change the word just slightly. ask "can nature deceive", and feel the mass of apparent profundity evaporate from the question. A lie, just as with an illusion

change the word just slightly. ask "can nature deceive", and feel the mass of apparent profundity evaporate from the question. A lie, just as with an illusion or a deception, is a means to impair or blind someone's or something's mental model of a future state in a way that disadvantages them to one's own. I think the depth in this question, and I'll confess I didn't read the article so it may go into this, is not whether nature can lie but whether consciousness can be dedined along this axis. that is, whether the deceiving entity is aware of what it is doing, and further, has any agency over doing it. Or more succinctly, this is another entrepôt to the ancient benighted debate of free will vs determinism.