American astronomer and astrophysicist, Frank Drake, once wrote,
"Of all the things that have been tried by the creatures of Earth to aid survival,
be it camouflage, many legs, large size as in the dinosaurs,
and so forth, only one characteristic has continuously been retained and
improved throughout the entire succession of species – intelligence."
But perhaps the most important aspect of intelligence, at least to us humans and us
humans alone, seems to be our awareness of self or what we refer to as consciousness.
But what exactly is consciousness?
And can other lifeforms in the universe experience it as well?
To answer these questions,
today we will be talking about a concept called the ‘Sentience Quotient’
proposed by a nanotechnologist, Robert A. Freitas Jr., in the late 1970s.
But before we explore this concept, we must first establish the definition of
‘intelligence’ and ‘consciousness’ using a ‘matter-energy’ approach.
So, if you are a fan of alien-related topics, you must watch this video
from beginning to end to really comprehend this mind-blowing topic!
So, let’s dive right in and explore
the possibility of higher levels of consciousness within our universe.
Until quite recently, it was believed that the basic mental capacities of thinking or
reasoning served as a clear distinction between humans and other members of the animal kingdom.
This, in other words, meant that intelligence was seen as the ability that only humans possess.
But today we know that we are not so unique.
Even the amoeba, one of the most primitive microorganisms, responds to chemical
gradients and bits of food floating by, indicating some degree of intelligence.
The appearance of intelligence on Earth evolved in two major classes of animal nervous systems,
called ganglionic and chordate.
The earthworm is a typical example of the ganglionic nervous system,
with each of its many segments behaving almost as
individual organisms, having their own sets of organs, muscles, sensors, etc.
On the other hand, birds and mammals opted for chordate intelligence
which focuses on neural centralization with all sensory, analytical, or other
information being processed into a unique coordinating processor, we now call the brain.
While ganglionic intelligence may have been complicated
and physically self-limiting to upscale in size, the simple brain provided for
the growth of surplus neural matter that eventually evolved into higher intellect.
Nonetheless, it appears that practically all
living creatures possess at least some basic level of intelligence.
Intelligence, therefore,
is not a quality unique to humans alone but is developed and refined by all lifeforms.
So, according to evolutionary theorists, higher intelligence can be viewed as an “emergent”
property of higher levels of neural networks and organization in the brain.
So, what about consciousness then?
Despite the countless years of trying to understand consciousness, scientists,
philosophers, theologians, and psychologists still cannot agree on exactly what it is.
But if we look it up in any dictionary, we find something along the lines of "the awareness
of one’s self as a thinking being" or “the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.”
To most, consciousness is the defining attribute of all our waking states such
as our moods and affections, memories, thoughts, attention, and desires.
Somehow, we feel certain that consciousness is the basis of concepts,
learning, and reasoning thought, and judgment simply because it records and
stores our experiences as they happen, allowing us to re-examine and learn from them at will.
However, according to Dr. Julian Jaynes,
an American psychologist, consciousness does not appear to be a copy of experience
that stores and captures it like a camera to be reflected upon at some future time.
Rather, "conscious retrospection is the retrieval of what you have been conscious of before,
and the reworking of these elements into rational and plausible patterns."
Moreover, consciousness is not necessary for conceptualization either according to Jaynes.
Consider any language for example.
We simply let a particular word stand for a concept because
concepts are usually not in our consciousness at all.
Similarly, consciousness seems unnecessary for learning, which even snails and flatworms can do.
In fact, thinking, judgment, verbal association, deductive and inductive reasoning, intuition,
creativity, and abstraction all do not require
consciousness to be displayed by an intelligent lifeform.
So, consciousness then is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of
since we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.
For example, it is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to
search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it.
Now, in whatever direction the flashlight turns, it would always find light,
therefore wrongfully concluding that there is light everywhere.
Similarly, Jaynes argues, consciousness can seem to permeate
all of mentality, but in reality, it does not.
This implies that consciousness does not really
make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.
So, what does all this means for consciousness then?
According to Dr. James Miller, a pioneer in systems science,
“more complex living systems at higher levels of organization manifest characteristics, more
than the sum of the characteristics of the units which comprise them, not observed at lower levels.
These new characteristics are emergents, made possible by the increased complexity
present in higher-level systems.”
So, consciousness under this model is just an emergent property of intelligence similar to how
intelligence is an emergent property of physical neural connections and their organization.
So, if this is true, then could there exist higher-order “emergents” beyond consciousness?
Many science fiction writers often point out in their work
the existence of higher levels of awareness in the universe.
One such example can be found in 'The Black Cloud', written by astronomer Fred Hoyle.
In it, the main character is killed due to data
overload during interaction with a vastly superior alien intellect.
