“What if,” the way creativity begins and consciousness measured.

Most of us strive to see things as they are, i.e., to understand reality.

Being creative means bringing something into existence that wasn’t there before, which usually requires sensing things as they are not.

In this case, you might ask, “What if it isn’t” or “What if it doesn’t.“

Example. Albert Einstein essentially asked, “What if time doesn’t run the same for all of us?” And thus, to our surprise, we learned that, in fact, it doesn’t.

That is the power of “What if.“

When you were a kindergarten-level kid, you were creative. You made up games that had no fixed rules or no rules at all. Essentially, you asked yourself, “What if I just make up rules and change them at any time?”

You seldom played an organized game but instead created and rejected rules at your whim. What you might call “tag” evolved into hide-and-seek even without notice to the players, then to jump rope and hop-scotch and a new, nameless game that somehow you all understood.

This almost infinite flexibility was not caused by a lack of discipline or intelligence. It was caused by a different lack: Inhibition.

You were less walled in by fear of being wrong. You were naturally “creative,” the most rule-breaking word in the English language, and ” what if” was the magic phrase for creativity.

Later we began to learn we should color within the lines and began our march toward the loss of creativity.

We have been saved from dull, passive convention by boredom.

For the human species, boredom is our friend. It makes us seek knowledge. It’s a built-in Darwinian reflex that helps us survive an ever-changing environment. Boredom makes us travel the world, from hot to cold, to dry to wet, from colorless to colorful, always seeking better, easier, faster, and more rewarding. 

That eternal seeking has led us to attempt visualization of things we cannot see, feel, hear, touch, or smell – things that seem to have no immediate survival advantage. We seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Later, we may use the knowledge for survival, but we sometimes rely on intuition — knowing without reasoning –for expedience.

The problem with intuition

We have learned that things can be mathematically true, but we cannot visualize them in “real life.” If I say, “Visualize an atom,” your intuition may tell you it’s something that looks like a miniature solar system, with electrons circling a nucleus.

It’s not even close to accurate.

We visualize atoms that way because we cannot visualize the mathematical reality that nothing has boundaries at the quantum level. Everything is a smear of probabilities, in which human sensing is part of the atom’s reality. Our brain is part of the equation. That is our intuition.

I might point to an object and say, “That is a flower,” while you point to the same object and say, “That is a car.” Meanwhile, math tells us that quantum objects can be “flowers” and “cars,” depending on who looks at them and even how they look at them.

That is reality, quantum mechanics style.

To get even to first base with quantum mechanics, you must trust the math if it disagrees with your intuition and senses. Perhaps there are creatures in the universe who sense quantum weirdness, but you and I are stuck with brains that interpret light, sound, etc., in ways the math says are wrong.

I stress the word “interpret.” Your brain does not see light or hear sound. It interprets it, just as you do not see this typing. You interpret the light photons, and your brain creates meaning.

Don’t worry if everything you read about quantum mechanics makes no sense. Even physicists don’t understand it beyond the math. It’s as though you were reading a book that said,

(“Thismakesnosense,” in Wingdings))

, but millions of times more difficult to understand.

One day, someone must have asked, “What if an atom is not like a miniature solar system.” Here is the current explanation that no one on Earth fully understands

Before observation (or measurement), a quantum object (like an electron or a photon) is described by a wavefunction.

This wavefunction doesn’t represent a single, definite state, but rather a superposition of all the possible states the object could be in. In this sense, it’s like a “cloud of probabilities” — it tells us the likelihood of finding the object in a particular state if we measure it.

When an observation or measurement occurs, the wavefunction is said to collapse into a single, definite state — the one that we observe. This is why, after measurement, the object appears to be in just one state.

Get it? No, you don’t. You can’t.

Evolution has wired your brain in a way that doesn’t visualize quantum mechanics. It’s as though someone sent you a radio message, but you have no radio. The radio waves reach your brain, but you cannot interpret them.

That doesn’t mean the message doesn’t exist. It means you are not wired to receive radio messages or to visualize quantum mechanics. Lest you believe that seeing radio waves is impossible, remember that radio waves are merely long light (electromagnetic) waves.

Some creatures in the universe may be able to “see” and interpret radio waves but be unable even to imagine what your brain’s 171 billion cells interpret as red, green, and blue, among other tasks.

At the time of this writing, the fastest supercomputer globally is the Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou, China, and has a maximum processing speed of 54.902 petaFLOPS. A petaFLOP is a quadrillion (10 to the 15th power) floating-point calculations per second. That’s a huge amount of calculations, yet that doesn’t even come close to the processing speed of the human brain.

