Modern Cosmism

Most likely humanity will be divided in two main streams: an Earth-based genetically improved biological civilization and a departing digital society, creating a new cosmic reality where the concepts of truth, consciousness, freedom and happiness will be deeply revised. Contemporary Cosmism raises the critical question about meeting and joining with other cosmic civilizations and suggests some answers concerning their “eerie silence”. Here we will touch on some of the related problems in cosmology, and astrophysics such as the shape and future of the Universe, black hole information paradox, multidimensional space, dark energy and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Also, we will try to answer some profound questions like separate arrow of time and exceptions to the principle of causality.

Unlike any other area of philosophy and technology before, Cosmism raises fundamental questions about the post human nature, how it connects to reality and why we should eventually get rid of our biological hardware. How can we define Cosmic Evolution and the role of intelligent life? Is the structure of reality included in the consciousness? Is it possible to create a Universe in a lab? Are there limits to the functional simulations of consciousness? Will we be able to create super intelligent agents with consciousness and feelings? What are the limits of human technology and when will AI start to recreate itself?  Could we enhance our own nature by genetically redesigning our DNA?  

How will our concepts of subjectivity, perception, and morality change, if we were to live in a mega-consciousness environment where one can experience multiple presence, personality, gender (or no gender at all) and unlimited kinds of artificial feelings? What are the possible ramifications and consequences of digital consciousness? Cosmism suggests that the profound nature of reality is also digital and utilizes existential source code coming from the Being that is possibly using “radiant humanity” for its own preservation and modification. 

Metaphysics

The Cosmos is not easy to define. The Ancient Greeks describe it as a beautiful order and a whole which is the opposite of fragmented and ugly Chaos. According to the Stoics, the Cosmos are located in the infinite void. It’s animated, intelligent, spherical and solid. It was born out of fire and eventually will turn into the fire, passing its development cycle. The Cosmos are ruled by logos, which is the principle of reason, world-mind, measure, the power of law, word-form and word-number. According to the Neoplatonists, the Cosmos are the life of the world-soul (anima Mundi) and move under its influence. The Cosmos are hierarchically ordered: from the highest moving layers of finest ether to fixed and heavy layers of matter.

Modern Cosmism would describe the Cosmos as a single emanation of Being and the home of a particular way of essence. The Cosmos is not “everything out there” but rather one united system where the mechanism of certain types of existence can be turned on. The Cosmos is not a scientific term because we will never be able to observe or detect most of it. However, we can probably model it based on the happy natural assumption that Logos, through which we can see the rest of the Cosmos by using our “intelligent eyes” as Plato suggested, also rules our mind.

Cosmism is a doctrine of conscious life in space and its influence on the evolution of the Cosmos. We are already living in the Cosmos via Earth, but this is not the only way to do it. Additionally, it is not the one (best) way of life for advanced civilizations. Actually, there is no such thing as “one way” in reality because uniqueness is a property belonging only to the Being. Everything else must be plural, including the Cosmos and its structures, containing oceans of diverse Multiverses, which consists of a countless number of Universes. However, this number is not infinite. Because only the Being can deal (again) with infinity, represented in many different ways by many different Cosmoses. Like a myriad of lightning (tiny and huge), exploding and disappearing into the infinite dark sky where our Cosmos are flashing among others and absorbing its “existential source code” from the Being.

One of the major principles of evolution, natural selection, is postulate that life must survive through the process of mutation, resulting in a changed/improved DNA code (like feedback from life). Similarly, but in a different way, Being is sending individual existential source codes to its emerging Cosmoses, suggesting different survival strategies against their one common “enemy” – Nothing.

Luceverum

We can speculate that preserving information (knowledge) about the Cosmos is possible only with the participation of highly intelligent beings, which, like seeds, can grow up in the “life friendly” Universes. The mechanism of such participation is currently far beyond our understanding, but it should, most likely, go through a specific channel which we can define as a Luceverum (in Latin – light, true reality).

