At the recent @assc28.bsky.social meeting, I heard several talks purporting to show that high entropy aligns with high consciousness, in newborns and in adults under hallucinatory drugs. I found that puzzling since randomness does not align with interconnectedness/structure. Clarifications welcome!
Lenore! Thanks so much! I'm glad you find this interesting, it a pleasure to hear that from someone like you. As a general short answer, no, I think it is important to disambiguate emergence measures and measures of neural complexity, or algorithmic complexity (signal diversity).
I do agree however that measures of LZ for example do peak with randomness (though there is a really cool old paper showing that this might not be the case, if I find it I will link it here). Measures are only as good as their utility, so one should always be cautious with what we infer from them.
To add, I don't even know if I believe that 'higher' consciousness is actually a thing. A rule I live by is that: conscious of more *does not equal* more conscious. It has helped me on my path thus far. 😅
This caution, to me, includes measures of emergence and my own work, as well. They are, like all complexity measures not exempt from it. So maybe, like what I find in my results--that more emergence doesn't equate to more consciousness: same for complexity. Very happy to discuss all of this more!
Yes, let's plan to discuss more! Anyone reading Boki's reply here should read from bottom up.