What if awareness isn’t eternal? What if even consciousness has an expiry date — not because the body dies, but because awareness itself is eroding with time? These were the late-night questions bouncing around my brain, and instead of dismissing them, I followed the thread.
The Theory (In Simple Terms)
You might’ve heard of entropy. It’s the idea that disorder in a system always increases over time. It’s one of the few things in physics that have a direction — it always increases. Time, interestingly, is not a defined direction in physics. It doesn’t have to go forward. But since entropy increases only in one direction, we end up experiencing time as going forward. Our entire experience of past → present → future may just be us riding the wave of increasing entropy. It explains why things age, why heat spreads out, and even why time seems to flow only forward.
Now, here’s the leap: what if consciousness is also subject to entropy? Not just the brain or memory. But the very framework that allows us to be aware — to experience, to perceive, to say, “I am.”
Think of it like a clay pot holding water (memories). The pot is that framework, and the act of adding water to the pot is awareness. Over time, using it causes some of that clay to dissolve into the water. Slowly, the vessel thins and cracks.
Eventually, the pot can’t hold anything.
So even if you replace the water (change memories, swap identity), the pot itself is fading. And when it crumbles, awareness collapses.
Mapping It Out: Awareness → Experience → Memory → Identity → Self
Most discussions treat the self as memory-based. That’s how neuroscience often sees it. And Buddhism, too, teaches that identity is ever-shifting, made of momentary experiences. No permanent self. Only a stream. Buddhism also teaches that all things are impermanent — bodies decay, memories fade, and eventually, the person we knew disappears.
But what would that mean for artificial intelligence or simulated consciousness? Would a perfect, endlessly regenerative AI with perfect hardware be free of this rule?
Is it only the body and memory? Or is there something even more fundamental — something that enables experience in the first place — that also fades?
Here’s the thought I’m exploring: Since we live in a universe where entropy always increases. Everything tends toward disorder. So maybe our very consciousness — the capacity to be aware — is built in a way that aligns with this rule. It stays consistent with the laws of the universe.
And that act — the act of staying consistent with time, change, and entropy — might be what we experience as awareness. It’s the effort of a system to maintain its structure, its coherence, its low-entropy state, within an environment constantly pushing towards disorder.
That leads to
- Awareness comes first— not memory, not identity.
- Awareness enables experience.
- Experience leads to memory.
- Memory forms identity.
- Identity becomes the self. This ‘self’ is a high-level strategy developed by consciousness to navigate this entropic flow more effectively, even if it’s ultimately temporary.
But this whole chain rests on awareness. And if awareness comes at a cost — if each moment of awareness puts a small strain on the framework that supports it — then that framework will slowly erode over time, even in the most perfect body.
I suggest that it isn’t just passively existing. It costs something. Every moment of awareness adds micro-strain on the framework enabling it. It’s like a processor logging activity, even if it forgets the logs later. That act of logging causes wear.
So even if you erase memory or identity, awareness keeps eroding. Until one day … it doesn’t arise at all.
So what am I saying?
Maybe being immortal isn’t possible even in the most perfect of human or mechanical bodies because maybe awareness isn’t free.
Maybe the universe charges a cost for every second of experience.
And maybe that cost is entropy, not just in your body or mind, but in the very capacity to be aware.
That doesn’t mean we panic. It means we realize
- Memory isn’t everything.
- Identity isn’t solid.
- Even consciousness, the thing we think is timeless, may be on a clock.
And that clock might not tick like hours. It might tick like erosion.
Final Thought
This isn’t a scientific paper. I’m just curious about where physics, philosophy, and perception intersect. But if any of this sparks curiosity, or if someone way smarter than me can build on this, then that would be worth something.
Until then, I’m just here, aware, watching the pot slowly crack or the body.
Further Reading:
Posted by Samarth Pawar. All thoughts are mine, unless entropy erases them.