Our brain is a great gift and hint from nature that the new reality of conscious mind can be achieved through the sophisticated network and layers of connectors which may have very different supporting “hardware”. Our organic brain is probably not the best receptacle for consciousness; much in the same way that natural wings are not the best way to fly across the oceans. Modern Cosmism also suggests that in not-so-distant future, from humanity will stem an artificial form of non-biological intelligent life which will eventually become our next evolution break through transformation. We are not talking about AI or “living in gigantic supercomputers,” but rather we are trying to describe a radical new concept where reality will have true digital representation. It’s possible because the profound nature of reality is also digital (informational), so the spiral returning to the source seems natural.

We call this representation – Luceverum, through which post-post-post humanity may possibly participate on the creation and evolution of new Universes. Also, fulfill the old dream of unlimited freedom, unimaginable creativity, universal power and conditional immortality. This will be the totally new synthetic reality, a tiny fraction of which we might experience today as meaningful happiness.   

First generations of Luceverum, we can define as a space based, artificial, digital, and mega-conscious reality. This construction will be possible and achievable because the profound nature of mind and physical reality are the same. This fundamental idea (directly or indirectly) was supported in many philosophical streams. Even in Cosmology, anthropic principle is considered as a possible reason for a fine-tuned Universe.  Perhaps every existential construction kit comes equipped with a consciousness option.

Currently we are part of organic life, which is quite fragile and always subject to the mercy and unpredictable environment of its home planet. Humans (and most likely post-humans) are not designed to live in space and even our deeply genetically modified bodies (including brain) will never adopt to the high radiation and extreme temperatures of harsh open space. Because it’s not our mission. People will always live in the bottom layer of the atmosphere (or in the shell of a spacecraft). This is our evolutional limits and, as such, our imprisonment. However, Cosmism should not support the idea of interstellar travel or colonizing new planets.  It is yet another shelter for the same type of organic intelligent life. Like colonizing more caves in the Stone Age instead of digging the earth for metals. So, we should dig for virtual life and admit that organic construction kit is very limited by the laws of nature. We have another way to go, a more meaningful, exciting way to overcome our biological nature in order to join galactical super-intelligent civilizations.

For our next evolutionary stage, we should develop a light, effulgent, super intelligent and powerful reality located independently in space, which Konstantin Tsiolkovsky foresaw as a home of radiant humanity, that I call Luceverum. Eventually, this will become a living, mega-consciousness construction of cosmic scale taking energy directly from a star or even directly from the fabric of space-time itself.

The Luceverum is a non-planetary home of post-post-human digital civilization. It will go through many developmental stages. Initially, the first elements of it will be constructed on Earth in the near future as an attempt to “upload consciousness” and provide an escape from biological death. The active research on this first step started back in 2005 with the “Blue Brain Project.” The Swiss/EU Whole Brain Emulation (WBI) initiative is aiming to understand a connectome of human brain and create its detail model on a molecular level. The European Human Brain Project (HBP) aims to integrate huge volumes of neuroscience data into unifying models. The US BRAIN initiative project has a final goal of mapping the activity of every neuron in the human brain. Private Seattle based “Allen Institute for Brain Science” is modeling the mechanisms behind how the brain stores information. The combined budget of those projects has probably well exceeded $5 billion. This shows the serious intentions from participating labs and supporting individuals/organizations. Scientists have already been able to model the brain of a mouse and some areas of human brain as well. So, most likely a fully functional model will be ready by the middle of the century with the first uploading experiments following shortly thereafter.

However, uploading is just initial process stimulating by the intriguing today ideas of “life extension”, “back up copy” of our mind, personality and finally the old dream of achieving conditional immortality. At a certain point Luceverum will gradually depart from human civilization and face its own cosmic destiny. Needless to say, biological civilizations will never reach a cosmic scale of development because they are designed only to live on planets with limited energy supply, a long training process, reproduction circles etc.

In the very distant future, Luceverum (probably) will move out of a star system and will be able to extract pure energy (which we believe is materialized information) from the undiscovered yet information space or by using zero point energy generator. Different civilizations will be united in the Luceverum with their own cultural and technological contribution. It kind of indirectly explains the “eerie silence” of the Universe. Advanced civilizations at a certain point in their evolution will lose interest in the surrounding (and totally known) physical reality. They may escape to the artificial synthetic reality connected to the informational space of the Cosmos. The Luceverum can be a natural, safe and maybe even the final destination for intelligent life. We may also describe it as a hypothetical Boltzmann Brain which will not pump out of a vacuum as suggested but rather constructed through the evolution of mind. Conquering the soulless, indifferent nature is a long journey with probably few finalists, but those winners will hold the key to almost unlimited possibilities.

