Previously, we discussed the emergence of Galacticity, or a Galactic level of awareness,
which is one step above Hypersociality, two steps above Communality of advanced A.I.s,
and three steps above the regular Consciousness of the human type. Today, we will be discussing
the highest level of awareness possible for a sentient being within the universe known
as Universality. If you haven’t seen the previous videos on this topic, check them
out first before watching this one, the link is in the description below. But if you have
already seen those, then let’s dive right in!
The final ‘emergent’ property of intelligence according to the concept of Sentience Quotient
is known as Universality. For this level of awareness to occur in sentient beings, they
must be able to process data at 10^50 bits/sec-kg, having an SQ value of 50. An alien being capable
of handling data this rapidly would have to be considered a "perfectly efficient" thinker
according to this scheme. So, in any given mass category, such an entity would possess
the greatest intelligence theoretically possible in the universe. This would make beings at
the level of Universality incomprehensible for even those at the level of Galacticity
capable of comprehending the complexities of an entire Galactic community! As for beings
at lower levels of awareness, such as Reactivity, Consciousness, Communality, and Hypersociality,
all of them would be virtually indistinguishable for these beings from the dumbest possible
brain that can only process one bit of information in a time equal to the age of the universe
and a mass equal to the universe itself. Such intelligent beings may be regarded as no less
than deities even by the most advanced Galactic standards let alone all the other lower levels
of awareness. For these Universal beings, all other forms of sentience would be extremely
primitive and backwards, lacking the knowledge of the intricate workings of the entire universe.
Now, just how smart could these Universal beings really be? Let’s relate their level
of data processing with something our minds could readily comprehend such as reading some
number of books per some time interval. As mentioned before, it is not efficient to talk
about individual books, rather, we will consider the biggest library in the world, The Library
of Congress, which contains over 170 million written and recorded materials. So, for a
being at the Universal level of awareness, it would take only one picosecond, or
1/1000 000 000 000th of a second, to read and comprehend 400 trillion libraries of Congress!
To put this further into perspective, a picosecond is to one second as one second is to roughly
31, 689 years! So, given just one second of time, these god-like beings could process
400 septillion or 400 trillion trillion times the content of the Library of Congress! Now
that is some serious and extreme level of data processing. It is no wonder that all the levels
of awareness below Universality would be next to nothing!
Now, the basic type of sentience that could make this sixth and the final ‘emergent’
property of intelligence according to Sentience Quotient could be what we call Universal Sentience.
Similar to how a Galactic being would be capable of comprehending the complexities of an entire
Galactic community, a Universal being would be capable of holding in its mind the seemingly
incalculably complex orderings of an entire universe full of living systems at all levels
of intellectual sophistication! This would include any and all forms of sentience within
the universe. So, even the most advanced Galactic beings would be considered as extremely primitive
and partially conscious to these beings at best.
The inability of Galactic beings to comprehend the inner workings and the complexities of
all the living systems in the universe would perhaps seem pitiful and barbaric by the Universal
standards. But this does not come as a surprise since beings that could sense the needs of
an entire Universal community as easily as we humans can sense the needs of our own physical
bodies would obviously be incomprehensibly superior to any of the levels of awareness
below it. So, just like how we could teach dogs a few simple “tricks” to make their
lives better, Universal aliens may perhaps do the same with Galactic aliens to enable
them to live together in harmony with other Galactic level intelligence in the universe.
But of course, trying to understand a far superior mentality at this level of awareness
with our limited senses and knowledge is next to impossible. Perhaps we may never be able
to even hope to communicate and understand superbeings with SQ +50.
In other words. In the words of Robert A. Freitas Jr.:
“At present, human scientists are attempting to communicate outside our species to primates
and cetaceans, and in a limited way to a few other vertebrates. This is inordinately difficult,
and yet it represents a gap of at most a few SQ points. The farthest we can reach in our
"communication" with vegetation is when we plant, water, or fertilize it, but it is evident
that messages transmitted across an SQ gap of 10 points or more cannot be very meaningful.
What, then, could an SQ +50 Superbeing possibly have to say to us?”
And with that, we come to the end of this video and the end of the Sentience Quotient
Series! If you enjoyed it, do leave a like, share, and subscribe to our channel for more!
Also, with the possibility of a multiverse, how does the upper limit of intelligence change?
Could we have alien beings operating at an even higher level of awareness than Universality?
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below! Until then, we’ll see you in
the next one!