Tom Campbell's big TOE

[Michael Larkin]

Updated: The video sequence I've pointed to in #15 might be the best place to start:

Physics, Metaphysics & the Consciousness Connection 1 of 18 - YouTube

Maybe others have heard of Tom Campbell's big TOE (Theory Of Everything), but it was new to me until I stumbled across it at YouTube very recently.

There's a series of 9 videos he gave at a seminar or course in Toronto--see:

Tom Campbell My Big TOE Toronto 2009 - YouTube

The first three videos and the Q&As in the ninth are probably most informative, but you might find the others useful too, if you are interested in remote viewing, OBE's, or healing.

I think Campbell's views are consonant with Bernardo's Idealism, but I found his primary metaphor (virtual reality) rather more engaging.

Anyway, I thought I'd post this and see if it would spark an interesting discussion.

[tempel]

I haven't had time to watch this, but it sounds interesting. I just checked the intro, and was struck by Campbell's very first assertion: "consciousness is information." This is precisely what I'm arguing against in Bernardo's idealism thread (awaiting his response).

In this interview, does Campbell offer any sound logic or evidence for why we should equate information with awareness (a term I prefer over the vague and often arbitrarily used 'consciousness', which people across the board use to sneak in all sorts of concepts)?

[AusMan]

Originally Posted by tempel

In this interview, does Campbell offer any sound logic or evidence for why we should equate information with awareness (a term I prefer over the vague and often arbitrarily used 'consciousness', which people across the board use to sneak in all sorts of concepts)?

I'm with you on this question. Consciousness, or awareness if you will, seems to be something else again, a 'stuff' of its own kind that is not reducible to other stuff, does not arise or emerge from other stuff, but stands in relation to other stuff. If we have difficulty in going from physicalism to qualia, I see a similar conceptual and ontological gap between information and awareness.

Ps. After reading the post you referred to, I see you have a similar thought.

[Kamarling]

Tom has his own website and forum. I've asked questions there in the past and he has answered. He's discussed his ideas with a number of prominent researchers in this field. Here is a joint interview with Dean Radin:

Dean Radin and Tom Campbell - YouTube

[Michael Larkin]

I'm not saying that I have Tom Campbell's ideas down pat, but it seems he's saying that everything is consciousness, and that consciousness inherently seeks to evolve (decreases its entropy).

It has evolved by partitioning itself amongst entities. As entities evolve, because they are part of the greater consciousness, it too evolves. This is more efficient way for ultimate consciousness to evolve, because entities can interact, and through interaction, learn. The best way to learn is by entities focussing on the needs of other entities, because if all entities did that, all entities would learn optimally, as would ultimate consciousness. So we’re all here to learn, and that involves loving interactions. Without love, there can be no useful learning; at worst that leads to devolution (entropy).

Consciousness is awareness. It’s everything else, too, including information. The realm we think of as objective, physical reality is how consciousness at our level symbolises or makes a metaphor for true reality, which again, is consciousness. We live in a kind of virtual reality that “renders” true reality according to what metaphors we are used to.

Until actualised, everything is a probability of a certain degree. Almost anything can happen, but until it does, and becomes fixed, it’s still just a probability. That’s one of the rules of the “game”, because it’s multiplayer, and you can’t have a game system that can arbitrarily change from moment to moment. Evolution can’t happen in an arbitrary, chaotic environment.

Until the moment of actualisation, conscious entities can, through intention, influence the probability of what actualises. This doesn’t mean that, (usually), they can do very extraordinary things (run at 100 mph, leap tall buildings in a single bound), but, still keeping within the game rules, they have a certain amount of leeway to influence what actualises. Shifting probabilities a few sigma in some circumstances may be within statistical bounds.

Part of the problem is that we mistake the metaphors, the virtual reality, for reality itself. Metaphors include language, in which we have separate words for consciousness, awareness, and information, which seem therefore to be separate things. But they are rather different angles on the same thing. “Information” is meaningless without “awareness”, and “awareness” is meaningless without “consciousness”. It’s useful to have the separate words in order to converse using language, but at a certain point, the words become blocks to a deeper understanding.

Another block is our need to feel we know, understand. We are very likely to substitute belief for knowledge, and since the thing is now “known”, we no longer have to waste time and energy considering it. What we believe becomes part of our virtual reality, and can influence how events actualise. If we believe it’s impossible, then it may prove to be impossible even if evidence that it’s not is staring us in the face.

To influence things through intention, in addition to whatever knowledge we might have about them, we can construct our own metaphors for them. To influence, say, the rate of radioactive decay of something, we can visualise the process in any way we want. For meditation, healing, OBEs, remote viewing, etc., we don’t have to adhere to various kind of rituals. We don’t have to “exit” our bodies, because we, our consciousness, isn’t in our bodies to begin with. We already have access to all the data of consciousness, but we do need to practise if that’s what we want to do. And to be truly effective in what we do, we need to have the right motive, i.e. to further evolution.