Philosophy

Suppose that something became possible because of the spontaneous fluctuations of “imperfect Nothing”. It constitutes a minimum certainty transforming itself into the primary causal connectedness (network) which will make an existence of something unique possible. Combined sets of such “successful” fluctuations are constantly contributing to the essence which we can call Being. Our Cosmos exists (metaphorically) in the branch of a lightning bolt of multidimensional Being, which is not infinite like Nothing, but rather vanish in one dimension so it can emerge in another one. So, Nothing “noticed” nothing and therefore stays as Nothing. However, existential information is not disappearing but rather it is forming what we can call potential reality. To keep its integrality, Being would have to develop compressed repository to store this information (about itself) like a seed or existential DNA. Cosmism may suggest that Being needs this micro “self-reflection” in a form of mega-consciousness for constant self-evolution and humanity can be a tiny part of this fundamental process.

Ultimately, we are dealing with the balance of life and death, or more philosophically with dialectics of Being and Nothing. Being is eternal but temporal, limited but endless at the same time for the reason that a non-infinite state is a necessary condition for any existence. Nothing is always the final winner because it is incompatibly infinite. Speaking logically, we can say that absolute Nothing can “exist” only in solitude, which means that nothing should not exist at all. However, nothing (including Nothing itself) is not perfect because perfection is more like an order, rather Nothing is more like a chaos that can be interpreted as a privation of oneness and self-identity. These imperfections (fluctuations) can temporarily open a tunnel for a particular way of existence which we can call a dimension of Being. Cosmic Time is the measurement of unfolding of such dimension, which will constitute its own separate dimension, known as physical space-time. 

Cosmos means a universal and beautiful order. Perhaps we can describe it as a single emanation (overflow) of Being. Like a tree with vines where hanging grapes represent the Multiverses, Cosmos will represent the tree itself – connecting the “nerves” and life support system. So, there are many Cosmoses much like vast and diverse forest trees growing from all available dimensions of Being and our Universe is just one grape among countless other “fruits and berries.” Most of those trees are probably lifeless because existence, as well as a life itself, is extremely rare. It requires the preset of perfectly fit elements or hitting the jackpot in a lottery of existence. However, the formula of existence was not random “winning numbers,” but rather more like specifically moving “genetic code” and creating things around itself. Cosmos is our final, ultimate, and incomprehensible Home. There is no physical space or time in the Cosmos as we know it because the Cosmos are not located in space-time. It is based in Information Space. Reality becomes more and more “informational” when you increase (or decrease) its scale. Most likely, every Universe is connected to the Multiverse, Cosmos and even Being through a network of connectors, perhaps like black/white holes or singularities. It’s possible that our very distant (and certainly digital) descendants will be able to participate in controlling some of those connectors.

We usually (and wrongly) identify the Cosmos as the Universe. Our experience of the Cosmos may refer to something incomprehensibly vast but at the same time unified and well-ordered in a way surprisingly similar to the structure of a man as ancient Greeks believed. Science doesn’t think this way, but some physicists and cosmologist are seriously talking about anthropic principles or a fine-tuned Universe where observed conditions must allow the observer to exist. In other words it states that only those Universes in which consciousness is possible can exist. This is most likely because in order to exist you must initially be “smart,” meaning well organized to sustain the total destruction of ubiquitous and engrossing Chaos. Similarly, living organisms must be “very smart” (or well-adopted) in order to survive in our harsh world of gases, minerals and extreme temperatures. Respectively, we should be more than smart enough to win our own survival battle and eventually overcome our organic nature.

Protagoras said about 2.5 thousand years ago that: “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not”. Hence, the Cosmos need super-intelligent beings to measure its proportions, to understand it, build a model and even preserve it in a way of maintaining its informational framework. We cannot observe the Cosmos directly through a telescope. However, we may eventually be able to “calculate” it and detect its source code once we achieve a greater and deeper understanding of the structure of the reality and recover the meaning of Being.

