As promised here is my take on the subject.
I wrote it in 2005 and it is heavily influenced by ideas from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus, with some amendments about classical physics and general math/logic that weren't known to them.
The consequences of the model, would it be true, are none
Emotionally I liked coming to closure after five years thinking about the subject and I haven't thought about it much since then.
But I didn't really like the conclusion and I still don't
The world exists both as subject and object.
This is the root cause of all differentiation.
The subject corresponds to the desire/will of the world (that which experiences).
The object corresponds to the representation of the world (that which is experienced by that which experiences).
But the desire/will (the subject) can only experience * itself * as there is nothing else.
The world thus becomes self-conscious, that is, the object (the representation) is a
subset of the subject.
Subset because the world does not know itself completely.
Complete self-awareness would namely imply that the set itself (the subject) could be an element (an object) in the same set, i.e. that infinite recursion would be possible.
Had the world known itself completely then subject had been identical with object, but reality contradicts this.
Infinity does thus not need to be introduced as a concept.
Discrete theory building is therefore the logical choice (except for approximations).
Suppose the possible states of the world F
are finitely many (n = 0,1, 2, ..., N) and that those states can be described by finitely many degrees of freedom dim (F) = M.
Now let F(n+N) = F
, i.e., let the states be ordered in a cyclic way.
Beginning and end thus coincide, and become arbitrary.
According to experience, all interactions diminish with distance.
The world is therefore as most self-conscious when its representation is as small as possible.
Similarly, the world is as most unaware of itself when its representation is as large as possible.
Let the latter state (arbitrarily) be F(0), i.e. n = 0.
Here Sisyphus looks at the stone that he is about to roll up the hill, so to speak. Note that F(0) = F(N).
The world experiences painful interaction, which it wants to minimize.
This is formalized in physics as “the law of least resistanceâ€, that is, the desire to minimize the potential energy.
In its efforts to minimize the suffering, the subject gets to know its surroundings, and gradually the world as a subject realizes that its surroundings (the representation) in fact is a part of the world itself, i.e. the subject realizes that knowledge building, in fact, means getting to know itself, to become self-conscious.
At the same time it realizes that the price to become conscious is suffering, because knowledge building requires examining the object, that is, interacting with it, which always results in some pain.
A way for the desire/will to completely avoid suffering would therefore be making itself completely unaware. In the world as representation one can imagine that this is equivalent to elementary particles being so far apart that they completely cease to influence each other. This in turn can be achieved if the desire/will produces one last very painful effort and gathers all space-time and matter in a single, completely symmetrical, zero-dimensional region (one point) and fires off.
The symmetry in this perfect Big Bang would result in matter to spread uniformly in all directions and no particle would experience any net force from the other particles. The consciousness of the desire/will would slowly drain away.
The world, however, as mentioned, may never become fully self-aware and therefore the region was not entirely symmetrical and point-like, which in turn gave rise to a new aggregating of matter and a new long pursuit of complete self-knowledge. The circle is closed and the cycle repeats itself identically.
The overall objective of minimizing the suffering gives time direction, i.e. the ability to arrange the states of the world F
in a sequence.
As space-time expands, so does entropy, and suffering declines.
In this phase the world becomes less and less self-conscious.
Sisyphus’ stone rolls down the hill.
When space-time is compressed, entropy is reduced and suffering increases.
In this phase the world strives for complete self-awareness.
Sisyphus pushes the stone up the hill.
The transition between these phases correspond to the Big Bang:
The world has become aware that it causes itself pain as it strives to minimize the suffering by learning to know itself.
Sisyphus is on top and has just rolled the stone all the way up.
It recognises that one way to escape out of the paradox and the suffering is to try to become completely unconscious.
The stone starts rolling down again.
The model is fully deterministic and makes the concept of free will meaningless. It's just a matter of interpretation: I *must* follow the laws of nature (I have no free will) is the same as I *want to* follow the laws of nature (I have free will).
