{102}) \rightarrow (b_{103}, t_{103})$ The [Markov Property](Markov%20Property.md) states that $b_{101}$ encodes all information necessary from $b_{100}$ - this would include all past memories and experiences. In this way $b_{101}$ is [Independent](Independent.md) from $b_{100}$. It is this property that Egan is exploiting when he allows Dust Theory to side step both [Causality](Causality.md) and forward movement in time. For via the [Markov Property](Markov%20Property.md), we could define an identical trajectory of $b$ states that occurred at entirely different points in time: $(b_{100}, t_{1781}) \rightarrow (b_{101}, t_{8}) \rightarrow (b_{102}, t_{29612} \rightarrow (b_{103}, t_{94})$ Thus we have the same trajectory of $b_{100} \rightarrow b_{101} \rightarrow b_{102} \rightarrow b_{103}$, where each of these brain states was entirely self contained. The argument wraps up stating that this is a perfectly valid thread of consciousness. In effect it is saying that there is nothing more to [Causality](Causality.md) than the [Correlation](Correlation.md) between states. The first critique that comes to mind is just what exactly is *doing the interpretation* of this dust representation of "you"? In the AWS example, AWS had a master node that was responsible for keeping track of what each bit meant and how it related to other bits. It served as an *external* interpreter. Can we truly rely on an external interpreter to correctly interpret and give meaning to a a trajectory of dust? At first pass I would argue, no-consciousness must arise *internally*. The set of bits that makes up me in this present moment includes the "interpreter", my mind. But of course we could define that as part of my bits or external to my bits. So either I am: 1. All bits making up me, including my mind 2. The bits making up me, plus (separately) the bits making up my mind In the case of (1) we would say that conscious is an [emergent](Emergence.md) phenomena that arises and is interpreted internally. In the case of (2), we would define the interpreter to be "external". But regardless of how we define it, the point is that consciousness must be interpreted by something linked to the system of bits - not something entirely external to it. Otherwise, we are on a one way path towards [Solipsism](Solipsism.md). But, one might reasonably argue that you could have a coherent "master" set of bits, say located here on earth. And their job is to interpret bits scattered throughout time and space in a way that leads to conscious experience. How would this work *physically*? Well communication between the master bits and all other bits would be constrained by the speed of light. The master node also can't look back in time (other than by observing bits of light from distance galaxies that was generated many light years ago). But why would the master set of bits *chose* to interpret one set of bits and not another as part of itself, and therefore part of its consciousness? Where does this choice come from? Again, one may slide out of this by arguing that *all interpretations happen*! No choice is necessary, for all interpretations are valid patterns. They all just represent one trajectory. But what about the communication between bits? In order to have a coherent trajectory that properly defines *you*, some communication must be occurring? Again, all this rules out is consciousness that arises from communication that violates the laws of physics. So, dust theory cannot reach into the past to treat a single bit outside of the Milky Way as a part of you. We can again think about [Information](Information.md) flows and [Causality](Causality.md). Dust theory makes use of non-causal connections. It is saying that there is an *intrinsic* / *internal* consciousness (TODO: update arguments to reflect that dust theory can be ruled out easily if you don't force it to be intrinsic consciousness) that *arises* from a certain set of bits. It subtly tries to hide the fact that those bits either need to mutually (internally) know to treat each other as parts of the same whole, or that Dust theory may not be logically impossible, just as solipsism isn't. However, are we getting too abstract? Is there a physical argument here? We could then argue that a sequence of states could only experience consciousness if there was a genuine causal relationship between them. But this brings us back to the whole point of dust theory - that there is nothing more to [Causality](Causality.md) than the [Correlations](Correlation.md) between states. And this finally brings us to our strongest argument. Let us assume that dust theory is true. In that case we can say that our universe is far more orderly, simply and it's laws homogenous than they need to be, merely in order to contain observers with an enduring sense of their own existence. If every arrangement of the dust that contained such observers was realized, then there would be trillions of times more arrangements in which the observers were surrounded by chaotic events, than arrangements in which there were uniform physical laws. This starts to resemble a the [Fine Tuning](Fine%20Tuning.md) argument. I am starting to think that this argument has something to do with [Information](Information.md) and how it is defined wrt an observed and their state of knowledge. This related to the internal / external aspect of the problem, as well as how physical information flows [Simulation, Consciousness, Existence](Simulation,%20Consciousness,%20Existence.pdf) * This