Free will re-redux

I don't think this is the same thing as quantum indeterminism? It seems to me that we - or let's say Lapace's Demon - could predict the outcome of the simulation if we looked at the atoms of a computer as it runs the program.

There are domains of computational irreducibility... and that is where we are. Or you could say we are inside Laplace's demon's computer (which is the universe) that is calculating the future. The future can't be predicted except to run the simulation and see what happens. You can locally simplify into domains of computational reducibility (physics and engineering) which allow you to make probabilistic predictions. If you haven't already, please listen to this Lex Fridman podcast with Stephen Wolfram... one of the best yet!

Whereas, at least based on our current understanding, it is in principle impossible to predict the individual particle behavior in the examples of quantum indeterminism. (Think Maxwell's Demon on the side of Xaos, and Lapace's Demon the side of Law.)

We can't predict individual particle behavior in that fluid simulation I showed without running the simulation just like we can't predict individual particle behavior of quantum particles without "running the simulation" which is life.

What are these cards from?

The one caveat is I've read this idea that if we are in a Simulation then ground level indeterminism from our vantage point could be accomplished by a pseudo-random generator invoked by the program running said Simulation.

In my "Patternism" model all randomness is fundamentally a result of subjective choice which by definition is the "first cause" the act of determining and if such choice were predictable it would be defined as part of the fundamental Object. We all contain "first cause" because the divine mind hasn't made up its mind yet and it doesn't know how to make up its mind until it sees what happens... nested feedback loops and we are each tracing out one such feedback loop out of all the possible loops that can exist.

Randomness of particles inside macro-scale structures is not the only similarity to simulacra created by neural networks. There is also the semantic aspect. If I want an image of a cat, I can input "cat" into a trained network and out comes an image of a cat. Here at Psiencequest we are familiar with all sorts of apparitions, mysterious appearance and disappearance of images, sounds, etc. as well as synchronicities. These can all be more easily understood if physical reality is generated by a network which contains a semantic capability.

I'll repeat the question I posed elsewhere: is your story being compressed with irrelevant data discarded? During your life review is every blade of grass in the exact same place because your entire story is preserved without compression? Or does God's GAN upscale the blank space labeled "grass" and generate fresh grass for you to see?

What are these cards from?

Will get back to you on the other stuff but the Tarot cards were from the Mage Tarot, and the last image is from one of the comics based on Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series.

Both works of fiction, but they seemed to fit. Especially the Mage Tarot Suites: Dynamism, Pattern, Questing, Primordialism.

There are domains of computational irreducibility... and that is where we are. Or you could say we are inside Laplace's demon's computer (which is the universe) that is calculating the future. The future can't be predicted except to run the simulation and see what happens. You can locally simplify into domains of computational reducibility (physics and engineering) which allow you to make probabilistic predictions. If you haven't already, please listen to this Lex Fridman podcast with Stephen Wolfram... one of the best yet!

We can't predict individual particle behavior in that fluid simulation I showed without running the simulation just like we can't predict individual particle behavior of quantum particles without "running the simulation" which is life.

But the inherent nature of the computer running the simulation is thought to be at least "adequately deterministic", in the sense that we don't think quantum indeterminism would change the outcome. I mean there algorithms that utilize randomness to solve a problem with good guessing that is practically unsolvable deterministically due to computers breaking down over time...but AFAIK machine learning doesn't utilize those algorithms?

In my "Patternism" model all randomness is fundamentally a result of subjective choice which by definition is the "first cause" the act of determining and if such choice were predictable it would be defined as part of the fundamental Object. We all contain "first cause" because the divine mind hasn't made up its mind yet and it doesn't know how to make up its mind until it sees what happens... nested feedback loops and we are each tracing out one such feedback loop out of all the possible loops that can exist.

So you agree with the Idealists writing to Sci Am? ->

As such, a conscious observer may be indispensable, an idea further elaborated by one of us with regard to so-called “delayed choice quantum eraser” experiments. The bottom line is that we cannot know that detectors actually perform measurements, for we cannot abstract ourselves out of our knowledge. Recall Max Planck’s position: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.”

What preserves a superposition is merely how well the quantum system—whatever its size—is isolated from the world of tables and chairs known to us through direct conscious apprehension. That a superposition does not survive exposure to this world suggests, if anything, a role for consciousness in the emergence of a definite physical reality.

