I haven't tried microdosing; do you find it different/ more interesting than cannabis? — Janus

I'm thinking of psilocybin. Yes, completely different from THC. Weirder, more spiritual or - for the strictly secular - more self-revelatory. Equally interesting.

You can do THC every day but it would be an odd duck who liked to do mushrooms every day.

I started with tiny doses and over the past six months worked my way up to a mild borderline-psychedelic buzz. At times I get tiny glimpses of the pit but at a distance where it can be unpacked, analyzed and even understood.

It would be remiss of me not to say psilocybin is a demanding chemical - it will show you yourself, your darkness and your light - but small doses can be just recreational.

Thanks ZZZ, I've had plenty of experience with Psilocybe cubensis (but not for about 8 years and then it was "heroic doses", not microdoses); they grow abundantly in cow shit in the area I inhabit.

works you recommend — Janus

Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them

Saint-Denys, 1867

A classic. Maybe the first attempt at a book-length scholarly analysis of lucid dreaming. (Not sure; I'm a dabbler...) Includes technique and guidance.

Lucid Dreaming

Stephen LaBerge, PhD 1985

The author was a lucid dream researcher at Stanford. Fascinating dude and research.Techniques and guidance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_LaBerge

The more you read about lucid dreaming the more likely you are to go lucid. Also, if you check for your hands 10 times a day during your waking hours you're more likely to check for your hands in your dreams. Fear is reasonable.

:smile: Cheers, I'll check those out.

Thanks ZZZ, I've had plenty of experience with Psilocybe cubensis (but not for about 8 years and then it was "heroic doses", not microdoses); they grow abundantly in cow shit in the area I inhabit. — Janus

Sweet. :)

"heroic doses" — Janus

Small doses only for me. About once a week and I have no desire for more.

Recipe for a functionalist theory of consciousness:

1) Specify the concept of consciousness your theory is a theory of. It is important to separate theory from definition as much as possible. Without that, you risk just redefining words to fit the theory.

E.g. the IIT, as expressed by Tononi, does have a phenomenal concept. It's fairly clear at the start of his paper.

2) Identify the critical function. What does a system have to do to realise consciousness?

E.g. the IIT specifies integrating information as the critical function.

3) Pick your verb. Does the function realise, instantiate, constitute consciousness? These are verbs indicating identity, and that's what you really need. Other verbs indicating a relationship (other than identity) between two conceptually distinct things indicate a non functionalist theory. Verbs such as cause, produce, give rise to, etc.

E.g. the IIT says consciousness IS integrated information, so it is indeed a functionalist theory, I think. A system is conscious when and only when it is integrating information, we should read that as.

4) Why can't all that happen in the dark? if the starting point is a phenomenal conception of consciousness, say why that function could not take place without the system being conscious. This really connects the dots and is the holy grail. Is the hard bit. One way to do this is to say "but that's just what we mean by the word", but that is rarely plausible in cases of theories of phenomenal consciousness. That works better with other kinds of functions, like 'walking'. In the case of walking, theory and definition coincide to a high degree, theory probably just filling in a lot more details not normally included in the definition/concept.

E.g. the IIT does not do this as far as I am aware. There's just no answer to this question.

I'm particularly interested in comments by @fdrake and @Cuthbert if you have time. Others as well of course.

Where's Garrett gone? Is he ok? @Garret Travers I can't summon him. Oh, maybe I can. The name didn't come up as an automatic option.

He left and seems to have changed his mind about being a member. I don't know why.

Must’ve been something we said.

Oh that's a shame. Spunky lad. Liked him.

Let's go back to an example you raised earlier, that of DNA. Consider the statement 'DNA encodes genetic instructions for the development and maintenance of all known life forms'. Does this qualify as a useful explanation of what DNA does? — Theorem

Suppose you suggested that to a highly intelligent alien as an explanation of DNA. Would the alien then be equipped to go off to its spaceship and replicate the workings of DNA in its lab?

No, you'd need to tell the alien stuff like this: each nucleotide is composed of one of four nitrogen-containing nucleobases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] or thymine [T]), a sugar called deoxyribose, and a phosphate group.

That's a description of what actually happens. If you told the alien all that stuff, you wouldn't then need to to talk about "instructions" or "information".

Or biological scientists showing that they see life and mind as the same essential kind of mechanism.

And Peirce saw semiosis as the logic organising the Cosmos. — apokrisis

Science may be true or false (just because that's the nature of verbal and mathematical language), whereas; awareness is always true.