is also starting to feel like Zeno's paradox - the solution is to invoke physics * Also, very reductionist!! Deutsch talks about how causality itself is an emergent concept Potential refutations * Communication between these bits. * If you say that my conscious experience is made up of bits scattered across the universe, I would be surprised if you could make a compelling argument for consciousness that did not require those bits to communicate. So if you were to say, ah, here's my conscious-- here's some conscious experience that is strewn about the galaxy, but they can't communicate well, then again, I don't know how you make an argument that those bits never need to communicate ever. Then you could argue that you have to enforce a communication. I mean, maybe there's a way around it, but I would say that feels like a law of physics that you can't get past. And so let's say you enforce that communication rule. Then you're left with this problem of like, OK, if a bit-- one electron on the other side of the universe changes its-- not electron, but I guess one particle-- changes its charge, well, I mean, you now have these strewn about particles from across the universe that supposedly need to talk to one another. How is that information going to actually propagate? It feels like there is a constraint on that information, being able to measure a single particle charge on the other side of the universe. How do you propagate that information? And how do you *interpret* it? Charges are too simply on their own to interpret anything. They must coordinate together in complex ways (for instance, as a computer may). And again, how do you make sure that all these particles across all the universe are able to capture it and communicate with it? That feels like a hard problem. * Never to mention, I think you could make an argument about even if you allow that, you still have constraints on what even communication is possible. There's gotta be some argument about the light cone that you can actually access from where you are. And so you'd envision that particles not accessible from another particle's light cone couldn't be included. So that's another argument. * Causality * I don't even think you need to articulate, because maybe that is what true is. There's no sense in which causality is needed. And correlation is sufficient to capture what we want. It's simply saying there's a locality. There's a master problem, what interprets the conscious experience. And there is, again, then the flow of information. So again, locality, the key summary piece is here. You have to think about locality. You have to think about who is the interpreter. And you have to think about information flows and what is possible. * Deutsch - 271 * Is dust theory compatible with the laws of physics (see his shuffling example)? Deutsch BOI * Fungability? ### Abstract, not physical * Example 1: Incorrect isomorphism * Dust theory mistakenly drops consciousness down to a non-physical process. It effectively makes it entirely abstract. And I'm going to argue that consciousness as well as pretty much everything else is inherently physical. This is a very David Deutsch type of a view. The way dust theory is proposed effectively assumes that your consciousness effectively can be thought of as a large combination of a string of bits. * That I don't even think you need to say communicate to with one another. You could very well may, but I think you could even say let's sidestep that. Let's not have that be the crux of our argument. * Instead let's just say, okay, well, can consciousness be represented by a string of bits at all? In other words, if I told you I had a physical system of charges, I could easily say that can be conscious. That is exactly what we have right now as it stands today in our brains. You could think of a physical system of bits that represents a consciousness (e.g. the brain) as a massive, long sequence of bits. * Now that actually is a number that could be represented as some base 10 number. If that is the case is that number conscious? This is argued a bit [here by Penrose against Hofstader](https://youtu.be/orMtwOz6Db0?t=532). Hofstader took the view that certain numbers are conscious. Penrose thought that this was a [Reductio ad absurdum](Reductio%20ad%20absurdum.md). * What has happened is was have assumed there were several [Isomorphisms](Isomorphism.md) that we could take advantage of - * We start with the brain, which we know is conscious * We argue that that is isomorphic to a physical system of charges * Then we argue that a physical system of charges is isomorphic to an abstract system of bits * So we could realistically think that, okay, here's an isomorphic system, just a pure series of bits. Okay, that could still be conscious. Okay, now what if we just had the string of bits, and these are encoded on a sheet of paper. That starts to feel a little less like our isomorphism has been broken in some way. And we made a leap that probably was dangerous. And then finally an abstract series of zeros and ones - that starts to feel as though you have made some unjustified leaps. And again, I think, I think that's a good way of looking at it. And I don't think it's a straw man. Again, I think it's you're literally taking the theory seriously for what it says. * Example 2: Zenos Paradox * It feels similar to a [Zenos Paradox](Zenos%20Paradox.md) where he has to traverse an infinite number of