---
title: Physicists Prove Math Is Consciousness
date: 2025-10-07T00:00:00
author: Charlie M.
category: SIGNAL
---
This morning, I woke up to sunlight streaming through the blinds, this weird slice of reality that reminds me my phone’s still on the nightstand. I squinted at the screen, fingers scrolling before thoughts were even coherent. Instagram, then the news—something about physicists proving math is consciousness. Or maybe it was more like suggesting it? I dunno, those clickbait headlines usually twist things up. But it stuck with me, like a song lyric you didn’t really hear but can’t shake off.
I mean, what do they even mean by that? Math and consciousness? Are they saying numbers can think? Or is it more like how consciousness uses math? My mind drifted back to high school calculus, staring at the board full of symbols, Mrs. What's-Her-Name saying something about derivatives. I never really "got" math, like in that intuitive, this-feels-like-magic kind of way. Maybe I was too busy doodling or daydreaming. I wonder if math is like one of those things you either click with or you don't, like cilantro. Some people say it tastes like soap, right?
So I dug a bit, somewhere between bites of toast and sips of too-hot coffee. Turns out, I'm not the only one who finds this concept kind of mind-bending. There's a dude, Tegmark, I think? He has ideas about the universe being a mathematical structure. I read it somewhere, or maybe it was a podcast. He’s got this theory that reality itself is math. Like, everything. But how’s that fit with consciousness? Isn't consciousness all messy and unpredictable, not a neat equation?
I think back to my attempts to meditate, sitting there trying to "clear my mind" and ending up with a shopping list instead. Maybe it's a kind of math, those synapses firing and rewiring. Except it never feels like numbers—more like chaos. I probably should've stuck with it, everyone says meditation helps, but I keep deleting the app because it feels like just another item on the to-do list I never finish.
And there's this thing about how there's math in nature—like Fibonacci sequences in flowers and those spiral shells. But is that math being conscious? Or just us finding patterns because we're conscious? I don't know, honestly. Maybe we just see what we want to see. Like when you hear your name in a crowded room, your brain picks it out of a jumble of noise. Selective attention or something like that.
Lately, I've also been thinking about how when we talk about AI and machine learning, we use math to mimic consciousness, right? Algorithms. But are they conscious or just faking it really well? Like, when a chatbot seems to understand you, is that understanding real? I remember this one time I spent hours talking to a chatbot just to see how real it could feel. It was eerie, but in the end, it felt like talking to myself.
So now I'm here, still scrolling, trying to wrap my head around the idea of math being consciousness. Or consciousness being math? It's this weird loop that doesn't end. I guess I should dive deeper, read more of those dense articles with words I have to Google. But then I think, maybe it’s like meditation—something I just don’t quite get no matter how hard I try. And that's okay, maybe.
So where does that leave me? With a half-empty coffee mug, a pile of unread articles, and a lot of questions. None of which I have an answer to. Yet. Or maybe never.