Can GHC become self-conscious?

As you know, GHC is compiled by itself. GHC also comes with an optimization engine. GHC's code optimization therefore optimizes itself. It is also a rather aggressive optimizer.

How long do you think we have until it becomes self-aware, recursively self modifying itself down to the point that it can instantly rewrite programs to run in O(1), having solved P=NP and so other computational problems?

Do you think 6 to 8 weeks is a reasonable estimate?

higher order functions will always overtake lower order functions

Yes, if the input size is unbounded, which it is always assumed to be within the theoretical field of computational complexity. In reality it isn't, but generally it's still high enough that order makes more of a difference than coefficients (which is why all coefficients are assumed to be 1). A higher-order function may run faster on small inputs than a lower one (again, due to coefficients), but that isn't what computational complexity is about.