Sahil's Theory of Everything (WIP)

What is it all?

The short version (so far): it all bootstraps from a single trick, matter that models itself in order to keep existing. That self-model is the seed of information, and eventually of a “Me” that can climb a capability ladder; measure, move and manipulate the world; and live in two worlds at once, the physical and the symbolic. The part that can know itself lives in pattern, in substrate. I’m not building this idea so much as compiling it (slowly, and probably forever), over at unnatural.info. The rough scaffolding below is where it started.

1. Life is about not dying, the rest is optional theatrics. Consciously, volo ergo sum.

2. Starts with modelling a ‘Me’ and climbing the capability tree/ladder

3. Duality of quality leading to Measurement, Movement, Manipulation

4. The universe and the world - Physical and Symbolic

5. Reality and Perception - Objectivity & Subjectivity

   In the beginning life was a matter of (physical) matter mattering to itself enough to somehow continue existing. To do this, logically and physically, it needed a representation of itself against which to measure its continued existence. (Or perhaps, matter that chanced into that capability happened to be the first step of life. Before that, some forms of matter just had reactions, automated measurements that caused them to move.) The representations must also necessarily be made of matter, since matter is all that can physically be. However, the matter being represented was more than the matter representing, and this was an important matter, because today we know this as Information (thanks to Shannon sensei). The information purposely contained and conveyed (necessarily in some matter) is, for its contextual purposes, what we call a language. Thus DNA is a language of life and binary is the digital language of today’s transistor computers, or Thai is the language of the people of Thailand (or was the country named after the language?). Any language represents and talks about some parts and ‘things’ in the world, and many of these languages try to talk about everything (and one of them as objectively as possible - math). The matter that takes the form of some unit of information is called a symbol, although the matter matters less than the information of the symbol. Our mind is symbolic. As conscious beings we can manipulate symbols with and against our volitions. In a fractal and chaotic world, we can create unlimited (symbolic) Things. Since we (as minds, in brains as seats of conscious experience) are symbolic being things in physical bodies, even pure (made-up) symbols end up with the ability to affect physical reality. Thus we humans (our kind/level of symbolic beings) use language (read/written or spoken/heard) to stay on the same page with each other (as much as possible).