=-=-=

Hurmanetar Wrote:

Randomness of particles inside macro-scale structures is not the only similarity to simulacra created by neural networks. There is also the semantic aspect. If I want an image of a cat, I can input "cat" into a trained network and out comes an image of a cat. Here at Psiencequest we are familiar with all sorts of apparitions, mysterious appearance and disappearance of images, sounds, etc. as well as synchronicities. These can all be more easily understood if physical reality is generated by a network which contains a semantic capability.

Do you think apparitions are errors/glitches in the "Matrix"? Also synchroncities seem different than the other stuff you mention, as do apparitions that are more coherent.

I'll repeat the question I posed elsewhere: is your story being compressed with irrelevant data discarded? During your life review is every blade of grass in the exact same place because your entire story is preserved without compression? Or does God's GAN upscale the blank space labeled "grass" and generate fresh grass for you to see?

I've no idea, though it would be sort of odd if the Mind of God had to do lossy compression...

But the inherent nature of the computer running the simulation is thought to be at least "adequately deterministic", in the sense that we don't think quantum indeterminism would change the outcome. I mean there algorithms that utilize randomness to solve a problem with good guessing that is practically unsolvable deterministically due to computers breaking down over time...but AFAIK machine learning doesn't utilize those algorithms?

My knowledge of machine learning is limited to YouTube demos and Lex Fridman's podcast, so I don't know how randomness is used in those algorithms, but would be interesting to learn more.

Is the universe deterministic in the sense that a universe sized computer could calculate the present moment from initial Big Bang conditions? IMO, no, because there are feedback loops involving choice on much smaller time scales and because the observer and the observed are not distinct entities but are interdependent - we are making it up as we go. People on a mass scale have predictable behavior patterns but on individual scale are unpredictable to a degree. Which brings up an interesting point about the Joker Trickster is that his power is due in part to his unpredictability. ...I want to go back and watch Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight again now...

So you agree with the Idealists writing to Sci Am? ->

Yes, I skimmed the article and don't find much to complain about except this: the feeling evoked by words is important and although the authors claim they are not advocating solipsism or whatnot, the word "Idealism" sort of leads to that. Idealism is fluffy and soft and ethereal and objectivism or materialism is hard and firm and immutable. I think its very important we recognize that all of our notions about anything and especially metaphysical musings are metaphorical extrapolations of direct sensory experiences. That is why I like the word "pattern" because we see patterns and we also are very familiar with optical illusions where depending on how you orient yourself to the pattern you can see different things. "Patternism" sort of "objectifies" consciousness and recognizes structure and the object and therefore makes it friendly to the materialists, but contains the Easter egg of free choice and purpose and consciousness which satisfies the Idealists.

Do you think apparitions are errors/glitches in the "Matrix"?

No, I imagine that they are 5D analogs of toroidal vortex ring that undergoes vortex stretching upon death. The remnant energy contained in the residual vortex that was created by the original life of the entity can interact with God's GAN to generate physical phenomena that are more or less repetitions of the original physical phenomena. Maybe that sounds like a word salad explanation, but I can picture it!

Also synchroncities seem different than the other stuff you mention, as do apparitions that are more coherent.

Let's take Jung's familiar synchronicity with the beetle. The emotional power of the synchronicity exists as a kind of time loop (again appealing to the visual of the torus with north pole into the future and south pole into the past) where the symbol of the beetle from the dream was semantically connected to the beetle that flew in the window during the therapy session. It is as if someone typed "insert beetle" into the script and God's GAN generates a beetle. But who typed "insert beetle"? The participants in the synchronicity did it with their own emotional reaction to it (combined with all of ours who read about it decades later) in a time loop.

You can think of the universe as a graph of semantic vectors indicating whether this clump of space is more or less similar to all the other clumps of space and this is a type of locality. Locality in the traditional sense is merely one type of similarity (spatial-temporal similarity) and merely one component of the overall semantic similarity value. In the semantic similarity space (which is analogous to a trained neural network) the more similar things are, the more local they are.

I've no idea, though it would be sort of odd if the Mind of God had to do lossy compression...

But that is the question: are you losing anything? If so, what? We create simulations, games, that distill the essence of interestingness out of life. When I play Call of Duty, I don't want to play for 10 days before I see some action. I want to get in and get out. Or when you have casual conversation with a friend, you tell them the highlights of your life and not the mundane details. We compress our lives mentally to distill the essence of the things we find to be of emotional value. Does God do the same? And can the mundane details be reconstructed completely - is everything stored indefinitely - or does God necessarily forget anything because he is on a similar quest to distill meaning and achieve a goal? To what extent is the past fixed? Is it recorded indefinitely or is there a causal horizon beyond which the past is malleable? These are the biggest philosophical questions in my mind at the moment.