We are a vile bunch of assholes. Actually you're not. You're quite nice.

That's a description of what actually happens. If you told the alien all that stuff, you wouldn't then need to to talk about "instructions" or "information". — Daemon

I doubt that this is true. Again, I'm not sure what you mean by the term 'actually happens', but it seems that if someone doesn't know that 'DNA encodes proteins' then they're missing something vitally important that no amount of knowledge about the chemical structure of DNA (per se) can provide. The knowledge that 'DNA encodes proteins' is an additional insight at a higher level of abstraction not derivable from the knowledge of chemistry alone.

Thanks, I hope you don't drink and smoke dope all day. All I'm really saying is that religious or mystical experiences or intuitions can be evidence for beliefs for the person who experiences them, but cannot be evidence for anyone else, because there is always the possibility of being wrong. And that possibility obtains also in the empirical sciences, which are perennially defensible. — Janus

No, I do not. Coffee is my vice, and that's it. I also want to apologize for that response yesterday, it was out of line and rude. I think the difference is between the way we use the word "evidence". Experiences and intuitions are feelings. Feelings are reasons why we do or believe things, but they wouldn't be considered evidence in my book.

Evidence would be something which proves that the conclusion we made based on our feelings was right. More importantly, evidence would demonstrate that what would contradict our conclusions, is wrong. So if it we found that when a person talks to God, there was a radio wave or something that left the brain and returned, we couldn't say, "Talking to God is only in your mind."

Human intuition and feelings are often wrong. However, there is nothing wrong with being honest that it is only human intuition and feelings. As long as you state, "Yes, there's no evidence for this, but wouldn't it be fun to explore!" there's no issue. Its when people start claiming that their intuitions and feelings are true claims about reality without any evidence, but claim there is evidence as I've defined, that the exploration has become dishonest and outside of the realm of truth.

The knowledge that 'DNA encodes proteins' is an additional insight not derivable from the knowledge of chemistry alone. — Theorem

But it's also 1. not necessary to understand genetics and 2. not an element of the process.

DNA causes appropriate proteins to be formed. "Encodes" is a commentary on the process. As you say, it's an insight, it's a thought, it's a product of consciousness, not part of the process.

But it's also 1. not necessary to understand genetics and 2. not an element of the process. — Daemon

I don't see much evidence that '1' is true. I don't think I've ever come across an explanation of genetics that didn't leverage these concepts (whether in a popular science magazine or in a highly detailed biochemistry textbook).

Putting it simply, semiosis is the construction of a meaningful relation between a self and world using a (meaningless) code. — apokrisis

I don't know if I would say it was "meaningless". It seems to me that natural selection found survival and mating benefits in the ability to construct this meaningful relation between organism and environment. The phenomenological sensory symbols that are part of the construct would be similar across multiple species as brains evolve from pre-existing brains.

Phenomenology is socially constructed. It is a modelling exercise using language to externalise the internal in a socially pragmatic fashion. — apokrisis

If language is used to externalise the internal that means the internal is prior to the externalizing of it. Therefore it can't be socially constructed. The internal constructs the external. It doesn't even make sense to talk about it in terms of "internal" vs. "external". Where and when does the external become what is internally constructed? It seems that this type of language-use creates a problem of identity.

It seems to me that the externals are just other internals so internals are prior to externals and externals only come about by internally recognizing that you are one internal among many.

Object permanence comes about in toddlers not by any social design because you have to first be internally aware that other objects exist independently of you and don't share the contents of your own internal states to then go on to understand that language is used to communicate your internal states to others.

So the code can act as a code because it stands outside both sides of the equation. It is neither material, nor informational - as much as that is actually possible. — apokrisis

Then how does the code exist if not materially or informationally? In saying that there are states of being either material or information that the code is not, you are implying that there are other states of being that are not material or information that the code is. This appears to be just more word salad. It seems to me that "code" is synonymous with "information". Interpreting the code/information is determining the actual cause of the symbol to exist.

Information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. Information exists wherever causes leave effects. The mind is the effect of prior causes (evolution (evolutionary psychology), life experiences stored in long-term memory and the type of senses (measuring devices) one possesses).

