Being human

So as I've mentioned when I was younger I often wondered why I was born a human and not some other more abundant life form. Beginning with biomass the odds aren't exactly stacked against us. We still make up a very large portion of the biological mass on earth, but it is greatly outshined by the collective biomass outside the scope of human life. So how could we formulate a more satisfying reason? And why are we not composed of non-sentient matter which makes up an astronomically large proportion of the universe.

Well to solve the last problem I feel it helps to draw an analogy to the blind spot that exist in the front of our field of vision. We don't observe any darkness in that blind spot. It's common place for people to assume the brain is doing the job of covering up this lack of vision in our view but I assume something much simpler is going on. Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine a room positioned behind yourself. Now imagine a person standing in that room. They turn the light off. Would you notice the darkness of the room?.... Of course not! So the principle is that we cannot be aware of what we are not aware of. Simple enough to understand. Orange oranges are oranges. So why are we sentient? We're sentient because the only way we can be aware is to be aware. But this is still unsatisfying so I'll work a little bit harder.

What if we tried using something more fundamental? Okay so here's my favourite place to start. Positions in space exist independent of all cause therefor reality as an object exists independent of all cause and objects are always informatic because they exist. So Every position in space is populated with information. Next we assert that information is generic, because, well, to put it simply it just is. So we have an amorphous block of information that can take on any possible configuration because it's possible. Then we infer the existence of a 4th spatial dimension because of motion, and finally we infer the existence of an infinite amount of spatial dimensions because the fourth one already exists at an imaginary angle. Lastly we define consciousness as an unfurling process that maps qualia onto surfaces bringing perspective to a point, because consciousness needs to be quantified somehow and an unchanging position in R_n would allow us to quantify it.

So whatever it is that can happen with information will happen with respect to any position in space, and experience is the only way to know about reality or our existence so from this starting point we can assume it's inevitable that we exist. But I've digressed...

So why human? Well at this point I would just call it luck of the draw, but if you want to do a little bit better instead of thinking about biomass lets try a new concept. Perceptual mass. Human beings have a very large perceptual mass. Our brains weigh about 3 pounds and there's about 7 billion humans on earth to date so... it's actually not that unlikely. If we're to take those extra pieces of information into account.

Plus if you look at the chart it's still a pretty big number. So there's that too. But it does seem excessively lucky to be apart of the smartest species on earth. I wonder if being an an ant feels like going to sleep. I don't know.... Hope you enjoyed my article!