The classic example is the Conway's Game of Life - Wikipedia, which is turing complete, hence (if you assume the important parts of brains are discrete and deterministic) can model something equivalent to a brain.
A complete description is:
You have an infinite two-dimension grid of squares which are “on” or “off”.
Each square with fewer than two neighbours “on” or more than three neighbours “on” becomes “off”.
A square with three neighbours “on” becomes on".
A square with two neighbours “on” stays the same.
You won’t find a universe much simpler than that.
Of course, life is (probably) unlikely to naturally evolve there.
No, since we have no access to that universe and can’t test them. They’d know they were self aware, which is sufficient for the OP’s question.
The Strong Anthropic Principle is (the universe wouldn’t exist without us). The Weak Anthropic Principle (the world looks like it’s designed to let us exist because if it wasn’t we wouldn’t be here to notice) on the other hand is quite logical, and useful in countering arguments that try to claim that gods/aliens/whatever must be responsible for life on Earth because “look how finely tuned everything on Earth is to let life exist”. The WAP can also explain why the laws of physics appear to be “finely tuned” to allow for life, as long as one presumes a multitude of universes*; if our particular universe didn’t have physical laws allowing for life, we wouldn’t be here to comment on those laws.
*Which seems logical; if a process exists that can create one universe it makes sense that it would probably make more.
I think what was meant is that we need a hypothetical/categorical test to determine what types of things we are allowing in the theoretical scenario.
IOW, not “is this self aware”, but “does this count as self aware for the OP’s question”.
For example, we don’t have to go to another universe to have a test for triangles: “does it have three sides?” might count, unless the OP wants it to only be Euclidian: “do the angles add up to 180 degrees?” etc.
The Weak Anthropic Principle doesn’t really say much at all. It says we exist because we are in a universe where we exist. So yes, it’s not so much self serving as just saying “Duh”.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to answer this question because each sentient species will (in fact, must / is limited to) define self-awareness according to their own standards. There is no impartial standard by which sentience can be universally defined. *The Andromeda Strain *is one of my favorite books, and this question was raised multiple times… if a different KIND of life ever comes along, there is no guarantee we’d even recognize it (much less be able to classify it).
To take the simplest analogy: aliens that are earth-like in every way, except they can also communicate telepathically. Obviously for such a species, telecommunication would be among the top few ways they’d recognize and define sentience. Would humans be considered sentient to them? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean we would stop considering ourselves so.
It’s a “Duh” that needs to be said, given how often people try to claim that the “fine tuning” of Earth/the universe/the laws of physics proves gods/aliens/etc are Behind It All.
How does one test for sentience? We cannot establish meaningful 2-way communication in *any *other species’ language, whether that takes the form of whalesong or birdsong or dog barks or pheromone trails or hypothetical telepathy. Therefore, sentience cannot be externally confirmed (the rare exception being a gorilla that learned ASL). Without that ability, the OP’s question is trying to build upon a concept that is necessarily undefinable. We can say with reasonable certainty that humans and gorillas are sentient. We cannot say with any reasonable certainty that ants and as-yet-unknown forms of alien life are not.
As another example, imagine a hypothetical universe which consists solely of a big lump of lead. One might ask whether the lump of lead is self-aware. It would seem not, but why not? And how would one demonstrate it?
You can’t test the creatures because they don’t exist. The question is about self-aware creatures. If they aren’t self-aware, they don’t apply. If I ask you a hypothetical about a block of cheese, you don’t need to test it for being cheese, it’s part of the hypothetical.
On topic: I think that for the question to be meaningful we need to take our universe and chop away laws that aren’t necessary. If we’re making up a new universe from scratch, you can just say that the laws of physics are such that brains self-assemble out of big-bang dust.
To illustrate just how slippery the concept is, notice that you go from asserting that we cannot know how another species would define self-awareness to suggesting how another species would “obviously” define self-awareness. ;)
Of course, strictly speaking, I can’t prove that anyone other than me is self-aware (and often I’m not even sure about myself).
A lot of people look at Earth/the universe/etc and think that everything is so fine-tuned that it had to be intelligently designed by some entity, like a human-made computer. However, the AP basically says “We wouldn’t be here to witness anything if the universe weren’t fine-tuned, so the fact that everything looks complex/designed/etc should not be surprising.” Saying ‘fine-tuned’ may be the wrong phrase to use here, because it implies design.
It would be like tossing a cup of M&M’s on a target painted on the floor, looking at the M&M’s that are exactly in the middle of the target, and claiming “This was clearly fine-placed! Look at how aligned in the middle it is!” when really, you can get “intelligent” results by having a sufficient amount of randomness until something clicks.
I don’t personally believe this necessarily, although I think it could be quite likely based on my knowledge of cosmology/quantum mechanics/evolution – but I think there may be some sort of cosmic evolution mechanism. Something that spawns different version of reality (some of them stable, some not) with different frameworks, and only some of these happen to ultimately allow for life. I imagine that the Conway’s Game of Life would represent something you’d find in a very simple universe. Ramp up the complexity and eventually you could get something like our reality.
There is enough randomness in the universe that eventually a fairly stable mechanism for the generation of non-random chemical compounds evolved into us. That’s all there is to it.
Yes. But again that’s not what’s being discussed in that context – the AP is meant to bring light to why we shouldn’t be surprised that our universe appears to be ordered/have consistent laws/“just the right values” for certain constants, etc.
Given that we have a human bias in recognizing/defining sentience, though, how does the OP’s question have any meaning whatsoever? We can’t formulate any more of a meaningful answer to this question than (say) a species of black-and-white-colorblind beings asking each other what kind of universe would allow for beings that see in color. Their concept of color is the only one they know, but it’s not the only one that’s possible. They would fail to account for people who see in ROYGBIV through no fault of their own. It’s a futile exercise in navelgazing.
I understand that. It’s just an unneccesary explanation within the realm of science. We don’t need a specific principle to explain why the bellhop doesn’t have 3 dollars. We just explain that the math has to be done right. There’s no reason to consider that our universe appears to be just right, it’s just the way it is. And despite it’s purpose, the AP tends to lead people to believe there is something more to it than that. We wouldn’t exist in a universe where we wouldn’t exist. Duh.
You seem to be arguing that understanding the concept of self-awareness in a general sense is a subjective activity and not based on math.
I would argue that our eventual understanding of self-awareness will be based on math and will apply to any form of life, but I can’t provide you a formula today.