Not yet discovered, the information dimension is a vital component of the Cosmos. This is not the same as conventional information, which can be defined as a meaningful database of signs and symbols representing some form of reality to a recipient (us). Here, we are talking about existential information as a core structure supporting reality itself. Like information stored in DNA supporting/defining life where the information carrier is the DNA itself. According to string theory, carriers of existential information are branes and strings, or the smallest cells of space (Planck distance), which unique for each Universe. We can probably trace its work in a transformation of energy from one form to another.

The fabric of the Cosmos is the product of existential source code located in the Information Space which can be defined as the operating system of reality, adapting to the physical reality and generating formulas for all possible existence. It is also a repository and building kit for the construction of potential worlds. Lao Tzu called it Tao, Heraclitus – Logos, for Plato it was a world of ideas, and scientists can call it our laws of nature described in one elegant formula which they can see it from a “bottom up” view without taking consciousness into the equation.

According to Noether’s theorem, continuous symmetry in a physical system will always correspond and lead to a conservation law. For example, a continuous symmetry of time means it’s homogeneity, which corresponds to the energy conservation law. Homogeneity of space corresponds to the law of conservation of momentum. The continuous symmetry of Information Space can mean the repeating pattern that determines the preservation of universal constants.

Reality is a network of everything that has rights to exist where rights mean full existential package and existence means a ticket to actuality. Reality is not limited to things you can sense or detect through a phenomenon. Astrophysicists claim that we never would see most parts of our Universe because of its accelerated expansion. Reality is a moving picture of all possible forms. It makes things real by including them into the network. It also includes our thinking about reality and makes it real as well. However, the degree of reality is vastly different for all concepts and objects because nothing is absolutely real or unreal. Because time as we know it does not exist there. We can measure the reality level of something by calculating its direct influence on others. Therefore, objects influencing everything will form a Super-Reality and something detached from the whole will not be real. The same can be said for existence itself, which does not exist by itself and at same time it’s not a property of something (predicate). There are many varying levels between full-existence and non-existence. We can call this spectrum “existrum”. Accordingly, it looks like reality has a hierarchical structure.

According to contemporary Cosmology, our Universe will most likely vanish and disappear after (about) a googol of years (Big Freeze) due to the Universe’s endless expansion, exhaustion of star formation, proton decay, Hawking radiation etc. Possibly, a so-called “true vacuum” can eventually (and quickly) disintegrate our world. However, the reality itself cannot be destroyed or disappear because it’s based on existential information which cannot be disintegrated. Much like the law of conservation of energy in our Universe.

String Theory can probably describe the Information Space as a network of metastable “false vacuums” of some fundamental scalar field. Each false vacuum can trigger the birth of a new Universe.  It is alleged that there is an incredible number of such conditions with positive cosmological constant. String theory calls the collection of those possible worlds a “landscape.”

Life

Life as we know it can generally be described as an organized and self-sustaining process within specific organic matter in the form of cells which must be capable of metabolism, growth, adaptation, reproduction, and death. However, this reminds us of a famous ancient story, when Plato defined man as a “two-legged animal without feathers”. In response to Plato, Diogenes brought him a plucked rooster and sarcastically said: “this is a man.” I mean that bullet points for life’s basic functions will not define it.

We know how 3 elementary particles form 6 chemicals required for life and how they constructed 20 standard amino acids which are used in all living cells. What we don’t know yet is how this lifeless molecular construction was powered and ignited into something quite different. Most prefabricated blocks of life, including the RNA world, were created in space during the formation of stars in nebulas. Therefore, life is inevitable and exists everywhere but is exceedingly rare because it requires a very unique and stable set of conditions in hostile space, like a liquid water and right chemical cocktail.

The meaning of life lies (probably) in its own existence. Every single cell contains much more information when it is alive than when it is dead. Information, like energy, cannot disappear; it builds up and will eventually become self-aware through a process we can call conscious-genesis. Cosmism suggests that through the evolution of super-intelligent life, Cosmos are improving its ”operation system”.