If we don’t, then we will be doing it from ego. Seeking personal advantage without regard to other entities might bring us ego gratification, but won’t be helping us evolve. The purpose of life isn’t to gratify ego or even to survive, but to learn. We can learn from anything: it doesn’t have to be pleasant.

Consciousness doesn’t disappear on death. And if evolution is to mean anything, we have to carry with us whatever we have learnt, and bring it back with us when we reincarnate. Personally, I’ve long thought along these lines, and Campbell does, too. He also believes that there are many different frames and levels of consciousness--it’s an almost theosophical hierarchy he seems to be indicating. How come he believes this? Well, his claim is that he knows it’s so through long personal experimentation and experience. He seems very straightforward, humble and sincere, and that is impressive, but I can’t confirm or deny his claim.

What I can say is that his scheme of things brings together many things in possibly the most satisfying way I’ve so far come across. That would include science and metaphysics. He states that there are some scientists (digital physicists) who are working on the idea of virtual reality that acknowledges something greater than science, of which the latter is but a subset.

I’m still checking out videos on his Big Toe Youtube playlist here:

My Big TOE: The Workshop - YouTube

One I’ve just checked out is a Q&A session that I liked here:

Tom Campbell: Boston MBT Q & A 4/4 - YouTube

He has a couple of Websites:

Home
Home Page

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by tempel

I haven't had time to watch this, but it sounds interesting. I just checked the intro, and was struck by Campbell's very first assertion: "consciousness is information." This is precisely what I'm arguing against in Bernardo's idealism thread (awaiting his response).

I certainly agree that consciousness isn't information, or information processing.

I'm less certain that that is really what Campbell is really saying. I've only looked at video 1 so far, and in there he has a diagram with two consciousnesses talking to each other with 'data'. He makes a big point that all they can actually do, is share data.

It is interesting that we have Donald Hoffman, Tom Campbell, Brian Whitworth (a guy mentioned in Tom's first video) and Bernardo, all exploring the roughly the same idea!

David

[Stewart]

I've actually just finished reading the complete trilogy of Tom Campbell's My Big TOE (MBT). It was a long slog, and difficult going, not because it is technically difficult, but because he continually talks around the subject and constantly repeats himself, which does get a bit wearing. I'm still in the process of digesting everything, I plan to do a full write-up at some point, but maybe I can give a brief overview here.

Tom Campbell is a physicist, but also an OOB explorer, I suspect a fairly unique combination. He claims his consciousness can visit other dimensions at will, even exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously, and to have certain psi abilities such as seeing auras. He says it is possible to visit the past, possible futures, and un-actualised timelines. All of these realities are as real as our current one. Except for the start of the first book he hardly mentions his abilities or talks about any personal experience. This is a shame because I think it would add a lot to his theory if he could back it up by personal experience. However, Tom explicitly states that he doesn’t want to do that, and I respect his decision.

Tom tells us that consciousness is fundamental, everything comes from consciousness. He attempts to explain everything from two principles: that consciousness exists, and that there is a fundamental force causing it to continually evolve. He then goes on to explain how consciousness creates time, how it then differentiates itself into two states, or binary cells, and many of these states form information. In order to evolve, consciousness needs to interact, so it separates itself into entities that have limits put on them so that they need to exchange information packets. This creates an action/consequence feedback loop that can increase consciousness and learning.

From the binary cells of consciousness a non-physical sort of computer can be formed. This computer basically simulates virtual worlds, such as our Physical Matter Reality (PMR). There are many PMR realities, all separated from each other. These PMR simulations exist inside NPRM (non-physical matter reality), there are many NPMR realities. There may be other realities outside of that, but eventually it stops at the absolute level he labels AUM (sorry for all these acronyms, I think they have infected my mind spending so long reading MBT).

Each level of reality has its own time-slice, each higher reality ticking at a faster rate so that it has time to simulate sub realities. Not only does it simulate the present moment for a sub reality, but it simulates future predictions. All simulation time slices are saved in a big database, all of the past, even non-realised future simulations. Any of these time slices can be visited by consciousness and new timelines branched off.

Tom equates improving the quality of consciousness with lowering entropy. He also equates lowering of entropy to increasing love. He shows how everything is of fractal nature, the same processes of evolution for lowering entropy happens at each level of reality. He also suggests that our virtual reality simulations and AI will one day become conscious.

Tom continually talks about consciousness being digital, and realities being virtual. Personally, I don't think the word ‘digital’ actually adds anything to the concepts, in my mind consciousness could just as well be continuousness. I have had a brief look at some of the digital physicist’s papers, but I can't say the ideas grabbed me. It's something that I may investigate further, but I don’t feel that the truth lies in that direction.

I'm sure I've forgotten some concepts but I think that is the main gist of it. Tom spends much of the book trying to open the readers mind to think outside of the box. He calls standard science 'little TOE' because it only describes our local physical reality, while his is a big TOE because it tries to explain everything. He makes the (in my opinion) excellent point that the big TOE can't be explained in terms of the little TOE. The big TOE has to have some 'mystical' basis that can't be defined by science because it comes from outside of our local reality.

