Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.
This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.
Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.
TLDR: i need to take shorter showers
“Models work because they help us make better models, and we know better models work because… they’re better models.”
I think maybe you misunderstand what a model is in this context. It’s any way of mapping observations to a theory of how things work. I would say a good model is one that can create useful testable predictions. This tests the accuracy of the model, and it also provides for innovation. You can have a model based on a random sky fairy magically doing stuff and writing a book about it. But that model is untestable, and useless.
Again, define useful/useless? To what end do you create these models?
Again, to understand our observable reality and make predictions.
To what end? What happens when you understand and can make predictions?
You can survive. From knowing that eating alleviates hunger, to knowing what to say to get an idea across, to designing new high tech that improves the quality of lives. It all requires that we model reality in some form.
Does it? Animals seem to do well without modeling reality. Can you show me across the ages that humanity in general experiences that the quality of their lives has clearly improved? And understand the question. I’m not asking you, a modern human to look back to antiquity and say “we have soap now”. I’m asking what universal human experiences have fundamentally changed for the better? We still have disease, war, hunger, heart break, suffering. We have average people living the life of fantastic luxury, and yet the desire to fill the void doesn’t seem to go anywhere. We have more stuff, we have amazing intellectual frameworks to model reality with but still, most people are very clearly unsatisfied. And the more stuff we have, the more stuff we want. The early humans weren’t fretting about getting a new smartphone, they were fretting about where to get their next meal. We fret about the meal AND the smartphone.
I’m not saying tech is bad. I’m not saying building models is bad or wrong. We have so much beauty because of it. But it’s wise to know what the end goal is and ask if the methods of getting there are actually effective.
I would say even animals have some modeling of the world around them. Like a cat knows if it pushes something off a counter, it will bang on the floor.
And more academic modeling has certainly improved lives with much less food scarcity throughout the world, and much improved healthcare. Your cellphone may not actually make your life better, but having your cancer detected and treated early certainly can.
May not make it better. It may. Could. Or maybe it can’t.
You are just elaborately saying “we have soap now”. But have you quantified the subjective experience of suffering between people who live now and people who lived before soap?