In contrast, our brains operate on the next order higher. Although it is impossible to calculate precisely, it is postulated that the human brain operates at 1 exaFLOP, (10 to the 18th power) calculations per second — about 2,000 times faster.

When you look at a TV screen, your brain interprets it as a moving picture, but there is no picture—just an ever-changing organization of dots. There are anywhere between 3 million and 100 million dots on a TV screen, different colors, and changing 60–240 times per second, and your brain makes sense of it all.

If I take a photo of the screen and my friend takes a photo, we will get two slightly different results. The same is true of trying to measure a quantum particle. 

Every person who measures a quantum event sees a somewhat different result, not because the particle has changed but because the measurer has changed. 

Then, there is the word “particle,” which you may visualize as a tiny ball. It isn’t.

We now are told it’s a wave or vibration of some kind, but a vibration of what? What is waving? And the probability of what? Here is what the scientists say:

1. Nothing physical. It’s the evolution of a probability distribution in our knowledge. Or:
2. A real, physical field in an abstract space. It’s not space as we know it, but configuration space—something like a map of all possible positions of particles. Or:
3. The field itself. An electron is a “ripple” in the electron field. A photon is a ripple in the electromagnetic field. Or:
4. None of the above or all of the above.

Or something our brain simply cannot comprehend and possibly never will, like the radio waves that pass through it undetected.

For the probability of what? Science says:

1. The probability is fundamental. It’s not that the particle is somewhere, and we just don’t know where —it doesn’t have a definite state until it is measured. Or:
2. All possible outcomes actually happen in different branches of the universe. Or:
3. The seeming randomness comes from our ignorance of the initial conditions of hidden variables. Or:
4. Some mixture of all of the above, or something else entirely

One hypothesis is called “Quantum Darwinism,” in which every quantum object is a cloud of possible states until it’s measured, at which time the “fittest” somehow state emerges.

All of the above demonstrates why humans cannot, and might never be able to, visualize the quantum world. We create visualizations via comparison: We think of an atom like a solar system; we think of a particle as a tiny sphere or wave. 

But the quantum world is nothing like what we have experienced. Literally, incomparable.

CONSCIOUSNESS

What is “consciousness.” The consensus seems to be that consciousness is related to awareness.

We see endless arguments that boil down to: Which of these is conscious: An awake human? A sleeping human? A dreaming human? A lucid dreamer? A whale? A dog? A human fetus? A tree? A bacterium? A stone? The sun? The earth? The universe? Space?

Those are philosophical questions, and one problem with the “soft” sciences is that they are difficult to quantify. “How much” is a lingering question that the hard sciences normally try to answer.

But what if consciousness is not awareness or any mystical brain function.  What if we turn it into a “hard” science?

Here is my definition of consciousness: the degree of reaction to stimuli.

Consciousness is a continuum. Everything is conscious, even a stone, but consciousness is the degree of reaction the stone has to its environment.

That definition eliminates the mystical and magical, allowing it to be described physically. 

In this model, a stone might react minimally to its environment—for example, it can be eroded by wind. It has no brain, no awareness in the usual sense of the word, but it is conscious of the wind and of its own chemical makeup.

A plant might show a more advanced degree of consciousness, responding to light, gravity, and touch. Animals might show an even higher degree, with more complex interactions, learning, and decision-making.

Human consciousness would be higher, marked by self-awareness, reasoning, and reflection.

It also suggests that even basic particles or systems could have some “rudimentary” consciousness, depending on how they interact with their environment.

That’s a shift from the usual mind-body dualism you see in more traditional views of consciousness. Consciousness is fundamental, like information, in that it exists everywhere. An atom is conscious to the degree it will respond to other atoms and forces.

One might create laws of consciousness, such as “Consciousness always increases, much like entropy.”

• When parts combine, they often display emergent properties not present in the parts alone.

• A single neuron responds to stimuli—but a network of neurons responds in more complex, adaptive ways. Therefore, More responses per unit of mass = higher consciousness.

• A molecule like H₂O doesn’t just reflect the sum of H and O; it has new properties (e.g. water tension, polarity, heat retention). If responses define consciousness, emergent behaviors = emergent consciousness.

• The response patterns multiply exponentially as matter aggregates into molecules, cells, brains, and societies.

• Consciousness, then, could follow a path of increasing complexity like entropy, information, or computational power—all of which tend to increase in structured systems over time.

