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 — i...

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