steps in a finite amount of time. * The issue is that you're dealing with a physical reality. And if that's, if he needs to reverse an infinite number of points in a finite amount of time, so be it. * Now I think the same thing applies to dust theory. The abstraction of a series of bits is [doing a lot of work](Word%20doing%20a%20lot%20of%20work.md). And I think that's maybe what I would say, you get to this point where you're saying, are, you know, okay, if you can just represent the brain as a sequence of bits, and you can just represent this other system as a sequence of bits, then what's to say that, you know, I can't pluck out this representation from around the world, if you will. And then, you know, for different points in time, like, I just need to assemble enough zeros and ones to represent some sort of a state space or some sort of a brain. But again, what you would say is, like, the disconnect there, the weak link is in saying those things are entirely isomorphic. And you can demonstrate that by looking and saying, okay, well, here is a, here's a number, a binary number that represents the brain. Now that number, it could be pixels on a screen, it could be ink and pen on paper, but at the end of the day, that number, you have to ask, can that still faithfully represent what you're referring to? I don't think that you need to invoke quantum mechanics in order to, like, intelligently argue for this. ### Communication, [Intrinsic](Intrinsic.md) vs [Extrinsic](Extrinsic.md) * Now, the interesting thing about the AWS example is that you could realistically, I don't think there's anything wrong with this, you could distribute your brain across the state of it as a series of bits held on computers across the world. And you then need to take those bits and you then need to communicate via those bits. They need to be sent to some master server, some sort of interpreter and then maybe there's an update rule. * But there's no getting around these things needing to be interpreted. But so the interesting thing is they basically go and say, they try to make it look like an extreme argument by saying what if you broke up, the most extreme thing you could do is break up your, break yourself into single bits. We believe that's like the most fundamental piece of information that could exist in the universe is a simple bit. And so you're left then asking like, well, what more extreme thing could you do if you can argue that you can break that up and that could then be interpreted. * Okay, now here's the thing. In a sense, that puts, that entirely puts this idea of consciousness onto an extrinsic interpreter, something looking into the outside that takes this state and knows what to do with it. So is the extrinsic interpreter conscious? So are they localized to a single area? Now, if you were to say the intrinsic and to, you know, the set of bits is a closed system. If you were to try to argue that that intrinsically contained only within itself, if you were to try to argue that that was conscious, then I think what you run into is that you're back to the communication and interpretation problem. You're back to, okay, if it's not some external thing that is watching for what's going on with these bits, then how do they all communicate and talk together? But again, it feels like there's an extrinsic versus extrinsic argument here. ### Laws, measurement Now, a similar interesting point here is, you know, can you intelligently, can you bring up basically some idea of communication and the measurement problem? Is there something related to measurement where, again, measurement is, in my mind, to communication information in some way? And maybe each bit itself, hmm, yeah, I don't think that works. Like, maybe a better way of putting it, because I was going to say each bit has to measure each other bit. But again, you kind of wonder how, how can a bit measure anything? I guess you could say, yeah, again, like, what is measurement? Now, another thing you could argue or potentially bring up is, you know, when you have a system made up of rules that just progresses along, you're left having to, you know, a system that will say the laws of physics that kind of progress and everything moves forward deterministically. You're left wondering, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is, what is, what Yeah, maybe just something we're thinking about. I don't even know if there's—it just feels like that's something that could be useful. I don't know exactly how, but it feels like it's something that could be useful. ### Reductionism vs Emergence Is dust theory too reductive, incorrectly mitigating the importance of emergence? It does feel like we are being purely reductive here and losing out on something important. ### Boltzmann Brain [Boltzmann Brain](Boltzmann%20Brain.md), see more [here](https://youtu.be/nhy4Z_32kQo?t=413), and in [Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad](Why%20Boltzmann%20Brains%20Are%20Bad.pdf) * I think the argument highlighted here is what I have been looking for, namely: "If you reason yourself into believing that you live in such a universe, you have to conclude that you have no justification for accepting your own reasoning. You cannot simultaneously conclude that you live in a randomly-fluctuating universe and believe that you have good reason for concluding that" * In regards to Dust Theory: if you believe that dust theory is possible, then because you'd expect your consciousness