Neurons are like genes in being essentially costless in terms of their physics. Humans can afford trillions of synaptic switches. And they are like genes in that each switch is essentially meaningless. The connections have no meaning until the pattern that is a functional regulatory model has been evolved, developed, learnt, habituated, remembered. — apokrisis

Genes and neurons and their states are not meaningless in that they are effects of prior causes. Genes and neurons evolved from prior states with natural selection promoting those states that allows persistence of those states through time and space. The things that seem to be able to exist for extended periods are those things with a cohesive resistance to external changes. It seems to me that the "randomness", which you seem to mean when you say, "meaningless" is just a state that evolved in response to the "randomness" of the external world. Adaptability (having multiple switches providing multiple responses to external stimuli) is meaningful in a changing world.

Then you're a naive realist?
— Harry Hindu

No. — Philosophim

But you described a world as it appears in consciousness - as if the world is as it appears for you - that the objects you perceive have all the properties that you perceive them to have (like being physical).

What does it mean to be physical?
— Harry Hindu

To be made up of matter and energy. And I will return the question. What does it mean to be non-physical? What evidence do you have of it existing? — Philosophim

I don't use those terms, "physical" and "non-physical" because they don't make any sense. What we currently understand to be "matter" is the states or processes of "matter" on ever smaller scales. You can never point to a particle when particles are described as being the relationship or interaction of smaller particles ad infinitum. It's process, or relationships, or information all the way down.

You've made a common mistake of equating the outside observation of something, to the experience of being something. Find any other person in the world. Do you know what it is like to be them? No, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Do you know what it feels like for them to hear the beating of their own heart? No, but that doesn't mean they don't have a heart, that it doesn't beat in their body, and that they can't feel what that's like.

If I open up a brain and look at it, I don't know what its like to BE that brain. You seem to think there should be a picture show going on in there, which is silly. What we imagine in our heads isn't light. Its the communication of hundreds and thousands of electrons at incredibly high speeds. — Philosophim

Why would you think that I would think that there is a picture show (of all things) going on inside a brain if you don't have a picture show going on inside of yours? How would you have come to that idea that there might be a picture show in someone's head, or that others might think the same if there wasn't something like a picture show going on in someone's head?

This is the point I've been making: That there appears to be a distinction between "being" (the term you used) and how "being" is observed. I don't know if I really find that term, "being" useful because I believe that I am being more than just my brain. I can feel my toes maybe more intimately than I can see them. After all, feeling my toes as opposed to just seeing them is what makes me identify them as my toes.

It seems to me that the "being" in your sense of it, is the same as the act of observing, as if being is the act of observing. This would also explain why you believe that others might think that a picture show is going on inside brains. If "being" has an ontological existence, then why can't we observe it in others? Maybe because naive realists believe that the properties that are perceived are the properties that really exist independently of your observation (your being). In other words, naive realists are confusing the map with the territory, or the measurement with what is measured.

How the computer works is much the same. If I open up a hard drive, do I see windows running? If I open up the ethernet wires, can I see youtube and sound being streamed over? And yet if you told a programmer that this is evidence that the computer's functionality is a non-physical process, they would laugh at you. — Philosophim

I wouldn't say that it is non-physical. I'd say that it is information. Since information is the relationship between cause and effect, the information in the ethernet wires is different than the information that displays on the screen because it requires further processing to appear on the screen. What information is relevant to your goals at any moment will be the cause of the effect that you focus your attention on. So when you see Youtube on your screen, you are more interested in the video itself and it's cause (what the video is about (when and where it was recorded and what was recorded), not how it came to appear on your computer monitor). Information exists everywhere causes leave effects. Your present goals is what determines what information is useful at any given moment. I could glean from your use of language what you are currently thinking or where you might be from and your level of education in the language you are using, depending on my goal at the moment. All that information is there as a result of those causes, but what information I deem valuable is the bits that promote or inhibit my present goal.

The problem is, sometimes people believe that if they don't understand how something fully works, they can make up things about how it works. You can't. You can't introduce things that don't exist into a system. You can't say, "I don't understand how youtube can be on my screen, yet not be in my computer when I look at it," and think your made up idea that it must be a non-physical process has any merit. — Philosophim

You're conflating two different processes (Youtube being on your screen and being in your computer). Looking at one is not looking at the other so I would never say that. What I have been saying is more like why I see Youtube in your computer as electronic boards and circuits, but the computer sees it as a picture show.

