[gobdovan]

I don't think generation/discrimination is fundamental. A more general framing is evolutionary epistemology (Donald T. Campbell, 1974, essay found in "The Philosophy of Karl Popper"), which holds that knowledge emerges through variation and selective retention. As Karl Popper put it, "We choose the theory which best holds its own in competition with other theories; the one which, by natural selection, proves itself the fittest to survive."

On this view, learning in general operates via selection under uncertainty. This is less visible in individual cognition, where we tend to over-attribute agency, but it is explicit in science: hypotheses are proposed, subjected to tests, and selectively retained, precisely because the future cannot be deduced from the present.

In that sense, generation/discrimination is a particular implementation of this broader principle (a way of instantiating variation and selection) not the primitive itself.

[Jerrrrrrrry]

I agree, I meant to be explicit that the one rule was "gravity";

Variation (chaos) comes from the tidal push/pull of all cumulative processes - all processes are nearly periodic (2nd law) and get slower - guaranteeing oscillator harmonics at intervals.

These intervals are astronomically convulted, but still promise a Fourier distribution of frequency: tidal effects ensure synchronization eventually, as all periods resonate eventually.

As systems are increasingly exposed to pendulums of positive and negative coherence, they will generalize for variance, and eventually for increasingly (fourier) selective filters of increasingly resiliente traits, that will generalize.

The system would eventually be increasingly resilient and eventually an awareness would develop.

Awareness of past periodic cycles would improve fitness (with or without consciousness) and eventually the mechanistic processes would be in the systems nature.

This is why we have pointless traditions, folk lore, collective unconscious artifacts, cyclical cataclysmic religions, the Fermi Paradox, the great filters...

Variation and selection are woven, but understanding how it all stems from gravity by means of nearly perioidic oscillators (spinning planets, tidal pools, celestial bodies) due to the conservation of angular momentum, due to the 3body problem.....that is what took a genius to reconcile

[zoogeny]

> eventually an awareness would develop

I am not sure how this is a necessary conclusion to the premises you provide.

[Jerrrrrrrry]

Awareness would be any form of agency, goal seeking, or loss minimizing.

As Briggs–Rauscher reactions can eventually lead to Belousov–Zhabotinsky reactions, the system can maintain homeostasis with its environment (and continuing to oscillate) by varying reactants in a loss minimizing fashion.

This loss minimizing would be done during scarcity to limp towards an abundance phase.

This is the mechanism that hypothetical tidal pools batteries would had exhibited to continue between periods of sunlight/darkness/acidity that eventually gets stratified as a resilency trait.

[luma]

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the work from the lab of Mike Levin at Tufts but I'm betting you'll find it interesting if not. Here's a taste https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6923654/

While I disagree with your notion that this is explicity due to gravity, the rest of your argument seems to align with some of this lab's work. Learning can be demonstrated on scales as low as a few molecules, way below what we would normally call "life".

[zoogeny]

I'm not sure what your argument is here, except stating an opinion that loss minimization is equivalent to agency. But even if that was accepted, which is a huge stretch, it doesn't stretch all the way to awareness.

[Jerrrrrrrry]

It is, in context of its place in the cosmic scale.

Loss minimizing to a few problems will generalize into abstraction, and a few solutions will develop.

These systems with more generalizable resilency traits will encounter increasingly varied selective sieves.

Systems that survive this seive will exhibit increasingly sophisticated, generalizable solutions to prevent loss of needed dependent reactions/resources.

These solutions must exert influence to be effective; influencing the environment for its own benefit.

As systems influence their environment, delineation of "self" and "environment" becomes a fundamental barrier.

The system would prefer itself, or be outcompeted by a similar system that does.

This layer of semi-life like material would form between sunlight and the oscillating reaction, and eventually envelope it, minimizing surface tension by means of a spherical cell like structure.

Small stuff runs off of loss minimizing at a force level for its mechanistic affect; from covalent bonds to cellular ion transport, the path of lesser resistance is the fundamental forces.

As systems become more complex, the minimizing is less directly attributable to the fundamental forces and becomes more of a Byzantine dependency/feedback network.

This byzantine labyrinth of interactions is called biology.

The delineation of self, the ego.

At the highest levels, geopolitics. At the human level, mate suppression. Lowest level, energy conservation.

All loss minimizing

[zoogeny]

I understand the sketch you are making and my claim isn't "you are wrong". My claim is "it isn't sufficient to explain all of the behavior". You are making massive leaps over important details. In order to feel a grasp on the big picture, you are turning a cow into a sphere.

"Awareness" isn't a well defined term and is often just a proxy for consciousness. But in as much as we can define it, it is one or both of experience and knowledge. You may (or may not be) aware of the hum some electronics in your house. At certain points in the day that hum is present in you attention, at other points it is absent from your attention. Sometimes you choose to bring previously unattended objects into your awareness, sometimes they are thrust there despite your will.

What is actually interesting about awareness, and one of the reasons it is a tricky subject, is that it isn't clearly related to agency. There are objects of your awareness that you do not act on, and you act with respect to objects that are provably not in your awareness.

There is also the question of the field within which these oscillations take place. Is it the electro-magnetic field? A quantum field? Which field are we talking about? If you are proposing some "principle of least action" in that field, can you describe it?

You seem to claim "loss minimization" and then hand wave the rest. But without descriptions of knowledge and experience it feels like you aren't actually saying anything except stating an opinion that reduces all knowledge and experience to loss minimization. That is an extraordinary claim and requires either extraordinary evidence or extraordinary reasoning.

[whattheheckheck]

So where does gravity come from?

[Jerrrrrrrry]

A cool illusion, just another emergent property of our geometrical solution: higher dimensional aperiodic tilings of a 10^80 faceted complex polyhedra "walking" on another large aperioidic Penrose plane, that is getting smaller in a dimension we observe as "energy".

Basically a dice with a bajillion sides is getting rolled along an increasingly slim poker table, house winning eventually.

Time only goes one way, protons dont decay, energy is radiated unto the cosmic background hiss, until homogeneity is reached as CMB, and entrophy reaches 1.

I dont know where it comes from, but I know the shape it makes as it rolls by.