If the four assumptions hold, then subjective experience can emerge internally from information that appears externally as noise.
Let us go through two thought experiments to demonstrate the consequences.
Consider a full, faithful particle simulation of Alice’s universe. We render it frame by frame into an MPEG video. This is the straightforward, non-optimized implementation.
What distinguishes this video from ordinary ones is that the “pixels” are not flat 2D rasters, but 3D counterparts—“voxels”—where particles play the role of pixels. It is a complete, particle-level recording of the entire simulated universe, including Alice’s body, her brain states, and every interaction. This video is a virtual copy of real-world Alice—functionally identical at every relevant level.
Now we begin optimizing the code. First, we replace every log10() call with a precomputed lookup table. We render the simulation again. The resulting video is identical to the original.
Next, we replace all sqrt() computations with precomputed values. Again, the videos are indistinguishable.
We continue this process, gradually replacing more and more active computation with static lookup tables. At every step, the output video remains exactly the same. The only difference is the time required to generate it: the more we optimize, the faster the rendering completes.
In the end, we optimize the simulation completely. All computation has been replaced by precomputed data. What remains are two sets of files of pure static information: the execution traces of the gradually optimized simulations and their rendered video file counterparts.
All the generated videos are indistinguishable from one another; only the code-to-data ratio of the process that created them differs.
The execution traces themselves differ because the underlying implementation of each run was different.
We can draw two major conclusions from this thought experiment:
First, it would be absurd to argue that, within a set of identical videos, some would be more “special” than others (with some hosting active consciousness and pain, while others remain inert).
If the output is the same, then the “experience” must either exist in all versions or none of them.
Second, many different execution traces (or their computational equivalents) can produce the exact same Alice.
The observer is not bound to a single, specific bitstring!
This is a manifestation of statistical mechanics and entropy. Just as the sand grains in an hourglass can pile up in astronomically many distinct microscopic arrangements while still producing essentially the same macroscopic shape—a cone—the underlying informational execution traces can be arranged in many different ways to produce the exact same emergent Alice.
Alice is an Equivalence Class.
The immense number of distinct execution traces (microstates) that yield the identical macroscopic observer (the macrostate) is the informational analog of Boltzmann Entropy.
Imagine a computer running a high-fidelity, fundamental particle simulation of Alice’s universe. Now, suppose we add a special “self-mutating” function to its code. Instead of terminating after one run, this function modifies the computer’s own memory and instructions, then executes the new configuration. This process repeats indefinitely.
The computer systematically explores every possible way to interpret its finite number of bits n. It tries every possible division between code and data, every possible ordering of execution blocks, and every possible interpretation of the bit strings.
Since there are n bits, there exist 2n possible static configurations. By exploring every possible traversal and interpretation of these bits, the machine eventually exhausts the space of every possible program that can be encoded within that finite information. Among this enormous space, most configurations produce nothing but high-entropy noise. However, a tiny subset will produce coherent structures—including stable geometries, consistent physical laws, and conscious observers like Alice.
In this picture, there is no need for an external “reader” or simulator. The universe is self-contained: all possible interpretations and observers exist simply as different ways the same information can be organized and traversed.
One might object that this process still depends on an external clock to drive the mutations. However, this objection is easily overcome: the “clock” itself is internalized. By making the temporal counter a variable within the data rather than a pulse from the hardware, the entire construction becomes self-contained. Once the clock is moved inside the system, the machine ceases to be a running process and becomes a static “block universe.”
In set-theoretic language, we simply embed the computer and the software into a super-set of both. What remains is a static set, where “running” is merely a specific internal structure that supports the ?? developed in the previous chapter.
This self-mutating computer provides the bridge to understanding how entire universes—complete with conscious beings experiencing the flow of time and the reality of pain and joy—arise purely from static information without the need for outside intervention or a pre-existing flow of time.
Together, these thought experiments illustrate a profound structural truth: any external feature—including a clock, a CPU, or time itself—can be entirely internalized by embedding it within a joint system.
This internalization completely reframes the physics of time. In modern quantum cosmology, this is known as the Page-Wootters [12] mechanism, which demonstrates that the global universe can be completely static, while time emerges purely as a relational correlation between an internalized clock subsystem and the rest of the system’s states.
We can push this realization to its logical conclusion:
The illusion of a running computer or a dynamically expanding universe is dissolved.
What we call "the passage of time" is nothing more than the structure discovered by an intelligent observer within a static block of information.
The clock does not drive the universe; the clock and the universe are simply entangled readings of the exact same silent totality.