Back to the brain for a second, when we physically and chemically alter the brain, people's experience of BEING a brain changes. We've confirmed that time and again. Go get drunk, then tell me that your consciousness exists on a higher level beyond what physical alcohol can touch. Go read the evidence of anti-psychotic drugs, hallucinegens, and amazing records of brain damage like loss of long term memory, the inability to mentally see colors, comprehend words, etc, then tell me their consciousness exists on some plane beyond the physical. — Philosophim

But that is my question: why there is such a stark difference between observing brains that are drunk vs being a brain that is drunk. If I am being my brain, then why don't I experience the visual of neurons firing electrical signals at slower rates rather than feelings of dizziness and reduced inhibitions?

But we don't have any theories that are 'optimal, perfect and rational' explanations and descriptions of the world, — Theorem

That depends on your attitude towards the theory. Every law we have can be said to be optimal, perfect and rational in its domain of applicability.

If we conjecture two mutually attached substances, matter and soul, all problems are solved! Imagine what it is to be an elementary particle. If it didn't have soul, how why should it reach out for other particles? After their excitation into a temporally unidirectional real state from the temporally fluctuating virtual state, they constantly reached out to other particles by coupling to the timeless omnipresent virtual fields, forming increasingly complex beings (dissipative complex systems evolution between alternating heat sources) on the soothing and mitigating environments of universal planets.

The paper itself can be found here.

The paper lays out and important area of research, but unfortunately it's not what I was hoping for, which is an explanation of why meaning can't be physical. Obviously, certain types of information can be explained in fully physical ways. A gas nozzle "knows" to shut off when the tank is full because an increase in air pressure due to the tank being full is a signal about the gas level in the tank. This interaction only makes sense in the context of a (relatively) complex mechanical system. You get significantly more complex transfers (dynamic modulation) of information in other parts of a car (e.g., timing belt/crankshaft/camshaft interactions, master/slave cylinders), and these are still, in the grand scale of things, extremely simple.

The point about a Beethoven symphony not being the same thing when represented as a sound wave graph is off the mark. First, this is a common example used for predicate dualism, but he appears to be arguing for some sort of type/substance dualism vis-á-vis information. Second, as I'm pretty sure he would agree from other papers of his I've read, the symphony as observed by a mind is the result of multiple levels of communication and interpretation by different components of the human body, not just the sound wave. The sound wave works as storage for the symphony because the human brain is packed with all sorts of analysis "software" and error correcting functions that turn it into perception.


So, the paper seems to fall prey to the same dogmatic views I've seen pop up quite a bit in the biosemiotics literature where meaning just has to be something totally different. This is perhaps the case, but given the rapid accumulation of knowledge about how information can be explained in physical terms, it needs much stronger evidence than assertion of dogma.

The physics of information compression is well understood from advances in computer science. The fact that a protein can be coded for in something totally unlike a protein is not evidence of any sort of ontological difference vis-á-vis information. The fact that something can be coded in a format where it has lower entropy than the thing it is meant to represent is a necissary outcome of the differences between Kolmogorov complexity versus Shannon Entropy.


Terrance Deacon has some good work on the relationship between Shannon Entropy and Boltzmann Entropy that presents a decent framework for how information can be physical, even at high levels of abstraction. This would seem to run counter to the assertion here.

Algorithmic entropy can obviously exceed physical limits on information entropy vis-á-vis energy, and a combination of compression and error would allow information to code for the physically impossible. My guess is that there is a correlation between the incomputability of Kolmogorov complexity and the fact that computational systems can and often do represent violations of physical laws.

This is a discussion for another thread though.

Biosemiotics is an interesting field, but one with some major problems. When I read papers telling me that the enviornment is the interpretant of a genome, then rebuttals saying no, a genetic lineage is, with the current population of an organism acting variously as object, symbol, or interpretant, it seems like the theory has a problem. How is it supposed to explain things when every subject of analysis maps to every possible part of the model? I've seen a fossil represented as an interpretant of a bone, but then this being rejected because an interpretant must be extracting value from information.

The introduction of value maximization, from economics, seems like a major misstep. Also an ad hoc introduction to keep life special, and semiotics specially about life. The problem here is that such maximization doesn't even show up in economic data, and evolution certainly doesn't progress towards ideal solutions. An organism will extract information from the enviornment as long as said information extraction doesn't cause it to fail to reproduce at high enough rates that is disappears. Models from biology suggest it will extract valueless information as a rule, so long as the costs aren't too high, as a method of searching for information that increases survival.

The relatively recent mathematics of self organizing systems also suggest we might get a better answer for how meaning emerges for systems, an answer that doesn't rely on what is essentially a black box cut.

