*hits blunt*

can you imagine a universe that is aware of itself?

yes, because you are aware of yourself and "yourself" is part of the universe

whow cool

So you're saying a part is the whole.

>>3
By that logic, you as a human are not aware of yourself, because your brain is only part of your whole body.

1) I'm not aware of myself.
2) I'm not the universe.

>>4
You can taste my brain, but you'll never taste my mind.

What if it turned out that the entire universe was actually a fractal resulting from the iteration of one simple equation?! What would it mean for concepts like "free will" and "awareness"?!

>>7
I think it wouldn't make a difference for awareness, but it would for free will. Awareness can occur regardless of its mechanism. Free will depends on a mechanism that cannot be a deterministic one like a fractal.

>>8
The patterns that form through iteration appear to impossible to predict, meaning that, if the universe is indeed a fractal, you can have both free will and a deterministic reality. Free will is an expression of language, implying a concept that is only relevant to human perception (or rather, linear time perception). Therefore, for free will to be real all you need is to be the product of a set of processes that produce the sensation of choice.

>>9
That situation would still be determinism. You are saying every next state in the universe is in fact predictable while appearing unpredictable. In that case, the appearance is irrelevant and only strengthens the case for determinism.

to be the product of a set of processes that produce the sensation of choice.

This describes any manifestation of a sensation of choice. You could have an ephemeral soul or spirit that produces your choices, and that spirit would qualify as a process producing the sensation of choice, but it would not have deterministic qualities in any sense other than a semantic one.

>>10
The patterns of a fractal are unpredictable, but they are the precise outcome of iteration rather than being the result of choice or chance. So outcomes are unpredictable, but the result of a deterministic process. Free will has to imply an element of randomness to outcomes, otherwise it is a false choice.

This describes any manifestation of a sensation of choice

Maybe it isn't the best way to state it -- rather: how perceivable free will can arise from a deterministic system. If you don't happen to believe in a god this is a reasonable way of explaining why outcomes for people are the result of choice while also explaining how that (very real to us) perception of choice/options/unpredictability came to be.

A pattern that only repeats every million iterations is unlikely to be noticed; things can seem chaotic to allow randomness while still being deterministic.

>>12
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/63811/is-the-universe-fundamentally-deterministic

>>12
It will be noticed if you use a good enough pattern detection algorithm.

I thought the idea was that every universe is a leaf of the fractal and that our universe is going to spawn an infinite recursion of universes

>>12
But if the whole universe was the result of iteration that would mean the human experience of free will would be a real thing, because at our conscious level (as a emergent secondary property of iteration) there would be no determinism. A deterministic pattern playing out at a scale so far beyond human perception cannot be said to influence the experience of life including the act of choice.

So from the perspective of a human you would have free will, to say it only "seems" like you have free will in an essentially deterministic universe is like saying it only "seems" like you are a conscious being in a universe where time isn't linear. Both might be technically ttrue, from the perspective of a being who exists in all dimensions at once, but from the point of view of a human awareness you are a conscious being with free will.

Eventually wouldn't Urban Dictionary replace Oxford Dictionary?