> Consciousness is an emergent property of computation It's interesting to see the negative comments about this here because I agree with you. "Consciousness"

> Consciousness is an emergent property of computation It's interesting to see the negative comments about this here because I agree with you. "Consciousness" or even "sentience" is notoriously difficult to define. Even defining what an organism is isn't entirely obvious (eg some might consider a colony of ants or bees as being organism-like). Our views tend to be extremely human-centric because we can relate. I imagine once we actually invent an AGI many will debate if it's truly sentient or conscious for a long, long time afterwards. > Computation is more efficient in smaller, less massy media There are physical limits on computation. A smaller package ultimately has a lower limit. That alone will (IMHO) keep a space for very large computational units. At the top end of this is Matrioshka Brains [1]. A digital existence looks highly likely in the black hole era of the universe [2]. This is the era after all the stars have faded out and will be much longer (based on current understanding) than the stellar era, so much so that the 13-14B year lifetime of the universe thus far will be like the blink of an eye. As for detecting communication, that's too narrow a focus. Whether we're miniscule cyborgs that communicate with qubits or living as virtual beings in a world-sized computer, the ultimate limits of what any such civilization can do is is the amount of energy they can consume. More energy means more is possible. So even if we end up living as a K2 civilization in a billion orbitals around our Sun or one of the alternatives or build a Matrioshka Brain or simply collect all the power with satellites, all of these will have a similar IR signature that will be extremely detectable. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