Fire flys blinking in unison were once thought to show the magic of information, or likewise, to be a violation of physical laws. As it turned out, pulse coupled oscillators with a positive parabolic curve towards thresholds (diminishing returns as the threshold value is approached) always result in synchronization. This finding explained phenomena from earthquakes, to chemistry, to heart cells, to fire flies. Given how often self similarity pops up in nature, it would be suprising if meaning only began to show up at relatively large scales. The mathematics of self-organizing systems only appeared 20 years ago, and already a lot of mysteries are falling away.

The other issue with meaning starting with life is what this means for self-replicating silicon crystals or strands of RNA in a petri dish that undergo replication, mutation, and selection. Do these represent meaning? Plenty of other physical systems self organize and undergo selection, we just don't see them as such because subjectively they are far different. However, it turns out that the mathematics describing them are quite similar to those involved in biology.

That depends on your attitude towards the theory. Every law we have can be said to be optimal, perfect and rational in its domain of applicability. — EugeneW

Sure, we could say, by analogy, that geocentrism is optimal, perfect and rational as long as you ignore all of the data that doesn't fit its predictions. At that point it seems like we're stretching the meaning of the words 'optimal', 'perfect' and 'rational' beyond recognition.

Here is a good example of the information - thermodynamic entropy connection that would allow for meaning in physical systems. It's an incomplete but important bridge. The paper is bloated, having been prepared for a popsci book. You can skip to the section on thermodynamics.

This set of ideas needs to be merged with the concept of algorithmic entropy better, and the mechanics of computation observed at the molecular level to be developed into the model.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/Biosemiotics_Science.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjr1rTRgcb2AhUEmmoFHQCCAacQFnoECAsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3RL3FObsO3O0_jLVImLlJb

My own personal inclination is that a new concept based on the relative synonymity of different physical interactions within a system is needed to explain complexity.

Gas dynamics are emergent, high entropy systems that are nonetheless easy to model due to the almost exact synonymity of all interactions. The more complex a system is, the less synonymous interactions become. At a basic level, this has to do with chemical reactivity. Any interaction between two elements thrown together at low temperatures generally can be predicted based on mass and velocity. Different elements are close synonyms in this case. For example, a bunch of ice smashing into a bunch of most metals can be represented quite easily using similar parameters. Not so the combination of two highly reactive elements. The chemical properties of given parts of a system can be synonymous for any other part, or in some cases, carry a much different meaning (mixing salt, sand, iron filings, concrete, flour, insert most powders here with vinegar, versus baking soda).

So, some chemicals passing through the blood brain barrier don't do much. They bounce around and act as close synonyms. Those shaped in such a way that they mimic neurotransmitters at binding sites however have a different meaning for the system. That is, meaning can have a direct relationship with chemical properties, or velocity, or mass, depending on the system in question.

I wasn't making any theoretical claims about the relation between mind and world or that there is a mental theatre. I know from experience that I perceive things with greater clarity and vividness the less my mind is agitated by thoughts; that's all I was referring to. — Janus

I was trying to convey the idea that every awareness we have is a kind of change and therefore a kind of thought. So to distinguish between the receiver of stimulation and the stimulation itself, or between the mind and the thoughts it thinks, is to focus on two kinds of awarenesses, two kinds of changes and therefore two kinds of thoughts.
When I perceive myself as ‘stilling’ or quieting my mind, I am not reducing thoughts. What I am doing is shifting the mood of my thinking fro anxious to peaceful. We tend to think of thoughts as discretely felt packets of things. The more out of sorts or anxious we are , the more the flow of experience seems to be cut up into these discrete bits. When we are simply drifting pleasantly along , it is not as if this flow of thought is slowed. On the contrary, the feeling of pleasant thought-free awareness is one of a more accelerated kind of thinking that is marked by a thematic consistency and intimacy. Becuase this kind of flow of thinking is so smoothly self-consistent it seems to us that we are thinking fewer thoughts.
So the opposition you make between agitated thinking and vivid clarity is the distinction between this smooth flow, i. which things make sense , and the interruptive, alienated flow of thinking.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. — Joshs

It feels like you are reading way too much into the "precise" verbosity favored by professional philosophers. He is merely covering is bases. Would anything essential be lost rephrasing that quote as:

"Does a complete physical description and understanding of the brain imply consciousness? If it does not, consciousness must be aphysical."