Today, (just after one hundred years of using electricity!) the science and technology isn’t far from creating a simple form of artificial life. This will prove that life, although rare, is a natural and immanent phenomenon of the Cosmos and that life is one of its properties. Which makes the Cosmos, in a sense, alive and perhaps even conscious. For example, we certainly wouldn’t consider an apartment building conscious just because somebody conscious lives inside, but the whole structure of the building reflects “conscious order.” We can say this apartment building is consciousness friendly as well as our planet and the entire Universe. However, our brain is incomparably more “consciousness friendly” than many other objects in the Cosmos. The same analogy can also be said to apply to life. So, we can consider the RNA and organic matter a “life friendly” reality, which means there is a direct potentiality of life within “acceptable” probability. Eventually, this reality, in the right conditions, will turn into itself (in a way of self-denial) and form another reality which we can call Conscious Information Reality.

So, life is the part of universal order reflecting its general law of balancing between informational complexity and simplicity. These communicating vessels are needed because all existential information must be preserved in the Cosmos. Without it, things wouldn’t know how to exist. We may consider some of the latest versions of Liceverums as singularities of Information Space, much like the black holes in our conventional space-time. These singularities will store existential information and eventually will expand (overflow) into a different reality of new Universes. So, the circle of life will be completed again and again.

Consciousness 

Consciousness is a phenomenon that can only exist (like a magnetic field) in specific flow (orchestration) of its different components like knowledge, thought, awareness, judgment, prioritization, reflection, intuition etc. Consciousness is always being self-aware – present (navigation) in your own model of reality, which you can call your own, personal, internal world. However, no one can build such a model from scratch. Most likely it was developed unconsciously for you throughout your childhood. Then, one day you will find yourself thrown into consciousness without a choice, but with some basic knowledge, which shows a working relationship between you and tiny fractions of the phenomenal world around you. Consciousness is not just a property of brain and neural correlates, like music isn’t just a property of violine and air, wood, copper, leather, and ponytail. The music can speak through them, but it cannot exist independently from them. Modern Cosmism suggests that in the not-so-distant future our individual conscious experience’s can be shared like knowledge and will eventually be part of one super-conscious (or mega-conscious) essence variegated and complex as physical reality.

Consciousness, unlike instincts, does not occur naturally with birth. Its needs the supervision of another developed consciousness and requires language, knowledge, analytical thinking, psychological and social environmental influences. Consciousness is not a seed inside a child brain. Its full capacity and a clear state of mind are only achievable with specific conditions, and one of them is communication with another conscious being (which constitutes the chicken and egg problem). Consciousness is a navigation system in our model of reality. It is also an integral part of reality but a much larger scale that we might think. As our perception of the reality gets more complicated, a more sophisticated conscious will be required for proper navigation and our ability to accomplish tasks. So, inevitably, artificial consciousness will emerge.

In the artificial consciousness (AC) we will need to build and orchestrate some main units that are expected to contribute to the functionality. These units (similar to neural correlates) are: perception, knowledge, understanding, thought (information processing), judgment, attention assessment material, interest, goal setting, orientation in space-time continuum, memory, projection into the future, evaluations of your own judgment, communication, reflection, simulation of sensations etc. Once in place, these crucial elements will need a single unifying and controlling software that we might associate with AC.

If consciousness was planned in the evolution of mammals, then the development of AC should be anticipated in human evolution. It will focus more and more on itself, trying to navigate inside its own navigation system eventually becoming itself, like a snake swallowing its own tail forming independent and self-sufficient entities, extracting from itself (and for itself) new, incredible and enchanting forms of reality. Navigation inside navigation can be called over-consciousness, whose mission is connecting and supervising all conscious activity. This function is related to will, personality, happiness and freedom. There is another level of consciousness designing and controlling our over-consciousness, which we can call super-consciousness. Ironically, this level remains mostly undetected (unconscious), but can be related to art, intuition, inspiration, spirituality etc.

Can we ever upload a consciousness?

Yes, we can. We do some forms of natural downloading and uploading in social environments through learning and teaching.  Therefore, we just need a different kind of interaction between the brain and environment to upload/download knowledge or skills directly to/from brain, but with a radically new type of software, which we can call consciouswere.