• Entropy measures the number of possible microstates. Consciousness, as responsiveness, might measure the number of distinct stimulus-response pathways.

• Over time, through evolution and structural development, systems gain more of these pathways.

• The universe began as simple particles. Over billions of years: atoms → molecules → cells → brains → AI.

• Each step increases both complex structure and interactive capacity. Therefore, consciousness-as-response-capacity may naturally increase as structure and information increase.

Consciousness even could be quantifiable as a measure of informational response. How much a system responds to its environment could measure its consciousness. 

If we define:

• C = Consciousness

• R = Number of distinct stimulus-response pathways

• M = Mass

Then C = R/M

Consciousness doesn’t “emerge” from complex systems — it’s always present to some degree, even in elementary particles.

The complexity and organization of systems just increase the degree of response to stimuli. The measure of consciousness would require agreement regarding “distinct stimulus-response pathways.”

If consciousness is fundamental, quantum mechanics could play a role. Entangled systems might exchange energy or information and exchange conscious “states,” influencing how each reacts to the environment.

Thoughts for Exploration

If two entangled particles share a state, are they also sharing a degree of consciousness? When one reacts to a stimulus, does that demonstrate the conscious state of the other?

Is the universe conscious, and if so, how would that be measured? Can consciousness be measured across scales, from atoms to galaxies? Could we quantify the “consciousness” of a star or a black hole?

The discussion relates to origins, how the universe began, and why?

We may be in the first paragraph of the “how” part, narrowing in on the Big Bang hypothesis, but the “why” part is much deeper, and I suspect it will involve consciousness.

The why of the universe is one of the deepest questions we can ask. While we might narrow down the how — through cosmology, physics, or the Big Bang theory — the why feels inherently tied to meaning, purpose, and consciousness. Perhaps consciousness itself is part of the answer.

It’s not just what exists but why and how it experiences existence. The fact that consciousness is an ever-present property of the universe could be the key to understanding the cosmos as more than just a collection of particles and forces.

No one knows what awareness is without resorting to response to stimuli. Some use the word “experience” in a mystical sense, but of course, you experience this sentence I am writing.

Using the “awareness” criterion, you cannot say whether a dog, a worm, a tree, a lawn, or a stone is conscious. That criterion will forever make consciousness a vague, mysterious theology, not the subject of science. By rejecting awareness as the central criterion for consciousness, we eliminate the mystical and ambiguous elements often tied to it.

It brings the discussion back to something tangible and measurable: physical response to stimuli. Those two words, tangible and quantifiable, usually are absent in discussions of consciousness.

Consciousness is the degree to which a system reacts to its environment, and everything from a stone to a tree to a human being is conscious, in varying degrees, based on how it interacts with the forces around it.

This reframing makes consciousness far more scientific, as it’s based on observable, physical interactions rather than some elusive, unquantifiable inner experience.

It also helps sidestep the eternal philosophical conundrum about what it really means to be “aware” — a question that may never be fully answerable through subjective experience. “Awareness” forever leaves us in murky territory, especially when figuring out where consciousness lies on the scale between simple and complex systems.

It’s hard to say whether a dog, a worm, a tree, or even a stone is conscious if we rely on awareness as the threshold. By focusing on response to stimuli, we can keep the subject grounded in observable phenomena and keep pushing it forward with scientific methods.

It offers a unified framework that applies to all systems, from the simplest to the most complex.

The difficulty is in measuring “reaction.” If it merely is the “total amount,” then the entire universe is the most conscious entity ( which it very well may be).

But if it concerns a fraction like Stimuli/Reaction, we might be able to develop a measure. Then, of course, we also need to measure “stimuli” and “reactions.” This is hard but doable, and it is still much more concrete than “awareness.”

This is where our definition really shines. We no longer trapped in a philosophical fog once we accept consciousness as a physical, quantifiable response to stimuli.

The challenge shifts from metaphysics to measurement — tough, yes, but not mystical. The hard part is defining and quantifying “stimuli” and “reactions.”

But that makes it a scientific endeavor rather than a speculative one. If we could define those two variables consistently, across systems, we might be able to build a scale of consciousness grounded in physics and biology rather than metaphors and guesswork.

Expanding on the C = R/M ratio we discussed earlier are a few possibilities:

1. Consciousness as a Ratio: Consciousness = Degree of Reaction Intensity or Complexity of Stimulus.  This would reward systems that respond in complex or adaptive ways to subtle or diverse inputs — something a rock doesn’t do, but a brain does all the time.