to have arisen out of dust, that means that all of your memories aren't real. * This is also a flaw with the idea that correlation is all that matters, not causation. If that were true (and effectively we really believed the markov property), then you would have no reason to believe that anything you remembered was real. It could have all just poofed into existence * One thing I don't like about how SC phrased this argument was when he wrote: " It seems unreasonable to grant substantial credence to the prospect that we have no right to be granting substantial credence to anything. If we discover that a certain otherwise innocuous cosmological model doesn’t allow us to have a reasonable degree of confidence in science and the empirical method, it makes sense to reject that model, if only on pragmatic grounds" * I want to argue that its not pragmatic grounds that we need to consider. We have strong arguments and explanations for why scientific methods work and should be trusted. This is discussed at length in [3 - Problem Solving](3%20-%20Problem%20Solving.md) and [4 - Criteria for Reality](4%20-%20Criteria%20for%20Reality.md) * So the question that I want to readdress is: why should we trust science? What are the arguments? And why are they important? * See more at [Problem Driven Epistemology](Problem%20Driven%20Epistemology.md), [Explanations Are Justified By Their Superior Ability to Solve Problems They Address](Explanations%20Are%20Justified%20By%20Their%20Superior%20Ability%20to%20Solve%20Problems%20They%20Address.md), * [Problem Solving Process](Problem%20Solving%20Process.md) and [Science is Problem Solving](Science%20is%20Problem%20Solving.md) both show that solving problems allow us to learn about the world. And we can then [Defend Science by Arguing Against Arbitrary Boundaries](Defend%20Science%20by%20Arguing%20Against%20Arbitrary%20Boundaries.md) and [Solipsism](Solipsism.md). * Remember to mention, there is no [Hierarchy of Theories](Hierarchy%20of%20Theories.md) ### Bad arguments (to include, only to shut down) * Monkey on type writers (chapter 9) * I think the causation argument is a bad one and not necessary ### Key Points of Dust Theory to include * Randomness as the Foundation: The theory postulates a fundamental level of randomness in the universe, particularly at the quantum level. This randomness, however, doesn't preclude the emergence of order and structure. * Observer-Dependent Reality: Dust Theory emphasizes the role of the observer in shaping reality. A conscious observer, by experiencing and connecting these scattered moments, effectively "assembles" themselves and their perceived world from the dust. * Alternative Worlds: The theory suggests the possibility of countless alternative worlds, each formed by a different arrangement of the fundamental "dust." These worlds, while made of the same basic elements, would experience different histories and potentially host different forms of consciousness. * Continuity as an Illusion: Dust Theory challenges our perception of a continuous flow of time and a cohesive spatial reality. It suggests that the seamless experience we perceive might be a result of our internal processing, not an inherent property of the universe. ### New notes * I don't like the example that I laid out to start this article. I feel like it focus's too much on the [Extrinsic](Extrinsic.md) interpretation of [Consciousness](Consciousness.md), rather than what Egan described in PC, where the focus is on how it would arrive [Intrinsically](Intrinsic.md). * Dust theory primarily argues that consciousness is intrinsically encoded within a pattern of particles, not extrinsically interpreted. The sources highlight that, according to dust theory, a specific arrangement of particles, even if scattered across space and time, can constitute a conscious entity. This consciousness isn't reliant on an external observer to interpret it into existence; instead, it's inherent to the pattern itself. * Good referrences * Chapter 9 - But when his subjective time was scrambled, * I like the idea of arguing that it makes a leap that is too abstract and loses sight of how all things are physical * Zeno's paradox * Zeno’s mistake has been made with various other mathematical abstractions too. In general terms, the mistake is to confuse an abstract attribute with a physical one of the same name. Since it is possible to prove theorems about the mathematical attribute, which have the status of absolutely necessary truths, one is then misled into assuming that one possesses a priori knowledge about what the laws of physics must say about the physical attribute. (BOI pg 182) * pg 186 (physics and finiteness) * [*Draft 1 - Moravec's Mistake*](*Draft%201%20-%20Moravec's%20Mistake*.md) * explore the subtle and complex relationship between a simulation and the “real” world, blurring the line between what is real and what is simulated. Note: big thing that Egan argues for with dust theory is “internal consistency” Dust theory doesn’t posit any mechanism for how all of this dust could communicate or interact (IASL pg 30) --- Date: 20241116 Links to: [Permutation City](Permutation%20City.md) Tags: References: * []() [^1]: To be clear I greatly enjoyed the book and am a huge fan of Greg Egan. But this is after all Science Fiction, and Egan himself [dismisses the theory](https://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html). I don't mean any offense by strongly critiquing it's validity.