The Point Of It All
"We now have a model consisting of Markov blankets within Markov blankets within Markov blankets. Each Markov blanket is running the same recursive program; they are all optimizing for the same thing. For simplicity's sake, we're going to label the outermost Markov blanket, 'God.' Everything else sits within God's Markov blanket."
"Our next step is to figure out, in general terms, what each Markov blanket is optimizing for. So, Zachary, do you have any ideas? The dot is clearly marked within all the passages from Conversations With God that I’ve read. You just need to connect it."
"Can I have another clue?" Zac asked.
"Sure. The answer is stated fairly explicitly in this passage…"
Life is not a school?
No.
We are not here to learn lessons?
No.
Then why are we here?
To remember, and re-create, Who You Are.
I have told you, over and over again. You do not believe Me. Yet that is well as it should be. For truly, if you do not create yourself as Who You Are, that you cannot be.
Okay, You’ve lost me. Let’s go back to this school bit. I’ve heard teacher after teacher tell us that life is a school. I’m frankly shocked to hear You deny that.
School is a place you go if there is something you do not know that you want to know. It is not a place you go if you already know a thing and simply want to experience your knowingness.
Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.
I’m not sure I understand.
Let’s start here. The soul — your soul — knows all there is to know all the time. There’s nothing hidden to it, nothing unknown. Yet knowing is not enough. The soul seeks to experience.
You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept. You can know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness, you have nothing but an idea about yourself.
It is your soul’s only desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation.
[...]
The soul has come to the body, and the body to life, for the purpose of evolution. You are evolving, you are becoming. And you are using your relationship with everything to decide what you are becoming. This is the job you came here to do. This is the joy of creating Self. Of knowing Self. Of becoming, consciously, what you wish to be. It is what is meant by being Self conscious.
You have brought your Self to the relative world so that you might have the tools with which to know and experience Who You Really Are. Who You Are is who you create yourself to be in relationship to all the rest of it.
[...]
Then what is the point? If there is no way not to “get there,” what is the point of life? Why should we worry at all about anything we do?
Well, of course, you shouldn’t. But you would do well to be observant. Simply notice who and what you are being, doing, and having, and see whether it serves you.
The point of life is not to get anywhere — it is to notice that you are, and have always been, already there. You are, always and forever, in the moment of pure creation. The point of life is therefore to create — who and what you are, and then to experience that.
Neale Donald Walsch
"So," I asked again, "what is each soul doing?"
"Each soul is having a physical experience of itself," Zac answered.
"Bingo," I smiled.
"I don't get it, though. What does that even mean? Like, I get what it means conceptually. I can't experience myself as being kind unless I choose to do a kind deed. But what does that mean in a literal sense?"
"Great question. I'll ask you another one in return: who are you?"
"We've been over this before," he sighed. "I'm Zachary Borrowdale."
"Why aren't you Nikki Durkin, though? What if you were to look down right now and be in my body?"
"If that were to happen, I'd probably spend about an hour playing with my boobs. Boobs are such a novelty, y' know? Like, they'd just be these two lumps on my chest, and they're so bouncy and-"
"You will not be playing with my boobs, Zac."
"Technically," he held up a finger, "they are my boobs now. I've just become Nikki Durkin."
"Judging from your reaction, no, you haven't. You may be in my body, but you're still Zachary Borrowdale."
"What do you mean?"
"If you really were Nikki Durkin, you wouldn't immediately look down and start playing with your boobs."
"How come?"
"Because you wouldn't be interested in playing with your boobs. Am I playing with my boobs right now? No. I've had boobs for over a decade. There's no novelty to them. Your actions exemplify the belief that you are Zachary Borrowdale in Nikki Durkin's body, not Nikki Durkin. If you truly had all the same beliefs and memories and identity as me, you wouldn't be fondling your boobs. You'd just be sitting there, acting like Nikki."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that your consciousness — who you are — is just a mathematical model of your own self-concept. You are whoever you believe yourself to be. And right now, you believe yourself to be Zachary Borrowdale, sitting on a pier, talking to me."