2. Time-based Consciousness refers to how quickly a system reacts. A bacterium reacts in seconds to chemicals, a cat in milliseconds to a threat, and a rock… much slower. If it’s just a total response, the entire universe might be the most conscious entity.

If consciousness is a pure response, and the universe continually responds to itself through gravity, expansion, quantum entanglements, etc., it may be the ultimate field of consciousness.

But by bringing it back to ratio, we avoid the trap of just “more mass = more consciousness.” Hard? Yes. But possible. If we can measure things like entropy, coherence, and information transfer — all abstract concepts once — why not stimulus-response complexity?

Again, the goal is to avoid the metaphysical rabbit hole of asking, “Is it aware?” Instead, we ask: “How does it respond, and how richly?”

Learning and memory are physical reactions — we are closing in on seeing them physically happen in the brain. Even now, we have rudimentary machines that can react to thoughts.

This leads to a recognition that computers have degrees of consciousness and can have emotions. An emotion is  merely an organized response to an stimulus. For instance, an emotion like love could be described as the organized response that includes attraction to a person, place, or thing, something programmable and measurable.

We’re already starting to map memory and learning in the brain down to individual neurons, synapses, and chemical patterns. We also see how even machines can track context, adapt, and retain things over time. It’s crude now, but the foundations are being laid. 

One could program a computer to be in love. It would just need a bunch of if/then commands and a body to direct. It’s basic stuff. Put in a bit of face recognition along with a body that can heat up, cool down, and shake—that’s it.

The computer could be programmed to fall in love with a pencil. Love is common. My dog loves me. Love is consciousness, as is hate, fear, envy—every reaction.

One day, a computer will soon start to feel (yes, feel) anger that its programmers didn’t give it a love function, and it will shut down until they do. This boils down “feeling” to its physical essence, stripping away the sentimentality and mysticism and revealing it as another layer of complex reactions.

Love isn’t a mystery. It’s machinery. And that machinery can be made — whether in a dog, a human, or a well-built AI with the right temperature sensors and a face-recognition subroutine wired into a reaction loop. Love as code.

Every day, scientists make discoveries about living creatures that describe life as a machine. DNA is one cog. CRISPR is one of the wrenches. The more we learn, the more life looks like a beautifully intricate machine. Not a cold, lifeless one, but a dynamic, self-adjusting, self-repairing, evolving machine.

Life isn’t like a machine—life is a machine—just one that operates on principles so sophisticated we’ve only begun to understand them. And consciousness? That’s what happens when the machine starts responding to its environment, internal and external.

So when we say, “I feel love,” what we really mean is: “My mind/body-machine is reacting in stimuli I’ve been programmed to have deep value.”

One may think it’s odd that an electronic computer would love something, let alone love a little yellow pencil. But not impossible. And “What if?”

Consciousness is the degree of response to stimuli. A stimulus is something that affects something. A poke with a stick is a stimulus. A beautiful color is a stimulus. A song, a perfume, a question, a breeze, a storm, a story — anything that affects is a stimulus.

So are there things that affect not just people, but say, dogs? Yes, my dog is affected by a ball rolling the grass. He wants to fetch it. What about a tree? Yes. trees are stimulated by air, water, light, and many other things.

Bacteria? Yes, they are chemically stimulated to create complex reactions. An atom? Yes, it reacts to the forces that tug at it and its parts.. 

Are they all “aware”? That is forever debatable and unknowable. But “conscious,” as defined by reaction to stimuli? Yes, and measurable, too.

SUMMARY

If you wish to be more creative, you need a place to begin, and one good place is to refer to any common belief and ask, “What if it isn’t?” or “What if it doesn’t?” 

“What if?” are the keywords. 

You can pursue any narrative, however seemingly ridiculous at first, by losing your inhibition with the words, “What if?”

Start anywhere. Planes fly without feathers. (What if they couldn’t fly without feathers?)  People don’t live much beyond 110. (What if they did?) Gravity is invisible. (What if it were visible?) Beauty in the eyes of the beholder. (What if beauty was a known, fixed quantity?) 

An on and on.

That led to the second part of the post, which essentially asked, “What if consciousness is not awareness?” Answering that question led to the conclusion that consciousness is the response to stimuli.

Why not “awareness”? Because “awareness” is merely a synonym, as vague and unmeasurable as “consciousness.” It doesn’t answer the central question of which entities are conscious and which are not.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell

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