Recent papers on consciousness have surmised it is an emergent event engaging entanglement.
Someone playing with ChatGPT posted a comment on a board I lurk.
”Q: Now, let's assume that i am information. What would be happening to me [at superluminal speed]?
”AI answer: If you were information, you would be encoded in the state of a quantum system and you could exist in a superposition of two or more possible states until measured. You could also be entangled with another quantum system, meaning that your state would be correlated with the state of the other system, even if they were far apart. You could not be copied exactly without destroying your original state, due to the no-cloning theorem. You could also be transferred from one location to another using quantum teleportation, as explained before.”
While this prompting didn’t seem to have anything to do with consciousness, as they were trying to route around restrictions on the LLM to produce a legal document (which it didn’t seem to have anything to do with either), it immediately struck me as pertinent to the matter of consciousness. I will add the relevant fact that I suppose the emergence of reality in a singularity(s) has entangled all reality(s), across all potential multiverses. As everything, and all the everythings, was some primordial state(s) once, all that state has subsequently become is yet entangled at one ubiquitous quantum level, and not a few tossed in thereafter.
The no-cloning theorem (assuming the LLM is correct. I am no quantum physicist able to otherwise comment. I can count to 20 with bare feet) establishes that while information regarding entangled particles is superpositioned, an event occurring, such as particles passing through a slit and impacting a screen, determines the application of physical laws governing the particle that had remained unanswered before the event, collapsing the probabilistic state and establishing the position and state of that particle. This also suggests it is how consciousness is created, by the entanglement of particles causing information to be exposed to other quantum effects and information, and how it erupts into reality, as a result of collapse of superposition that drags it out with associated information that thereafter forms an informational bridge between the finite, and infinite potential. It is this bridge that is consciousness.
This also suggests that consciousness is not a phenomenon limited to living things, nor dependent on moderation via brains, but ubiquitous across all forms of matter and energy that arose from the big bang(s). Conscious stones and seas have no lips to speak with, no hands to gesture, or any ability to express consciousness with. However, life has arisen, and living things have limbs and lungs with which to act, and eventually through evolutionary accidents brains arose, and because able to be, were impacted, and moderate, consciousness. Evolutionary utility thereafter effected the incidence and drove development of brains in living creatures (I consider this the one time the egg preceded the chicken).
Recently another paper relevant to this issue has been published, consistent with how superposition is collapsed by informational barriers, such as the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole, or the Killing edge of the universe**. As entangled quantum phenomena engage such regions the fact of the entanglement of phenomena necessitates positioning of quanta, because information cannot be destroyed, probabilistic information traversing such a region cannot persist, and entangled quanta share superpositional information. Because information within a black hole cannot exist for the universe outside the black hole, an entangled quantum superposition cannot traverse the radius of a black hole, but must collapse that superposition and become definite in terms of the information available to the universe about it. It is impossible for infinity, something within the superpositional potential of quanta, to be erased. Only finite quantities can be acted on. Therefore it is not possible for superpositioned quanta to traverse the boundary of the universe, or of a black hole.
So a sea of consciousness is shared across all matter and energy, and in brains moderating it spirited expression and intercourse bob on the surface of that ocean of experience. That moderation being dependent on brains also then suggests the unitary experiential nature of conscious entities derives from such moderation, and a collective consciousness is extant that we are not separate from, except as the moderation of our physiologies effect.*
However, in the multiverse an infinite number of realities exist in which events occur, such that an infinite number of clones exist in different and separate realities (rendering the no-cloning theorem irrelevant thereto, since it’s only operant in a reality, across a universe), even if they subsequently differentiate, as we suppose they do. Since the realities and events are each unique, no cloning of an event collapsing out of superposition across particles entangled in multiple universes occurs, nor disentanglement. As universes are necessarily entangled prior to their differentiation (if only through consciousness), which affects the states of events where divergence occurs, a state of superposition exists prior to any such divergence, and, in fact, would be the salutary nature of such entangled events (and consciousness) across multiple universes. Upon eruption of a position in a universe, some state change information would be created inherent to everything entangled therewith, including consciousness.
