Is the Universe Conscious?
Ignoring the whole &quot;speed-of-light delays make galaxy-brains impossible&quot; thing, here&#x27;s a different argument I&#x27;m fond of:<p>A conscious mind has an at-least-somewhat-coherent preference function, yes? (Under modern predictive-processing models of the brain, the experience of being a mind is the experience of focusing on things that allow you to make reward-biased predictions, to further drive embodied processes like movement to &quot;unify&quot; those biased predictions with the environment—i.e. to seek the reward state. So you need a preference function to focus, and thereby to have a train of thought.)<p>So, the Earth might be conscious. Despite seeing ourselves as different from e.g. spiders, or algae, or bacteria, every preference-function of Earth-based life is actually rather close-together in possible-preference-function-space. You could say that the Earth—i.e. everything on Earth that thinks—&quot;wants&quot; to spread carbon-based life through mitosis and meiosis. If the Earth was a starship, this would be its mission.<p>The universe, on the other hand? Maybe if we&#x27;re the only life in it. Otherwise, there&#x27;s probably a <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.lesswrong.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paperclip_maximizer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.lesswrong.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Paperclip_maximizer</a> somewhere with a very different idea of what the universe &quot;wants&quot;, that can&#x27;t really be coherently combined with our own.<p>If such a universe had a brain, it would necessarily be one with split-brain syndrome; it wouldn&#x27;t be able to both &quot;be&quot; Earth-based life and &quot;be&quot; a paperclip-maximizer at the same time, and still have consciousness in the sense we define it. So, not &quot;one&quot; consciousness, no.