The novel suggests that higher levels of consciousness may very well exist in the universe,
however, it may be almost impossible for a being at
one level to comprehend the mentality of a being at a higher level.
Perhaps Carl Sagan’s analogy of our society
and the insect world fits best here:
“The manifestations of very advanced civilizations may not be in the least
apparent to a society as backward as we, any more than an ant performing his anty labors
by the side of a suburban swimming pool has a profound sense of the presence of a superior
technical civilization all around him”.
Another example of this can be seen in the following clip:
That's the most important thing of all, winning the trust of people that have put their trust in
us, many of them for the first time, and Borris will have my full support as he does that.
Well, I don't know why he is talking to a tree!
Now if such vast intellectual differences can be found within just one planet,
then it is possible to devise a scale of cosmic sentience
universally applicable to any intelligent entity in the cosmos.
Sentience, in the most basic terms,
is defined as the capacity to be aware of feelings and sensations.
So, any organism that can sense its environment
and be able to react to it, regardless of its complexity,
is considered sufficient to be a sentient being according to the concept of Sentience Quotient.
This means that all sentient beings or intelligent systems
consisting of matter-energy must process information.
The more information a given creature can process, the more intelligent it is.
Information rate is measured in bits/second,
where one bit is the amount of information needed to answer a simple yes or no question.
Furthermore, since smarter organisms tend to live longer,
evolution should favor increased efficiency of information processing.
This implies processing information using less energy and mass should be
naturally prioritized by evolutionary selection.
So, given these parameters, Robert A. Freitas Jr. defined his concept of Sentience Quotient
which expresses both capacity and efficiency
in a single number and can be applied to all sentience universally.
The Sentience Quotient or SQ is expressed as the log (base 10) of the quotient of two numbers:
The maximum information processing rate a sentient being can
process per unit time interval, in bits/second,
and the quantity of mass-energy the being requires to do it, in kilograms.
In simple terms, SQ = log (base 10) (I/M),
where I is the information processing rate (in bits/s) and
M is the mass of the brain (in kilograms).
Using this formula then, we can easily calculate the upper and lower limits of Sentience Quotient.
For example, the lowest possible SQ we can imagine would consist of
just one neuron having a mass of the entire universe,
requiring a time equal to the age of the universe to process just one bit of information.
Plugging this information into the formula would give us a minimum value of -70.
So, is there a highest possible SQ then?
According to Dr. H. Bremermann, if all information must be carried by matter-energy ‘markers’,
which seems to be the case here, then there is a fundamental limit to intelligence
imposed by the laws of quantum mechanics.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,
the lower limit for the accuracy with which energy carries one bit of information is
given by Planck's constant h divided by T, the duration of the measurement.
If one energy level is used to represent one bit,
then the maximum bit rate of a brain is equal to the total energy available, E = mc^2,
for representing information, divided by the minimum measurable energy per bit
(h/T) divided further by the minimum time required for the measurement to take place (T).
So, plugging in this information into the formula, and performing a few simplifications,
gives us a maximum SQ value of +50.
This is the greatest intelligence theoretically possible in the universe.
Such an intelligent being would be considered
a “perfectly efficient” thinker in Robert Freitas' view.
Now that we have established the limits of intelligence, where do we come in on this scale?
Well, we have an SQ level of +13 since one neuron in our brain has an average mass of 10^-10 kg
with processing speed between 1000-3000 bits/second.
Moreover, interestingly, all other animals with a nervous system,
from insects to mammals, are all found close to the human value of +13 on the SQ scale.
The tree we saw earlier along with similar plants comes at an SQ of about -2.
So, now it becomes pretty clear how vast a gap in communication can be between
two SQ levels differing roughly by 10 orders of magnitude.
Robert Freitas further speculates on the
possibility of higher-order ‘emergents’ in our universe.
Using the example of the trees and humans, he wonders
whether, at each higher level of mentality, a new kind of thought
process emerges which is unique to mental systems of equal or higher values of SQ.
For example, trees can process data at 10^0 bits/s-kg giving them reactivity,
whereas human’s ability to process data at 10^10 bits/sec-kg gives them consciousness.
So, what about entities that can process data at 10^20 bits/s-kg, or higher?
Naturally then, we must consider the possibility of higher-order intellectual
‘emergents’, comparable to consciousness but qualitatively vastly superior to it.
That we will tackle in detail some other time.
For now, we want to leave off with
a thought-provoking quote from 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 that brings us to the end of this video!
Give it a like if you enjoyed it and want to see more.
Also, share and subscribe to our channel if you haven’t subscribed yet!
It really does help the channel out!
So how will higher-order ‘emergents’ differ from consciousness?
We’ll tackle that soon, but we'd like to hear your thoughts first in the comments down below!
Until then, we’ll see you in the next one!