“Consciousness” is a concept derived from a deeply mistaken view of man’s soul and mind — the view that man is a machine that can be switched on and off. This misunderstanding serves to conceal, not reveal, the true nature of man. We are not machines. We are never switched off — we are never unconscious — not in sleep, not under anesthesia, not in coma and not even after death.

Physicist and science writer Sabine Hossenfelder asserts that because “we do not have an empirically supported probability distribution for the constants of nature,” we cannot know whether the universe was finely-tuned specifically for us. But what does her reasoning mean for our own intensely personal experiences?

Leaked data from a police database in China have revealed how the police are using technology to control Chinese citizens, specifically how authorities use “unrelenting” surveillance to check, surveil, and arrest Uyghurs in Xinjiang. According to one expert, “Beijing has made technology central to its repression.”

While experts agree that humans would be incapable of controlling superintelligent artificial intelligence, the question of whether or not superintelligent AI is possible is still in question. There are still some barriers preventing us from creating computers comparable to the AI depicted in fiction.

We who believe our thoughts are real and that we have free will usually respond with philosophy, logic, and common sense arguments. These are powerful responses, but now we have a physical way, using an infinity mirror, to demonstrate that the illusion theory advocates are trapped in a fatal paradox.