Kenneth Shinozuka of Blank Horizons asks: Andrés, how long do you think it’ll take to fully map out the state space of consciousness? A thousand or a million years?

The state-space of consciousness is unimaginably large (and yet finite)

I think we will discover the core principles of a foundational theory of consciousness within a century or so. That is, we might find plausible solutions to Mike Johnsons’ 8 subproblems of consciousness and experimentally verify a specific formal theory of consciousness before 2100. That said, there is a very large distance between proving a certain formal theory of consciousness and having a good grasp of the state-space of consciousness.

Knowing Maxwell’s equations gives you a formal theory of electromagnetism. But even then, photons are hidden as an implication of the formalism; you need to do some work to find them in it. And that’s the tip of the iceberg; you would also find hidden in the formalism an array of exotic electromagnetic behavior that arise in unusual physical conditions such as those produced by metamaterials. The formalism is a first step to establish the fundamental constraints for what’s possible. What follows is filling in the gaps between the limits of physical possibility, which is a truly fantastical enterprise considering the range of possible permutations.

A useful analogy here might be: even though we know all of the basic stable elements and many of their properties, we have only started mapping out the space of possible small molecules (e.g. there are ~10^60 bioactive drugs that have never been tested), and have yet to even begin the project in earnest of understanding what proteins can do. Or consider the number of options there are to make high-entropy alloys (alloys made with five or more metals). Or all the ways in which snowflakes of various materials can form, meaning that even when you are studying a single material it can form crystal structures of an incredibly varied nature. And then take into account the emergence of additional collective properties: physical systems can display a dazzling array of emergent exotic effects, from superconductivity and superradiance to Bose-Einstein condensates and fusion chain reactions. Exploring the state-space of material configurations and their emergent properties entails facing a combinatorial explosion of unexpected phenomena.

And this is the case in physics even though we know for a fact that there are only a bit over a hundred possible building blocks (i.e. the elements).

In the province of the mind, we do not yet have even that level of understanding. When it comes to the state-space of consciousness we do not have a corresponding credible “periodic table of qualia”. The range of possible experiences in normal everyday life is astronomical. Even so, the set of possible human sober experiences is a vanishing fraction of the set of possible DMT trips, which is itself a vanishing fraction of the set of possible DMT + LSD + ketamine + TMS + optogenetics + Generalized Wada Test + brain surgery experiences. Brace yourself for a state-space that grows supergeometrically with each variable you introduce.

If we are to truly grasp the state-space of consciousness, we should also take into account non-human animal qualia. And then further still, due to dual-aspect monism, we will need to go into things like understanding that high-entropy alloys themselves have qualia, and then Jupiter Brains, and Mike’s Fraggers, and Black Holes, and quantum fields in the inflation period, and so on. This entails a combinatorial explosion of the likes I don’t believe anyone is really grasping at the moment. We are talking about a monumental “monster” state-space far beyond the size of even the wildest dreams of full-time dreamers. So, I’d say -honestly- I think that mapping out the state-space of consciousness is going to take millions of years.

But isn’t the state-space of consciousness infinite, you ask?

Alas, no. There are two core limiting factors here – one is the speed of light (which entails the existence of gravitational collapse and hence limits to how much matter you can arrange in complex ways before a black hole arises) and the second one is quantum (de)coherence. If phenomenal binding requires fundamental physical properties such as quantum coherence, there will be a maximum limit to how much matter you can bind into a unitary “moment of experience“. Who knows what the limit is! But I doubt it’s the size of a galaxy – perhaps it is more like a Jupiter Brain, or maybe just the size of a large building. This greatly reduces the state-space of consciousness; after all, something finite, no matter how large, is infinitely smaller than something infinite!

But what if reality is continuous? Doesn’t that entail an infinite state-space?

I do not think that the discrete/continuous distinction meaningfully impacts the size of the state-space of consciousness. The reason is that at some point of degree of similarity between experiences you get “just noticeable differences” (JNDs). Even with the tiniest hint of true continuity in consciousness, the state-space would be infinite as a result. But the vast majority of those differences won’t matter: they can be swept under the rug to an extent because they can’t actually be “distinguished from the inside”. To make a good discrete approximation of the state-space, we would just need to divide the state-space into regions of equal area such that their diameter is a JND.

Conclusion

In summary, the state-space of consciousness is insanely large but not infinite. While I do think it is possible that the core underlying principles of consciousness (i.e. an empirically-adequate formalism) will be discovered this century or the next, I do not anticipate a substantive map of the state-space of consciousness to be available anytime soon. A truly comprehensive map would, I suspect, be only possible after millions of years of civilizational investment on the task.