Let me try again.

What happens between the final instant when I have not made up my mind and the first instant when I have made up my mind?

Is the universe deterministic in the sense that a universe sized computer could calculate the present moment from initial Big Bang conditions? IMO, no, because there are feedback loops involving choice on much smaller time scales and because the observer and the observed are not distinct entities but are interdependent - we are making it up as we go. People on a mass scale have predictable behavior patterns but on individual scale are unpredictable to a degree. Which brings up an interesting point about the Joker Trickster is that his power is due in part to his unpredictability. ...I want to go back and watch Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight again now...

Earlier you had mentioned a triad of determinism/randomness/will, but my reading of the above makes me think you're saying there's only determinism and free will?

Or are determinism and randomness just perceptions rather than actualities?

No, I imagine that they are 5D analogs of toroidal vortex ring that undergoes vortex stretching upon death. The remnant energy contained in the residual vortex that was created by the original life of the entity can interact with God's GAN to generate physical phenomena that are more or less repetitions of the original physical phenomena. Maybe that sounds like a word salad explanation, but I can picture it!

Let's take Jung's familiar synchronicity with the beetle. The emotional power of the synchronicity exists as a kind of time loop (again appealing to the visual of the torus with north pole into the future and south pole into the past) where the symbol of the beetle from the dream was semantically connected to the beetle that flew in the window during the therapy session. It is as if someone typed "insert beetle" into the script and God's GAN generates a beetle. But who typed "insert beetle"? The participants in the synchronicity did it with their own emotional reaction to it (combined with all of ours who read about it decades later) in a time loop.

Why is it necessarily a GAN? And are you also saying apparitions are not "alive" or at the least are not the consciousness of the deceased? Are the deceased in another environment then?

Also, regarding the synchronicity example, are you saying information is coming from the future into the past? How do you see this as compatible with free will?

You can think of the universe as a graph of semantic vectors indicating whether this clump of space is more or less similar to all the other clumps of space and this is a type of locality. Locality in the traditional sense is merely one type of similarity (spatial-temporal similarity) and merely one component of the overall semantic similarity value. In the semantic similarity space (which is analogous to a trained neural network) the more similar things are, the more local they are.

So in more "spiritual worlds" is our locality, even our space-time coordinates, based on things like our emotional and aesthetic preferences?

But that is the question: are you losing anything? If so, what? We create simulations, games, that distill the essence of interestingness out of life. When I play Call of Duty, I don't want to play for 10 days before I see some action. I want to get in and get out. Or when you have casual conversation with a friend, you tell them the highlights of your life and not the mundane details. We compress our lives mentally to distill the essence of the things we find to be of emotional value. Does God do the same? And can the mundane details be reconstructed completely - is everything stored indefinitely - or does God necessarily forget anything because he is on a similar quest to distill meaning and achieve a goal? To what extent is the past fixed? Is it recorded indefinitely or is there a causal horizon beyond which the past is malleable? These are the biggest philosophical questions in my mind at the moment.

The buzzing of mayflies doesn't matter to me, nor does the specific blades of grass covered with dew. But perhaps my own presence means nothing to either the mayflies nor the grass?

Also, why does God need to forget by necessity in order to distill meaning and achieve goals? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

Let me try again.

What happens between the final instant when I have not made up my mind and the first instant when I have made up my mind?

Perhaps it's just me but I don't think it's the phrasing, it's that no one knows what kind of "how" answer you're looking for. Note this style of phrasing the question came up at least once in the 75 page thread on this board, and IIRC in the old Skeptiko threads as well.

The best thing to do IMO is to make up an answer or two to your "how" question and then show whatever you think the "gotcha" problem with those (and arguably any) answers are. So in the style of proof-by-contradiction.

As an aside not sure about the cut in time in your particular just-quoted-rephrasing, but as it isn't directly about free will but rather my interest in causation I made a separate thread for that.

(edited for spacing, not sure what's up with the forum...)

Some things that might be of interest to readers of this thread.

From the Dispositional Causality Thread, this paper mentions the Randomness/Determinism Catechism but says it isn't a problem under dispositional causation ->

Causation is Not Your Enemy

Ajum & Mumford

We argue in this paper that an aspect of causation has been misunderstood over a long period, especially in its connection with issues of modality, and this error has had a particularly significant and damaging influence on the direction of the free will debate. A tight connection has been drawn between causation and necessity, for instance, and this has been highly problematic to those seeking any kind of credible libertarian stance on free will. It is necessity that is the threat, we claim. Causation is seen as part of the problem of free will when really we should be looking to it as part of the solution.

