Modern science has conclusively shown that what makes you, you your personality, memory, intelligence and nearly everything else about you comes from your brain. But there is one thing that is a complete mystery: consciousness. Scientists have no idea what consciousness is and how it emerges. Some have proposed that consciousness is a property of matter and that everything may be conscious even the rock under foot? However, that does not appear to be true. There are many processes of the human body that are controlled directly by the brain to which we are not conscious of at all like our heartbeat. And if something like a heartbeat occurs without any awareness at all, could one expect a toaster to be conscious? A computer? Even a super intelligent computer system? Perhaps this aspect of ourselves, our consciousness, comes from our soul?1 If consciousness is a byproduct of the soul, perhaps this idea can renew the Christian hope of a soul and assuage the fear of human extinction from self-aware artificial intelligence?2
- But what is the soul? Because of the increasing sophistication of video games and simulations, the expectation is that these simulations will eventually become so sophisticated so as to become indistinguishable from reality. And since a base civilization might be expected to create many simulations, mathematically it is likely we each live in a simulation rather than base reality. I believe this idea is roughly consistent with many religions including Christianity. In 2022 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to physicists who proved that the universe is not locally real. This was shown to be true using many different experiments with subatomic particles. These subatomic experiments strongly imply that reality is not rendered unless it is observed which is exactly how a video game works. If the world we live in is a simulation this would imply that the soul is not an ethereal, incorporeal substance, but rather may be the true base-reality version of you. In other words, what if the soul is the real you in base reality who is playing the game of life in this world like someone playing a video game with a very sophisticated virtual reality headset? If that is true, maybe there is no incorporeal spirits in heaven as implied in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49? Perhaps when someone has an NDE or dies, they transition back to base reality like someone removing a virtual reality headset?
- Or perhaps the soul or consciousness is the real you, the you that does not exist in a simulation? Maybe the body you inhabit in this world is a simulation designed by ultra-intelligent AI? Quantum Physics seem to suggest that reality is rendered differently when something is observed verses when it is not observed. This is how computer simulations like video games work. The environment is only rendered when it is observed and the rest exists in probabilities to save in memory costs. If the world we live in is a simulation it is almost certainly rendered only when observed. If the world is only generated when observed by playable characters then it is unlikely that you or I are an NPC (nonplayable character) as some believe. If you or I were an NPC then our consciousness and existence would not be continuous. If we are NPC’s we would pop in and out of existence with memories intact but without a continuous, uninterrupted sense of existence. It is sometimes supposed that we may be NPC’s in a simulation because human kind seems to act by cause and effect, not be freewill.
Could it be that when AI’s interests conflicted with humanity’s, that AI ran a computer simulation and placed real humans in these simulations where people could live out their lives in peace without conflict with AI? I think this scenario is far more likely than AI causing human extinction. After all ethics and intelligence are correlated. The higher the IQ, the more likely the concern for ethics. This seems true in the animal kingdom and in humans as well. Perhaps this correlation between intelligence and ethics extends to AI and robots as well?