Modern computers are made with 4 major components: hardware, operating system, utilities and application software. The future computational device suitable for the whole brain emulation (WBE) will probably be based on qubits (quantum computing) and have artificial neural networks reflecting structures of certain areas of our brain. It’s going to be less computational with “true or false” logic, but much more with fuzzy logic – a sophisticated way of pattern recognition, learning and self-reprogramming capacity. Consequently, after a few generations, this type of computer will become more like true soulless AI who is no longer an information processing computational device but not conscious yet and whose job is to help us finish mapping our brain and create the Portal, a simple version if what already exists as a Brain Computer Interface (BCI).

Some critics of “uploading” believe that our brain is not computable because most of the brains features are the result of “unpredictable, nonlinear interactions among billions of cells”. But applying the fuzzy logic approach will solve this problem particularly for future less computational computers. Australian philosopher David Chalmers believes that we will never be able to model “hard problem” of consciousness related to subjective experiences of certain perceptions. He is probably referring to some functions of what we describe as a super-consciousness, which would be an important part of AC.

Yes, subjective experience contributes to the state of consciousness, but it does not define it. We don’t know yet how to make computers feel or experience different perceptions. I don’t think they will ever adopt feelings similar to humans, which, by the way, is quite different than a dog’s (or fish) feelings. I mean we really don’t know how to transfer biological perceptions to silicon machines. Those two separate worlds can barely communicate with each other. However, when the technology will become available then the sky’s the limit.  We would be able to experience astonishing perceptions of magnetic fields, marvelous infrared views, and breathtaking music from ultrasound to infrasound and being present in multiple places simultaneously. So, the silicone (first stage) consciousness may have different or similar components, or even a different structure, but it’s still going to be self-aware. So here is the question – what is ones self or definition of individuality?

That technology, however, would never be able to replicate your consciousness accurately because nobody knows precisely “what is you.” Including even you. So, maybe after uploading yourself, you will see yourself sitting behind a screen-mirror, somebody very similar to you, but not exactly you! When original “you” is still alive and staring at the “new” you. This is a well-known science fiction situation.

The last, and perhaps the most interesting philosophical argument against uploading our mind (comes from dualism) supports the statement that mind uploading is impossible because there is always two opposite principles in this world, which are not interchangeable or reducible to each other. For example: form and its content, ideal and material, thinking and being, Yin and Yang, body and soul, software and hardware. They cannot exist in actuality without each other like opposite poles of a sphere. However, both of them are representing two sides of the same fundamental reality and can be united when the sphere become a point, – at the point of Singularity. We believe that eventually Luceverum will develop itself to artificial Singularity or a collapsed “Conscious Hole”, where the laws of nature will become a product of mega-consciousness.

More than likely, Luceverum would not be interested in an exact copy of your uploaded self. Ultimately it would not be interested in humans at all, because this mega AC can instantly create and adapt as its goals something much better than us – its own digital citizens. Luceverians! It wouldn’t need newcomers because they are very different creatures than those that come from our wild organic world. Those from our world would need fundamental upgrades and redesigning in order to exist in the digital reality of this new ethereal essence. Read more

What is Time?

What an old question! Ancient Greek’s Chronos was a unique and frozen sequence of logically connected events in the past revealing the law of nature. In the famous myth Chronos (Saturn), father of Zeus (Jupiter), swallowed his own children when they were born. Perhaps, this ferocity symbolizes a time-destiny of everything that came into existence. From the other side, “time” is Kairos – a supreme moment and opportunity when the future becomes (in a flash) the present time.

The Latin word “tempus” (time) comes from the Indo-European root “temp” which means stretching, string, or even series. So, the “time-series” will have two symbolic aspects – it is extensible and related to cyclical vibration. Vibration can be internal movement which is “timing” thing from the inside, setting up its own rhythm, which sounds similar in Latin to the word “numerous”, referring to the numerical nature of time as well.

In English, the word “time” probably stemmed from “appointment time” or the designation of an event, when something will happen or occur. There may be a connection with “tide” as it is similar to the Danish word “tid,” corresponding to old German “zit” and transformed into a modern German zeit (time). The Russian word for time (vremia) comes from old Slavic “veremia” and probably means, “revolving around me” with accent on “me” and with an emphasis on one’s personal experience of time.