In the traditional division between compatibilism and incompatibilism, we see that many philosophers have thought there to be a tension between free will and prior causes. They effectively thought of free will and causation as incompatible. We saw the reason why: they thought causation entailed necessity, which then entailed determinism. For instance, Libet’s (1985) neuroscientific experiments show at the most, if they show anything at all, that conscious decisions have prior causes. This impinges on the debate only if you think that free will is incompatible with prior causation.The real threat, we argued, was necessity because free will seems to be incompatible with determinism qua necessity (Mumford and Anjum 2014 also offer a defence of this kind of incompatibilism). This result is not alarming to any adherent of the dispositional modality for it is just an instance of the more general thesis that causation is incompatible with necessity, and thus with determinism qua causal necessity. Once that move has been made, the possibility is open for a re-appropriation of the term compatibilism. Our view is that free will is certainly compatible with causation. It is not something an agent needs to escape in order to be free. Indeed, how would freewill be possible other than through causation: allowing agents who are active, exercising causal powers in response to the worldly causes that affect them? The problem has been that many have thought the only way causation can work is through necessity and this has led them to assume that free will is threatened by causation per se. We have shown that it is not. Once causation and necessity are separated, you can see that causation is not your enemy.

It's interesting they sort of predict the eventual debunking of Libet's experiments being against free will ->

For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake.

As for why we should consider causation as dispositional, their argument - or the part I found strongest - is from another paper that points to quantum indeterminism ->

A Powerful Theory of Causation

S. Mumford & R Anjum

There is, though, already an older tradition that acknowledges the dispositional nature of causation. Aquinas‟s philosophy of nature, according to Geach (1961), is one in which causes only tend towards their effects rather than necessitating them and the view presented in this paper is on that account neo-Aquinian.2 Many contemporary treatments of causation follow from Hume, however, as he was traditionally understood prior to the „New Hume‟ debate.Constant conjunction is there depicted as a necessary condition for causation having occurred. Dispositionalists have highlighted the weakness of constant conjunction, pointing out that there can be accidental cases that were not genuinely causal, and instead saw real dispositions as somehow imposing natural necessity on top of constant conjunction. We argue that a true dispositionalism, in contrast, is one in which a cause only tends towards its effect. For a general causal claim to be true, such as that smoking causes cancer, there need be no constant conjunction. And in particular causal claims, even if one cause indeed produced its effect, that doesn‟t mean it necessitated it. Something could have got in the way of the effect, even if it did not as a matter of fact.

Recently made a thread on Aquinas' 5th way, the argument that "God" governs all causal relations, and is the concurrent cause of all events.

Understanding irreducibly probabilistically constrained causation is not easy unless one accepts that it involves a dispositional connection that is neither entirely necessary nor entirely contingent. Our coin tends towards a 50:50 distribution, but in a sequence of trials there could be any distribution of heads and tails. We know that an actual 50:50 distribution is unlikely, especially when the number of trails is low. But we also know that if the number of trials is high then a distribution wildly at odds with an equal distribution is highly unlikely. There is a principle of probabilistic distribution that, applied to this case,says that the proportion of heads and tails will tend to 50:50 as the number of tosses tends to infinity; or, the higher the number of tosses then the closer to 50:50 the distribution is likely to be. This principle is appealing and yet we might wonder why it is true. Is it just some brute fact about the world or does it have a truthmaker? The powers theory offers a truthmaker for the principle. The coin has a tendency to land heads and tails with equal chance, a tendency which manifests itself over a sequence of trails. But this is only a disposition towards such a distribution. It does not necessitate it, as we know when we acknowledge that any actual distribution is possible for any sequence of tosses. Yet the distribution is not entirely contingent either, as we know when we acknowledge that distributions at variance widely from 50:50 are unlikely, proportionate to the number of trails.

The case of probabilistically constrained causation thus corroborates our account. It is noteworthy in so far as the account seems to accord entirely with what we already accept pre-theoretically to be the data of chancy causes.

There's also Thomas Nail's arguments for Pedesis, matter moving in a way that's neither deterministic nor random.

I do think it's interesting that Ajum and Mumford are working from what they call a "naturalist" position, which I take to be a materialist one. They seem to want to deny the idea of God/Psi/souls, so that their project has gotten this far is interesting as those of us who aren't bothered by such a need to hold to materialist catechisms would arguably be further ahead.