There are no high metaphysical claims about realism here.

Would you similarly object to the statement:

"Does a complete physical description and understanding of biology imply life? If not, life must be aphysical."

I grant you that the with consciousness we are attempting to examining the very same process or entity by which we examine that process or entity. However, there are two sides of this equation, the third-person examination, and the first person phenomenon we are trying to explain. A third person scientific elucidation of the brain is no more problematic than any other subject. The problem is the bridge between the third person understanding and the first person phenomenon of consciousness.

So, some chemicals passing through the blood brain barrier don't do much. They bounce around and act as close synonyms. Those shaped in such a way that they mimic neurotransmitters at binding sites however have a different meaning for the system. That is, meaning can have a direct relationship with chemical properties, or velocity, or mass, depending on the system in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So here's Count Tim using "meaning" in a way that doesn't explain anything new, in much the same way people misuse "information". When you've said "some chemicals have the same effects as neurotransmitters" you've said it all. The "meaning" part doesn't have any work to do.

Or if you think it does do something in addition to the chemistry Count Timothy, please tell us what it is.

DNA causes appropriate proteins to be formed. "Encodes" is a commentary on the process. — Daemon

But then it becomes commentary all the way down. What is a protein in your reductionist terms? A chain of peptides. What’s a peptide? The name for a class of amino acids all linked by peptide bonds. What’s an amino acid? Etc.

The reduction to material/efficient cause is always done through the lens of formal/final cause. As @Theorem says, we can identify some suitable compositional level of description, such as "amino acid", because it is characterised by its functional and structural properties. An amino acid is the "right stuff" because it is in-formed substance.

So if you are just saying that "information" is a reified concept, that's fine. It is. But then so is "matter". Each describes the reciprocal pole of a metaphysical abstraction - the division of reality into its top-down and its bottom-up causes. The classical systems account of Aristotle.

Information theory counts the degrees of freedom in nature. It reduces reality to its simplest possible 'bits". In physics, this cashes out as Planck-scale materiality - the probability of being able to measure a definite difference. A bare fluctuation. An entropic microstate.

So the epistemology of reductionism is hierarchical. And as such, it cannot escape dealing with all Aristotle's four causes.

In practice, our models of reality must be efficient. And that optimisation involves striking some balance of the two sides of the story. We find focal levels like - "proteins", or "amino acids", or "amine groups"; or eventually "atoms", "quantum particle fields" and "vacuum expectation values" - that do the job of defining both the material/efficient causes, and the formal/final causes, that are involved in some level of explanation being able to work as a level of explanation.

So reductionism might disguise the fact that it is a four cause analysis - as it must be to describe nature. Folk like yourself might try to make it conform to atomism by saying functional structure just kind of "emerges" as an accident, and so suppress the role of non-holonomic hierarchical constraints. And also then push the global holonomic constraints right out of the physicalist picture by calling those the fundamental laws and constants of nature - equations in the mind of God, or further accidents because, well ... multiverse.

But this is just self-deluding rhetoric. Even physics has got around to embracing "information" as fundamental these days.

Information theory counts the degrees of freedom in nature. It reduces reality to its simplest possible 'bits". In physics, this cashes out as Planck-scale materiality - the probability of being able to measure a definite difference. A bare fluctuation. An entropic microstate. — apokrisis

What black hole entropy doesn't account for is what forms entered the hole. The entropy of a black hole formed out of a bike is the same as one formed out of a tree (if both have the same mass). This entropý has it all backwards and lays at the foundation of emergent gravity, which has it backwards too.

Sure, we could say, for instance, that geocentrism is optimal, perfect and rational as long as you ignore all of the evidence — Theorem

In general relativity, the Earth [becould[/b] be considered the center of the universe. Like the Sun or the center of the galaxy. Motion is relative.

I grant you that the with consciousness we are attempting to examining the very same process or entity by which we examine that process or entity. However, there are two sides of this equation, the third-person examination, and the first person phenomenon we are trying to explain. — hypericin

I suggest that whatever our alleged subject matter, be it consciousness or quarks, we are always at the same implicitly experiencing the object we are conscious of and the subjective consciousness of it. The third person examination simply isn’t able to make explicit what is implicit in it, which is that any experience of an entity is the experience of a a particular contextual sense of that entity, which is a sense for me , from my point of view, at this moment. Built into the very meaning of the entity as I experienced it right now is its particular relevance to me. Relevance is covered over by the third person mode of thinking.