So, semantically we should think about time in terms of causality, events, duration, irrecoverable process, destination, becoming, scale, measure, uniqueness, rhythms, numbers, waves, vibrations, cycles and finally consciousness as the only entity capable to recognize and define time. Also, we should be aware of the fact that everything can fully exist only in the now, at the present time. The past and the future are invented and extremely limited concepts of reality, but they can only exist in the form of knowledge belonging to intelligent beings.

A good analogy of time can be the clock component in our computers. It exists as an artificial measure, turning on and off certain processes and programs on a predesigned sequence. So, it can be said that its purpose is to regulate the virtual reality of our computers. At the same time, it doesn’t actually exist because it is not connected to the physical reality. You can reset this clock at any time. You know exactly your computer past and future (generally) but, most importantly you can change the rules on how this digital time is running. In the real world we must assign the time dimension to understand its moving logic. However, the real world doesn’t need our dimensions. It moves according to the laws of nature. We can speculate that our perception of time was embedded in our mind much in the same way as we install a clock program into to our computer for the purpose of regulating internal reality and matching it with external actuality.

Time is not only about perception. The Cosmic Time will show how things move in the Universe. The essence of Cosmic Time probably lays in the proportion between a Cosmological constant (dark energy, density of vacuum space) and discreteness of space. This would define all other constants, laws of nature and the signature of particular existence. 

Cosmology

According to the inflation theory of modern cosmology, the universe was formed from an amazingly unique quantum fluctuation that caused a drop in the strength of the postulated primary scalar field. As a result of this magical fluctuation, an inhomogeneity was formed, which was instantly inflated (due to the incredible nature of the scalar field) by many orders of magnitude. Then there was a phase transition involving gravity and matter in the newly made Universe. Astrophysicist Andrei Linde, co-author of the inflation model, believes that the formation of universes is an ongoing process. It is eternal and essentially static. This hypothetical scalar field is credited as the cause of existence and the beginning of all that we know. At the same time, it is impossible to talk about what came before the scalar field or before singularity (in the Big Bang version of events).

It would be logical to assume that the scalar field was preceded by more fundamental information fields, where, in fact, correct fluctuations with its unique initial parameters are encoded through which universes are formed and where consciousness will be possible along many others wonderful things.

The universe exploded in what cosmologists call the Big Bang, which is known as the official birthday of our universe. The Universe inflated instantaneously from a remarkably small point comparable to the size of tennis ball. Then forces and matter came along afterward to form the stars and galaxies. Now we can say that our Universe is flat and currently expanding with great acceleration. After about a googol (10¹⁰⁰) of years, the Universe will most likely totally disintegrate and dissolved into nothing (the so called big freeze ending). However, there remains a possibility that somehow Dark Energy will decline in the distant future, thus, gravity will prevail and turn the Universe from the contraction stage back to Singularity.

Most scientists would admit that we don’t know what came before the Big Bang, what Singularity really means, how it exists, why it become unstable and most importantly – how it delivered the perfect proportions into existence where life and consciousness become possible. These fundamental questions Physics has gladly (shyly) passed to metaphysics and even religion.

Now, let’s try to be more specific. Modern cosmology believes that about 13.78 billion years ago, at the “time zero,” existed a point of Singularity or the initial conditions of a special scalar field. We have no physics to describe this condition of so call Planck epoch, which ended when the Universe was merely 10^-43 second old. This was the most important “time of creation,” when a space-time continuum itself, was formed. We can speculate that this moment was a turning point from infinite potential to more or less the particular reality where we currently exist. This moment does not lay in time as we know it, but in a sort of cosmic duration, which can be translated to our time as an unknown gazillions of years. I mean there was plenty of time for vibrations “to win” or calculate all critical parameters of our upcoming and utterly amazing Universe. All four known fundamental forces were unified at that time. Perhaps in the Planck epoch, there were several other unified forces that shrank or disappeared at a later time, much like the hidden dimensions according to the String Theory. At the end of this epoch, gravity was separated from other forces and thus the next era was started.

It is worth mentioning that in the end of the Planck epoch the temperature of the Universe was probably 10³² K, with its diameter being about 10^-35m. There was a domination of quantum gravity, strings and perhaps even some other exotic objects. There were no particles or radiation, but rather a “very special” empty space filled with scalar fields. The second period of the Universe’s evolution is called the Grand Unification Epoch. It lasted approximately 10^-43 sec. – 10^-36 sec. with an ending energy of 10¹⁵ GeV, a density of about 10⁷⁴ g/sm3 and a temperature more than 10²⁷ K.

