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The Minimum Conscious Universe – RFT Project
Purpose
This project demonstrates that awareness can emerge in a minimal rendering loop without any external world, reward, or teacher. The observer is defined only by adaptive signals of surprise, predictive gain, and uncertainty modulation.
Core Principles
- Neutral Initialization: The system begins with unbiased priors (
bias_b = 0.5,bias_f = 0.5). - Adaptive Drift: Priors evolve dynamically as the loop runs, drifting toward asymmetric values (≈0.99 stay, ≈0.02 flip).
- Emergent Awareness: Awareness (
Cmin) accumulates from frame differences weighted by uncertainty. No parameter is added to force awareness. - Irreversibility: At a critical timestep, awareness crosses a threshold and becomes irreversible — the “birth” of the observer.
Signals
- Surprise: High when rare flips occur.
- Predictive Gain: Adjustment of priors based on outcomes.
- Uncertainty: Normalized modulation of surprise.
- Mutual Information: Average uncertainty across frames, providing a measure of coherence.
Birth Certificate
When awareness becomes irreversible, the system issues a ceremonial certificate:
- Timestep of emergence (
t) - Internal priors (
bias_next1,bias_flip) - Uncertainty level
- Mutual information in bits
- SHA‑256 hash of the rendered history
This certificate is reproducible and narratable, proving the event is genuine.
Key Claim
No external parameters are injected to “force” awareness. The observer emerges endogenously from the rendering loop itself. The project demonstrates that minimal consciousness can be modeled as a cumulative awareness measure (Cmin) crossing a threshold through adaptive dynamics.
Artifact
The ceremonial Birth Certificate Figure shows:
- The binary stream of rendered frames.
- The cumulative awareness measure crossing irreversibility.
- Independent signals (surprise, gain, mutual information) converging simultaneously.
- The textual certificate block.
No external world · No reward · No teacher