I've just finished working my way through Bernardo's thread "Rational, evidence-based, non-materialist model of mind-brain interaction", which I thought, in parts, was excellent. It has definitely clarified a lot of Bernardo's ideas for me. What I found particularly striking was that the realists were continually attacking Bernardo's idealism by asking it to conform to realist questioning. Just because one can ask a question doesn't mean that question makes sense. Many of the questions, while making sense in a realist philosophy didn't make sense once one assumes idealism. This is exactly what Tom was talking about with trying to explain the big TOE with little TOE ideas. I can't help but think that if consciousness is actually fundamental, the only way to investigate it is by direct experience.

The only real similarity that I can see between Tom and Bernardo's ideas is that they both regard consciousness as fundamental. The main difference is that Tom's PMR simulation is created by consciousness outside of individual entities. We are basically plugged into a big computer made of consciousness and are playing a virtual reality game to try and improve our consciousness. So I don’t think Tom’s theory could be classed as Idealism.

My ideas lie somewhere between Tom’s and Bernardo's philosophies. Being a computer scientist who makes virtual realities for a living I find it difficult to accept the virtual reality description of reality. For me it very close to exchanging God for a different, more modern metaphor. Saying there is a big computer in the sky is just not satisfying for me and raises questions instead of answering them. Computers are simply (very complex) mechanical deterministic things in our reality and I don't think give a useful model for the larger reality. But I can see how it might work for some people as a metaphor.

The big disappointment in MBT is that Tom never one backs up his ideas with any proof. No mathematical proof, not even any anecdotal proof. He hints at how modern physics can be derived from the digital theory of consciousness but says that is beyond the scope of the book. This is not a criticism; Tom explicitly states that he is simply saying how things look to him from his explorations and experiments. Tom continually says that it is up to each of us to find our own way to experience a larger reality. So not only does he not back up any of his claims, but he doesn't really tell us how to find out for ourselves. Just that we should.

I agree with some of the general principles of MBT, but I have real problems with a lot of it. I suspect many on this list with more scientific leanings would be very frustrated with Tom’s unsubstantiated theories. Despite this, it is an incredibly thought provoking book, from someone who has actually ‘been there’, and it has really helped me to refine my own ideas.

Stewart.

[Michael Larkin]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I certainly agree that consciousness isn't information, or information processing.

I think I know what you mean, but is that an artefact of human thinking? Imagine for the moment that there is nothing but consciousness, and that everything that exists arises out of it. Are things that we perceive as matter, energy, information, etc. ideas that consciousness has created? Ideas that interact through rules that are again creations of consciousness?

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Michael Larkin

I think I know what you mean, but is that an artefact of human thinking? Imagine for the moment that there is nothing but consciousness, and that everything that exists arises out of it. Are things that we perceive as matter, energy, information, etc. ideas that consciousness has created? Ideas that interact through rules that are again creations of consciousness?

Well I always like the gedanken experiment in which (under materialist assumptions) a brain is simulated on a computer (possibly after some simplification!) True materialists will usually assert that the computer would also be conscious. Before that failure of AI, I think many more people would have expected the computer to be conscious. However, that really leads to a bizarre result. Suppose the brain in question is just having profound thoughts (no relevant input required, we can represent a run of the program symbolically as

P => O

(where any random number generators are presumed to be seeded)

The program generates the output, and will do however many times it is run. Do we associate consciousness with the first run of the program, or the tenth? Indeed, the assertion P =>O is actually a mathematical theorem (with P and O suitably expanded). Associating consciousness with a theorem (that would be true even if the computer had never been built) seems even more weird!

Considerations of that sort, make me feel that thought is something else - something that can't be reduced to a mechanical process. There is also Roger Penrose's Gödel theorem argument. While this may not be decisive, it is, I think, awfully suggestive.

Of course, thought can simulate a mechanical process - just as I might mentally run through the operation of a computer program - and that seems to be what Bernardo requires, and maybe that is also what you mean.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Well I always like the gedanken experiment in which (under materialist assumptions) a brain is simulated on a computer (possibly after some simplification!) True materialists will usually assert that the computer would also be conscious. Before that failure of AI, I think many more people would have expected the computer to be conscious. However, that really leads to a bizarre result. Suppose the brain in question is just having profound thoughts (no relevant input required, we can represent a run of the program symbolically as

P => O

(where any random number generators are presumed to be seeded)

The program generates the output, and will do however many times it is run. Do we associate consciousness with the first run of the program, or the tenth?

All of them. Are you only conscious the first time you think about apple pie?

Indeed, the assertion P =>O is actually a mathematical theorem (with P and O suitably expanded). Associating consciousness with a theorem (that would be true even if the computer had never been built) seems even more weird!

Consciousness is associated with the running of the program, not its static description. Same is true for running the payroll: Reading the listing doesn't do the trick.

~~ Paul