The world is weird, our intuitions are dubious, and the US might be conscious | Eric Schwitzgebel

Core Thesis of The Weirdness of the World

• Universal Bizarreness: All major foundational claims regarding the nature of the universe (cosmology) and consciousness are strikingly contrary to common sense and human intuition.
• Universal Dubiety: There is no compelling empirical, logical, or mathematical evidence to justify accepting any single theory over its competitors in these domains; rational certainty is unattainable.
• Intuition Limitations: Human intuitions are evolutionarily tuned for immediate survival (e.g., avoiding cliffs, social dynamics) but lack "corrective pressure" for abstract concepts like the origin of the universe or quantum mechanics, allowing them to "run wild."

Quantum Mechanics as a Primary Example

• Interpretations: All interpretations of quantum mechanics (e.g., Copenhagen, Many Worlds) are equally bizarre and lack empirical consensus.
• Schrödinger's Cat (Copenhagen): Proposes a cat exists in a superposition of alive and dead until observed, a state defying macroscopic intuition.
• Many Worlds Interpretation: Suggests the universe constantly splits into multiple worlds (one with a live cat, one with a dead cat), rendering the cat never truly "superposed" but the universe infinitely branched.
• Lack of Consensus: No interpretation is currently justified as the correct one; all remain speculative.

The Consciousness of the United States (Materialism)

• Definition of Materialism: The view that everything at the fundamental level is spatial and non-mental (e.g., quarks, electrons), with mental states emerging from these physical substrates.
• Definition of Consciousness: Defined functionally by first-person experience (qualia), such as seeing, thinking, feeling pain, or remembering, distinct from unconscious mental facts (e.g., stored knowledge).
• The U.S. as a Conscious Entity:
  • If materialism is true, the U.S. could be a conscious entity due to its distributed information processing.
  • Goal-Directedness: The U.S. exhibits complex, flexible goal-directed behavior (border protection, trade, military defense, disaster planning) analogous to a rabbit or alien.
  • Self-Monitoring: The U.S. possesses self-knowledge (e.g., election results, census data) and represents itself to others (e.g., State Department diplomacy, "bottom-up" cultural awareness like Taylor Swift concerts).
  • Information Processing: Despite different substrates (people communicating via light/sound vs. neurons via ions), the overall cognitive shape and information exchange resemble the functional requirements for consciousness.
• Thought Experiments Supporting the View:
  • Super Squids: Hypothetical distributed aliens with thousands of tentacles performing complex cognition, suggesting spatially distributed systems can be conscious.
  • Ontarian Ant Heads: Giant mammoth-like creatures composed of a million conscious bugs, challenging the "anti-nesting" intuition that a conscious whole cannot be made of conscious parts.

Alternative Theories of Consciousness

• Substance Dualism: Posits an immaterial soul; leads to its own bizarre implications regarding pre-existence and post-death survival.
• Idealism: Claims the material world is fundamentally mental; the universe is a construction of minds.
• Panpsychism: Asserts that fundamental particles (electrons) are conscious, and consciousness exists everywhere.
• Property Dualism: Suggests irreducibly immaterial mental properties exist alongside physical properties (e.g., David Chalmers' view), often leading to causal impotence or panpsychism.
• Kantian Transcendental Idealism: Argues we cannot know the "thing-in-itself"; reality is a construction of our minds upon an unknowable substrate.

The Problem of Borderline Consciousness

• Indeterminacy vs. Binary: Schwitzgabel argues consciousness is likely indeterminate (vague) rather than a binary "flick" (on/off).
• The "Blue-Green" Analogy: Consciousness is compared to the color spectrum; there are cases where it is indeterminate whether an entity (e.g., a snail) is conscious or non-conscious, rather than a dim but determinate version of consciousness.
• Arguments for Indeterminacy:
  • Evolutionary Continuum: Biological traits exist on continua; a sharp evolutionary "leap" to full consciousness is unlikely without a gradual transition.
  • Developmental Continuum: Fetal development involves gradual neural maturation without a clear moment of "winking on" consciousness.
  • Impossibility of Imagining: The intuition that borderline states are inconceivable stems from a demand to imagine "what it is like" to be indeterminate, which is a logical contradiction (similar to a child struggling to imagine imaginary numbers).
• Implications: Rejecting a sharp line avoids the arbitrary nature of placing a boundary in a continuous evolutionary or developmental process.

Simulation and Dream Hypotheses

• Dreaming Reality:
  • Evidentiary Uncertainty: Current sensory evidence (e.g., reading text, feeling pinches) is consistent with some theories of realistic dreaming or "false awakenings."
  • Memory Distortion: Human memory of dreams is unreliable; the belief that dreams were once "black and white" correlated with the prevalence of black-and-white media.
  • Moral Implications:
    • Utilitarian View: If dream experiences count morally, one should invest in improving dream quality (e.g., lucid dreaming).
    • Consequence Discounting: If awake life is a dream, long-term consequences (e.g., career, policy) are irrelevant, shifting decision theory toward short-term gains.
• Simulation Hypothesis:
  • Termination Risk: Unlike the natural world, a simulation could be abruptly turned off, increasing the probability of short-term outcomes over long-term ones.
  • Epistemic Risk: We cannot assume a long, enduring simulation; beliefs about the distant past or future could be false.

Future of Knowledge and Science

• In-Principle Solvability: Schwitzgabel is not a principled skeptic; he believes we could eventually determine the correct theory of consciousness or quantum mechanics, citing the historical success of solving previously "impossible" problems like the Big Bang.
• The Expanding Circle of Darkness: As knowledge expands, the surrounding "ring of darkness" (unsolved mysteries) also grows; solving one set of bizarre questions will inevitably generate new, deeper philosophical questions.
• Role of Philosophy: Philosophy operates in the "penumbra" of scientific knowledge, structuring the space of possibilities even when definitive answers remain out of reach.