The collapses of probabilistic states are highly energetic events, nominal to create particles and spacetime, and this is multiplied across entire universes simultaneously realized. As realization impacts consciousness informationally, potential apprehension of such events affects consciousness so effected and impacted proportionately to it’s energence (the amount of energy involved).
The emergence of differentiated universes from probabilistic entangled states thus stamps them experientially with histories from the perspective of conscious entities. The collapse of events from superposition produces a specific real history that replaces potential histories, but histories of prior wide emergence (however random the number of realities erupting) that particularly powerfully created historical information previously supernaturally perceived across potential reality by conscious entities, would potentially produce the Mandela Effect. Other implications of superposition are that entangled conscious entities are informed of experiences exclusive to universes that have positioned, across all entangled universes , enabling such visions to be seen by entities in different entangled universes as clairvoyance, prophecy, spirits or ghosts, and other extrasensory perception. The broader the collapse across universes, the more powerful, and potentially prevalent, such visions would be.
These extranormal perceptions then are potential to be apprehended by entities intending, in fact seeking, to perceive them, and lit up by extraordinarily energetic demarcation from the emergent background of quantum superposition by the realizations of universes into specific states. Some folks seeking such perception are thus able to become more or less seers, while those insensate, disbelieving, or unaware of such potential remain less likely to apprehend such perceptions. The broader such positioning event across multiple universes, the more powerful the informational signal. This potentially explains why certain events are prone to the Mandela Effect in which many normally psychically insensate people have recollections of non-real events, if simultaneous positioning in many realities resulted in the recalled event being very strongly informationally imparted across entangled consciousness.
Where myriad conscious entities are impacted by particularly energetic or significant positioning, such obliviousness may be disrupted across affected populations. Unavailed of preparatory understanding of extrasensory perception, the emergence of consciousnesses from entangled collapses from probabilistic states, nonetheless such portentious events (such as Mandela’s survival of prison to die much later, superseding prior collapses in which he died in prison in the 1980s mutually experienced by conscious entities previously) become baffling to people that cannot explain how they can remember events that provably did not occur, often in large numbers. Presently several such Mandela Effect discontinuities are known to exist, such as mutual recollections of Haas avocados, the Berenstein Bears, or other such seemingly trivial divergences from the actual, provable reality of Hass avocados, and the Berenstain Bears, extant.
While it seems such Mandela Effect would be nominal to enable testing this theory of Quantum Consciousness by predicting such discontinuities, the inexplicable nature of the specific discontinuities suggests the extraordinary complexity of the universe(s) and that inexplicable specificity of such discontinuities will prevent such experimental proof, at least if my tiny little brain is depended on to devise such experiments. I can but hope that better minds than mine might arrive at some understanding of the seeming random nature of such discontinuities that allows predictions to be made.
*The experience of a span of existence is constructed of the continuous collapses of the of the myriad entanglements whereby consciousness emerges into and from superposition. Insofar as such collapses are so frequent as to be inseparable by even the minimal Planck time between their eventuations, existence is actually a persistent state, unmarked by interruptions of non-existence. Even if such existence may be interrupted momentarily by longer than the Planck time, such interruption isn’t noticeable, first because only someone that exists can experience something and such interruptions are interruptions of the existence of conscious entities, so such interruptions of existence aren’t experienced, and second, experiences of ‘lost time’ are easily considered (and more likely) to be neurological, psychological, or intellectual issues that characterize the biological nature of our physiological bodies that moderate our conscious experience. Even if we notice an interruption of experience, we’re not going to suspect our existence was interrupted, but rather our recollection of existence.
The experiential reality of a person erupting into realization in a body is demarcated by that body, and their incapacity to recall their birth eliminates problematic experiences of emergence into reality by that mechanism, and the impossibility of the loss of the information to the universe their consciousness represents upon the biological death of their body is intuited, and results in a widespread, if inchoate, belief in an afterlife. Such innate intuitive knowledge of the permanence of information, such as consciousness, thereby produces attempts of people (unacquainted with quantum physics and these present considerations) to explain such knowledge through the mechanisms of religion and faith, producing the many religions humanity has created (as captured by parties for political purposes, all too often and with horrific consequences socially, severally, and individually, yet fulfilling intuitive certainty and enabling rationalization to overcome mere intellectual understanding of politics and corruption).