Even those people who are simply against reducibility of consciousness might find some value, making Tallis's work on the subject a potentially worthwhile (re?)-visit.

Materialist-leaning types may want to check out the work of neuroscientist Peter Tse, or the Aeon essay of physicist George Ellis as both present arguments for top-down causation. To me Ellis needs an immaterial aspect of thought to make his argument work, though perhaps there's something in Peter Tse's actual book...which I haven't read yet...

=-=-=

Henry Stapp's free book on the subject ->

On The Nature of Things: Human Presence in the World ofAtoms

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. The Origins of the Quantum Conception of Man

2. Waves, Particles, and Minds

3. The Measuring Process

4. Quantum Neuroscience

5. The Physical Effectiveness of Mental Intent

6. Reality and Spooky Action at a Distance

7. Backward-in-Time Causation?

8. Actual Past and Effective Past

9. The Libet “Free Will” Experiments

10. Questions and Answers about Minds

11. The Fundamentally Mental Character of Reality

12. Conclusions

Appendix 1: Proof that Information Must Be Transferred Faster Than Light

Appendix 2: Graphical Representation of the Argument

Appendix 3: Reply to Sam Harris on Free Will

Appendix 4: The Paranormal and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Appendix 5: QZE and Environmental Decoherence

Appendix 6: The Quantum Conception of Man: a Talk

=-=-=



I thought I'd watched all these interviews but I think they might have updated it from years ago with some new ones...

Perhaps it's just me but I don't think it's the phrasing, it's that no one knows what kind of "how" answer you're looking for. Note this style of phrasing the question came up at least once in the 75 page thread on this board, and IIRC in the old Skeptiko threads as well.

The best thing to do IMO is to make up an answer or two to your "how" question and then show whatever you think the "gotcha" problem with those (and arguably any) answers are. So in the style of proof-by-contradiction.

Are you saying you have nothing to offer as an answer to this question?

What happens between the final instant when I have not made up my mind and the first instant when I have made up my mind?

What happens? What does my mind do? What do I think? What steps occur? After all these years of pondering and discussion, we cannot fill in the gap between no-decision and decision with anything compelling?

Assume I'm willing to accept any kind of "how" answer at all. Granted, if the answer is simply "... a free decision is made ...", then I will not be satisfied. But just about anything else would be interesting. The final decision must be caused by something. What is that something, that is not just a deterministic step-by-step procedure?

I would make up an answer or two, but I truly have no notion how it might work. I don't know words to put in the gap that won't just obviously sound like an algorithm or a coin flip. I can muster up all the good feels about desires, wants, needs, will, agency, and so forth, but that does not bring forth anything helpful. Those words seem like either sources of the decision or more factors in the deterministic decision.

Some folks appear to divide the world into the physical bits and the mental bits, and then attribute freedom to the mental bits simply because they are called "mental bits." I can grok dividing the world that way, but I don't associate freedom with the mental any more than with the physical.

~~ Paul

Earlier you had mentioned a triad of determinism/randomness/will, but my reading of the above makes me think you're saying there's only determinism and free will?

I think it is most useful to think in terms of triads. The Will is between the two poles and since it is a liminal thing it is subject to the fuzziness and arbitrariness of all boundaries and integrates qualities of both.

Another thing to consider is that "Will" exists in a goal-oriented feedback loop, and the complexity of goals and feedback loops increase with the complexity of the structure in which these are embedded. So perhaps the randomness in the quantum soup could be thought of as extreme simplicity of goals and therefore indistinguishable from randomness. But then simple goals create simple structure which then creates complexity which then creates more complex goals which creates more complex structure...etc... in a nested fashion. We have goals that only make sense within the context of the complexity of our structure as human beings. But it seems obvious to me that a layer of goals and complexity and therefore Will exists beyond us. So we are "free" within the bounds of our layer. The goals of our cells and the goals of the body of which we are a cell are foreign to us, yet we can approach an understanding of those goals by analogy. Totally free will would be meaningless chaos - pure randomness because there would be no opportunity to complexify. Total structure or determinism would mean the end of novelty and without novelty, we would never have arrived at this present moment. Free Will only has meaning in the tension between the two poles.

Or are determinism and randomness just perceptions rather than actualities?

They are polar opposites. It is impossible to consider one without the other. Perceptions (the third member of the triad in the middle) are what actualize them to a degree.

Why is it necessarily a GAN?

