The human body is said to be constructed of a few dollars worth of common chemicals, though I’m not sure what the point of saying this is. A blank DVD costs about a quarter in bulk these days, but you could pay thousands of dollars for one that has the bits on the surface rearranged in a preferred way. The software is what makes it valuable. Patterns are what matter.
In a universe equivalent to a blank DVD, the occasional emergence of a pattern more likely to persist dominated the chaos surrounding it and gradually led to the emergence of yet more complex patterns. It’s almost as if the universe itself is making choices, choices that sometimes seem correct and sometimes seem wrong, but it simply seems like a matter of time before it makes the right choices, the ones that move order forward. This is why I occasionally and reluctantly use the word “pantheist” to describe my views.
The human body was constructed over billions of years of natural selection, and of all the parts of the human body, the brain is the organ that stands out. The brain itself is a microcosm, a pattern which like the universe itself, makes choices and enhances the order of its own pattern through the process of learning and responding to the results of those choices, good or bad. Every other part of the human body seems to exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that this one organ can continue making choices, for preserving what we think of as consciousness. I’ve often discussed my predictions about the human race preserving what matters about us, our consciousness, in a superior and more persistent manner such as through some really advanced computer system. Such an advance would allow us to extend our personal lives dramatically; almost indefinitely.
(Read on…)
