From: Seth Lloyd Sent Sunday, November 6, 2016 8:48:50 PM Subject Re: ramblings but interesting mathematics. To: "Jeffrey E." leevacation mail.com> Cc: "Nowak, Martin" Dear Jeffrey, In both classical and quantum mechanics, there are descriptions of what happens that involve information propagating backwards in time: they are equivalent to the ordinary descriptions in which information travels forward in time. Our experience of the present moment can be thought of as our neurons jumping back and forth between the sensations just received and those immediately anticipated, as in our previous discussion of the experience of walking. As we discussed, self awareness is a tricky concept. I like your using this term instead of consciousness. After all, 90% of people are unconscious 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% are unconscious 100% of the time. The ability to refer to oneself, to remember one's actions in the past, and to imagine oneself acting in the future seems to be a pretty powerful ability, and could be quite useful in someone undergoing the constant threat of natural selection. Similarly, the ability to represent oneself to another self-aware being opens up the possibility of forms of cooperation and collaboration that are not available to those aware neither of self or of others. Note that self awareness is bound up in human language, in particular the fully recursive, self-referential type of language that Noam picks out as the essential driving engine of human thought. I suspect that one can construct games where self awareness coupled with the capacity for recursive thought conveys a strong advantage. I'd enjoy talking about this more. Available this afternoon (Sunday) and happy for distraction from excessive work. Martin and I live around the corner from each other and are enjoying hanging out and talking about just these kinds of things. You should join us one of these days. EFTA_R1_00025097 EFTA01738007