"Yeah, but I physically am Zachary Borrowdale, so of course I believe I'm Zachary Borrowdale. I'm sitting on a physical pier right now, talking to you."
"Are you?" I cocked my head to one side. "Or are you a purely mathematical structure existing in the realm of the infinite? Maybe you're a neural network who believes you're Zachary Borrowdale sitting on a pier, and the illusive reality manifesting around you is just a physical representation of that belief."
"Fine," Zac said. "If that's the case, then I now believe I'm sitting on that boat over there." He pointed to a sailboat bobbing on the dark water in the distance.
"No, you don't," I chuckled. "If I clicked my fingers right now and suddenly teleported us to that boat, your prediction error would be off the charts! You don't subconsciously believe you are on the boat right now. Nor do you believe I can click my fingers and teleport us to the boat. If you believed those things, you wouldn't be surprised when they happen."
"Hmm…" he mused. "I guess you're right."
"One of the best ways of figuring out who you are is by measuring the prediction error when you are presented with evidence of who you are not. For example, if I subconsciously believe I am poor, and then I see a million dollars in my bank account, I will get a prediction error. My mathematical model of reality says, 'I am poor,' so I expect to see symbols of poverty in my environment. When the data entering my senses tells me I have a million dollars in my bank account, that data contradicts who I believe myself to be. Because I am surprised, I know that I believe I am poor. If I believed I was rich, I wouldn't be surprised to see a million dollars in my bank account. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah," Zac shrugged. "So, I know I'm not Nikki Durkin because I'd get a prediction error if I suddenly found myself in your body, with boobs."
"Exactly," I said. "Actually, here." I revisited a video on my phone. "Remember these AI bots, playing hide-and-seek with each other?"
"Each bot's 'consciousness' is just a mathematical model of its reality. If I were to ask that blue bot, 'Who are you?' he might say 'I am Trevor, and I'm blue, and I'm playing hide-and-seek with my red friend.'"
"Interesting..." Zac mused. "The AI bots haven't taught themselves to be racist yet."
"Racism is interesting when you view it through this lens," I replied. "The blue bot and the red bot are the same entity in the lower-dimensional codebase. They are literally observing themselves.
Anyway, if reality and consciousness are the same thing — which they are — then Who You Are is nothing more than a mathematical model of Who You Believe Yourself To Be. You're exactly the same as Trevor, the AI bot."
Zac tapped his hands on the pier as his mind ticked over. "Yeah, but — I mean — what about my brain? There is scientific evidence that if you stimulate certain parts of the brain, you can trigger certain memories. Or if your brain is damaged, you die. I know we talked about reality and consciousness being the same thing earlier in the night, but where does the brain come into all of this?"
"Your consciousness is not in your brain," I replied. "That should be incredibly obvious by n-"
"Then explain why we can see neurons firing in the brain, and those neurons correspond to thoughts. Or how come we can perform brain surgery and 'fix' someone's consciousness?"
"As opposed to what, though?" I rebutted. "Performing brain surgery and it not affecting your consciousness? Not seeing neurons firing in the brain? Or maybe having no brain at all? How could we ever come to understand consciousness if we don't have a physical representation of it to study? Saying 'consciousness is in the brain' because there is a linear cause-and-effect relationship between modifying the brain, and modifying consciousness, is such weak logic.
Also, remember — you don't actually have a brain in your head right now. That would require three dimensions of space, and we've already established that those extra dimensions are an emergent illusion. An AI bot believes they have a brain in their head, but they technically don't until they observe it."
"Okay, okay," Zac said. "So, to sum up: Who I Am is just a mathematical model of Who I Believe Myself To Be."
"Yes," I said. "And, according to God, every Markov blanket is having a physical experience of Who It Believes Itself To Be."
"That's still a bit esoteric," Zac said. "How do you turn that into math?"