The Sapiens Attractor

[Quentin Anciaux]

Hello everyone,

I’m sharing the continuation of The Sapiens Attractor.

If you’re interested in the deeper structure behind the idea, you can read it here:

https://allcolor.medium.com/the-sapiens-attractor-maximal-informational-realism-and-the-god-loop-26393e34fa46

Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Best,

Quentin 

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer)

[Alastair]

Most of this is fascinating, insightful and deep - from what I can understand of Parts I to IV. (I am wondering: did you have more than cosmetic help from AI?)

I would also be interested to know your definition of 'information' (as bitstrings or equivalent? or as their chosen interpretation? or something else?). Semantic imprecision can be a barrier to adequate understanding and agreement in these (and many other) kinds of situation, so good definitions are important.

My own preferred version of physicalism has thought events as mass neural events and so can include ideas, concepts etc, including thoughts in and about a language, any of which could in theory be correct or incorrect (the physical laws underpinning those events operate correctly regardless). It would not appear to fall foul of any of the criticisms in part I of the article if these are framed outside the context of information as being ontologically primary; ie from this point of view physicalism is self-consistent, in this version of it at least, and so contradicts the assertion that ontologically primary information is the only self-consistent position available.

We may well have already detected electrical signals corresponding to thoughts and could even one day decode them, if we can for example individualise them to key neurons or assemblies and then bulk-analyse them across macro-time; but I don't understand sufficiently to say whether or not this this would refute the idea that information is ontologically primary - this brings us back to the definition of information used, and perhaps also to that of 'computational structures'.

Alastair

[Brent Meeker]

A lot of biological information isn't even instantiated in neuronal activity, it's in one's "gut" metaphorically speaking.

I seems to me that a common mistake in idealism is to take consciousness as the whole of thought.  Yet we know that (c.f. Poincare') most thought is unconscious information processing.

Brent

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[Alastair]

Just to clarify, my 'extended' version of physicalism isn't intended to replace the standard version, which accepts the existence of elementary particles, the Big Bang etc (QM is a more complicated and partly unsettled issue). It just focusses on certain forms of brain activity corresponding to thoughts.

If meaning is given by common use, then 'thought' - not a technical term - is confined to awake humans (and perhaps their dreams, and conceivably also a few other creatures) . . . for now. Meanings can change over time.

Alastair  

[Brent Meeker]

That's why I referred to information processing as a broader term subsuming conscious thought.  I assume you are familiar with Poincare's account of how a the solution to a mathematical problem suddenly came to him as he was about to step onto a bus, even though he hadn't thought about it (consciously) for weeks.  

Brent

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[Alastair]

This story illustrates the problem with the ill-defined boundary of applicability of 'vague' terms like 'thought' (and 'information processing' as applied to brains) - neural restructuring perhaps including weaker-synapse pruning during sleep is likely to have played a key role in enabling Poincare's brain to reframe his mathematical problem, and maybe that was all that was needed to make the final step macro-consciously at the bus stop; I am not sure I would call this sleep episode 'thought' (the same applies to any other non-dream sleeping brain activity), but 'information processing' at the micro-level (say massively parallel neurotransmitter activity) might just be defensible as a rough description of the neural restructuring and other relevant micro-events. I don't know how a substantially higher level information processing model will help even if it were possible - back to precisifying the terms used again.

Perhaps the basic question hinges on whether appropriately organised brain activity that constitutes 'thought' was necessary to reframe or prepare the problem for solving, at some stage during the prior weeks.

Alastair

[Brent Meeker]

On 2/24/2026 4:26 AM, Alastair wrote:

This story illustrates the problem with the ill-defined boundary of applicability of 'vague' terms like 'thought' (and 'information processing' as applied to brains) - neural restructuring perhaps including weaker-synapse pruning during sleep is likely to have played a key role in enabling Poincare's brain to reframe the problem, and maybe that was all that was needed to make the final step macro-consciously at the bus stop; I am not sure I would call this sleep episode 'thought' (the same applies to any other non-dream sleeping brain activity)

Who said anything about sleep or dreaming.  Poincare' didn't say he had dreamed about the problem.  He said he hadn't thought about it.  The very fact that you don't know this famous story, which every mathematician not only knows but has experienced the same, makes me think you have never done any mathematics.

, but 'information processing' at the micro-level (say massively parallel neurotransmitter activity) might just be defensible as a rough description of the neural restructuring and other relevant micro-events. I don't know how a substantially higher level information processing model will help even if it were possible - back to precisifying the terms used again.

Perhaps the basic question hinges on whether appropriately organised brain activity that constitutes 'thought' was necessary to reframe or prepare the problem for solving, at some stage during the prior weeks.

"Hinges on"?  How could it be otherwise.  His brain solved a problem subconsciously that he had consciously failed to solve.  Of course it re-framed or manipulated the problem in some way.  But it did NOT "prepare the problem for solving".  The solution, complete, came to him in that instant.

Brent

Alastair

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[Alastair]

On Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 1:23:40 AM UTC Brent Meeker wrote:

On 2/24/2026 4:26 AM, Alastair wrote:

This story illustrates the problem with the ill-defined boundary of applicability of 'vague' terms like 'thought' (and 'information processing' as applied to brains) - neural restructuring perhaps including weaker-synapse pruning during sleep is likely to have played a key role in enabling Poincare's brain to reframe the problem, and maybe that was all that was needed to make the final step macro-consciously at the bus stop; I am not sure I would call this sleep episode 'thought' (the same applies to any other non-dream sleeping brain activity)

Who said anything about sleep or dreaming.  Poincare' didn't say he had dreamed about the problem.  He said he hadn't thought about it. 

 The issue is whether any necessary brain activity constituted 'thought' - if it included non-dreaming sleep obviously he wouldn't have been aware of it. (Dreaming almost certainly doesn't apply here.) 

The very fact that you don't know this famous story, which every mathematician not only knows but has experienced the same, makes me think you have never done any mathematics.

Irrelevant to the reasoning, which only requires some credibility in the story that you have helpfully summarised. (Some maths was included in my physics degree course but not the history of it.)

 

 but 'information processing' at the micro-level (say massively parallel neurotransmitter activity) might just be defensible as a rough description of the neural restructuring and other relevant micro-events. I don't know how a substantially higher level information processing model will help even if it were possible - back to precisifying the terms used again.

Perhaps the basic question hinges on whether appropriately organised brain activity that constitutes 'thought' was necessary to reframe or prepare the problem for solving, at some stage during the prior weeks.

"Hinges on"?  How could it be otherwise.  His brain solved a problem subconsciously that he had consciously failed to solve.  Of course it re-framed or manipulated the problem in some way.  But it did NOT "prepare the problem for solving".  The solution, complete, came to him in that instant.

One can think of the 'preparation of the problem for solving' in terms of assembling the neural patterns in such a way that the solution could 'click into place' in one subjective instant. The final stages of that assembling could have occurred the previous night ('sleeping on the problem'), or from subconsciously performing that assembling, which may or may not be deemed 'thinking' (and of course there could have been many insufficient or unrecognizable assemblings in the past, never destined for conscious awareness).

Alastair