Partly because I like the alliteration of "God's GAN"... And I like that GAN means Generative Adversarial Network which basically has all the essentials of the Triad right there. Generative - Genesis, creation, novelty, dynamics. Adversarial - adversary, opposition, polarity is essential to creation. Network - collaboration, coming together, the synthesis of the polarity.

We exist within a nested structure of "GAN's" so I call it "God's GAN".

Thinking of the physical reality as being created by something like a GAN makes it easier to integrate anomalous phenomena which seem to have no local cause or seem to be discontinuous with normal causal chains of events.

And are you also saying apparitions are not "alive" or at the least are not the consciousness of the deceased?

An apparition or other ghostly encounter might have varying degrees of integration with the complete agentive personality with which it is associated. In some cases ghosts seem to be an echo or a broken record repeating the same thing as if they are a fragment - a single memory of the deceased or a stressful recurrent dream with some physicality to it. Even when we are alive, our personality is not necessarily completely integrated at all times and some models of psychology present us as a set of sub-personalities.

To what extent the complete fully integrated agentive personality of the deceased can be reconstituted in a physical apparition probably varies.

Are the deceased in another environment then?

Considering the fact that a great many NDE reports involve a continuation of a locus of perception as well as a life review (which is a larger scale feedback loop), I believe that a single life is "training" a "neural network" or "agent" that is analogous to the neural network of the brain but that is not the physical brain - perhaps we could call this the soul. The soul is the larger agent that is being trained towards achieving a goal or goals with each iteration (life). Actions taken during the life that receive positive feedback, reinforce those connections or "saves" them and negative feedback diminishes those or "burns them up". So this is heaven and hell with a fresh technologically current metaphor.

So I think the deceased can maintain their individual integrated identity as long as is necessary and that an integrated identity or locus of perception necessitates an environment, but I also think that what is learned by the deceased is integrated into a larger structure which is the "soul" which has goals that extend beyond a mere single lifespan.

EDIT: another good thing to mention is the cases where people have something happen to them (brain injury, coma, NDE, or some other life transformative event) and afterwards they have something weird happen like they suddenly start speaking with a foreign accent or they have new musical talents, or they have some kind of download of info. These things are easier to understand if we think of them as saved neural networks which can be implemented or swapped out on the brain's hardware.

Also, regarding the synchronicity example, are you saying information is coming from the future into the past? How do you see this as compatible with free will?

As discussed above, we don't have completely free will. We have free will within the boundaries of the structures in which we are embedded which gives meaning to our choices. Our free will shapes probabilities. If we encounter a wall this might be a physical local boundary on our will. We might encounter a non-local structure which is local along another dimension - a semantic dimension. This non-local meaning object, is possibly a boundary on our free will, but does not eliminate it in other areas.

So a synchronicity or astrology or a presentiment might be representative of an a-temporal structure within which we have a certain amount of freedom, but they don't preclude free will in its entirety.

So in more "spiritual worlds" is our locality, even our space-time coordinates, based on things like our emotional and aesthetic preferences?

Desire (or preferences if you prefer) are what drives motion and desire cannot exist without a lack. A world without lack where desires are instantly fulfilled is a world without time or motion (where can you go if where you are is always where you want to be?). That is essentially merging into the Oneness and indistinguishable from no-desire. There might be worlds where it is easier to arrive at the fulfilment of desires than in this one, but could such worlds complexify the way this one has? What would a soul/mind/spirit that has complexified and learned from this world desire? Its desires would be on a level complexity similar to this world.

The buzzing of mayflies doesn't matter to me, nor does the specific blades of grass covered with dew. But perhaps my own presence means nothing to either the mayflies nor the grass?

So in the Mayfly's life review are you replaced with a generic NPC?

Also, why does God need to forget by necessity in order to distill meaning and achieve goals? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

To include necessarily excludes as well. To draw a boundary around a space, there must be an excluded space as well. To tell a meaningful story you must exclude an infinite number of irrelevant details. A neural network must strengthen or diminish connections based on feedback otherwise it fails to get closer to achieving a goal. If the next layer of complexity up from us is going to achieve or create anything it must also destroy that which got in the way during earlier attempts.

So there's that... and then there's the question of it even means to have something be actualized. QM tells us the observer plays a role in actualizing an event, but how much of what we observe is not focused upon or remembered? And if something is forgotten by all observers, did it ever happen? Could future information change the past if the past is forgotten or otherwise unobserved?

So I think it is a good question to ask: how much of the universe is retained in memory in some form and for how long and is it stored in a compressed state that can be upscaled (with God's GAN)?