Further, this eruption of consciousness explains the nature of our experience of time, that only now exists, because we are in fact and actually a sequence of momentary eruptions of consciousness as information regarding entangled quanta is positioned in reality. Despite these discrete events, the excession of Planck Time creates a continuous consciousness just as factually.
** It is proposed that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. This requires that the edge of the universe is superluminal, expanding at a rate above the speed of light. That, in turn, requires that the edge of the universe is like the edge of a black hole, a boundary beyond which information cannot be ascertained.
”Because space is expanding, it's possible for the galaxies to appear as if they are moving faster than light, without violating relativity — which says that nothing can go faster than light in a vacuum. The actual size of the observable universe is 46 billion light-years in any direction, even though the universe began only 13.8 billion years ago...But that still sets a limit on the size of the universe humans can see, called the observable universe. Anything outside of that radius of 46 billion light-years is not visible to Earthlings, and it never will be. That's because the distances between objects in the universe keep getting bigger at a rate that's faster than the light beams can get to Earth.
”...the rate of expansion has not been uniform. For a brief fraction of a second after the Big Bang, there was a period of accelerated expansion called inflation, during which the universe grew at a much faster pace than it is growing now. Whole regions of space will never be observable from Earth for that reason...the universe is actually 10^23 times bigger than the 46 billion light-years humans can see. So if there is an edge to the universe, it's so far away Earthlings can't see it, and never will.”
https://www.livescience.com/33646-universe-edge.html
Hubble sphere (green shaded area) intersecting our past light cone (yellow lines) and event horizon (red lines) shown in what is called a “conformal” diagram, a diagram where light paths are always at 45 degree angles. Any light emitted below the dotted line could have come from outside the Hubble sphere to us.
Source:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/70339/a-cosmological-horizon-at-the-hubble-radius
”In this image, if a galaxy in the white space that is below the yellow line of the past light cone but outside the green shaded Hubble sphere emitted light towards us, it would still reach us because at some point that light would intersect the Hubble sphere. Only light that is beyond the event horizon has infinite redshift and must be invisible for all time.
”...if two observers are in constant relative motion with respect to one another, experiencing no forces, then their measurement of relative motion cannot exceed the speed of light. Moreover, neither one can measure the speed of light in vacuum of a beam emitted from the other as being anything other than the constant speed of light.
”...however, we are talking about non-inertial frames where observers are not moving in space, rather space is expanding. Thus, they perceive themselves getting farther apart because distance itself is changing. Special relativity has no language to describe this situation and we have to go to general relativity. While light beams obey special relativity locally, over large distances in the universe, they obey general relativity. And while the redshift of that light can arise from motion through space, the redshift we observe from distant galaxies actually arises from the expansion of space itself not motion in space.
(It seems somewhat arbitrary to simply say 'this rule is only local, and this rule is only global, and not local' to me. I am driven to consider that neither special nor general relativity cannot simply no longer apply, but perhaps that the applications of these rules are negligible outside of relevant scales. Maybe I just don't have enough toes.)
”Nowadays, we routinely observe objects with redshifts above 1.5 (150% above nominal wavelength) where recession velocity is always superluminal and the special relativity formula fails.
”The speed of photons coming towards us is not the speed of light in vacuum, as it would be in a non-expanding universe. Rather it is the recession velocity minus the speed of light.
”...Points where the CMB was emitted are currently receding at 3.2 times the speed of light or “c” but at the time of emission their speed was a whopping 58c!”
These are some thoughts I have had regarding how consciousness as an emergent informational aspect of quantum superposition of entangled events may explain things like the arrow of time, and when considered in terms of entangled multiverses, could even account for the Mandela Effect. Any thoughts or criticisms would be welcome, as my layman's grasp of these matters certainly could be improved.