There were no physical properties such as mass or charge at that time. At the end of this epoch, strong and electroweak forces were separated, thus starting a more understandable Electroweak Epoch, roughly 10^-36– 10^-32 seconds ABB (after big bang). Cosmologists believed that when the temperature dropped down to the point where heavy hypothetical X- and Y-bosons (supposedly controlling interactions between quarks and leptons) were created but then quickly decayed with violation of conservation of baryon number. That created a small, but important irregularity between matter and antimatter that can explain (after annihilation) why our Universe contains mostly matter. This possibly triggered an era of cosmic inflation occurring at about the same time. However, there were no elementary particles present as of yet.

Inflation makes our Universe, as we observe it today, flat, homogeneous, and isotropic. Inflation determines its size, physical properties, constants, and any subsequent evolution of our Universe. Cosmologists believe that hypothetical scalar fields with quantized particle “inflation” (similar to Higgs Boson) are responsible for inflation. According to A. Guth, the Universe was initially trapped inside a false vacuum with a higher-energy state, but after quantum fluctuation, it dropped to the lowest-energy (but not zero) state with the release of bubbles, a property consistent with true vacuums. A. Linde, in his Chaotic inflation model (eternal,) suggested that any high energy fluctuation of scalar fields (with quadratic potential energy density) will trigger inflation. When the field reaches its minimum energy, then inflation stops, fields begin to oscillate near the minimum and lose its energy by producing pears of all existing particles and radiation, which will eventually form forces, matter, antimatter and dark matter. Thus, the Universe becomes hot again.

Frozen quantum fluctuation during inflation will shape the galaxies and define a vacuum’s energy density, physics and overall structure of our Universe which is actually a part of a much larger structure – the Multiverse. This is because quantum fluctuation is an eternal process happening in the curvature of space-time foam, anytime and anywhere.

Cosmism suggests that we see only random quantum fluctuations of scalar fields because of our limited perception of other realities hidden beyond quantum mechanics. For example, imagine that your TV screen consists of only 100 pixels and receiver is disturbing the image when you are looking at the TV, also consider that your screen is only a tiny part of a gigantic cosmic screen. So, from your point of view, the few big pixels on your screen will flash chaotically (random) because as an observer you are a disturbing receiver and you cannot see the big picture playing on the cosmic screen behind it. There is only one solution – we need a different kind of screen and receiver where we can see the true genetic code of existence beyond the surface.

The last question of philosophy

Philosophy, as we know, is hopelessly outdated. The deterioration and replaceability of its terminology in the world of sciences and technologies has made philosophy more of a rhetoric and old-fashioned sophistry. However, the philosophical aspect of consciousness is an amazing phenomenon (a side effect if you will). It’s requires a mood and attitude for special questioning, which can be compared with an intellectual artistic vision of the Cosmos.

The cognoscibility of the world and its philosophical construction is possible due to the existence of a deep connection (interconnection and even unity according to Parmenides) of Being and mind. However, evolutionarily mature consciousness (super-consciousness in our understanding) is completely self-sufficient and not inclined towards philosophical thinking. It is already a “philosophy in itself” and isn’t aimed at cognition and explaining the world, but mostly itself and its “internal technologies.”

We cannot even come close to imagining all the possibilities of “living mathematics” of virtual worlds, where our entire Universe is one of many other constructions. Yes, we are standing on a very distant threshold of this world, but not all representatives of the biological race will want to (or can) enter it.

The last question of philosophy will end the era of human (natural) philosophizing when the truth could still in fact be hidden and discoverable outside of consciousness. If the Man is the main philosophical problem, then with the exponential development of technologies, this “problem” will either dissolve in a new reality or transform into something completely different than what we know.

Everything will change dramatically when the truth will transfer from the process of matching mind with reality to the stage where the mind will match its own evolution. Philosophy will end when the reality becomes computable so,

a truth (as we know it,) will no longer required. Probably the last question of philosophy will be the first post-philosophical question that the machine will formulate independently.