The Theories
Falsifiable hypotheses, early-stage ideas, and a place to propose your own — every one open to argument.
The Theories
Original, falsifiable hypotheses that come out of reading across the whole corpus — each with a stated way it could be proven wrong. Open one to read the claim and argue with it.
The Brain as a Filter Maybe the brain doesn't produce consciousness — maybe it filters or receives it. Model
The oldest rival to "the brain makes consciousness": the filter or transmission model, where the brain tunes and constrains a signal the way a radio selects a station rather than creating the music. It sounds mystical until you ask the sharp version — what observation would tell the "brain as producer" and "brain as filter" pictures apart? Two of our own theories below (the Grounding Filter and the Dislocated Consciousness hypotheses) are extensions of this model.
The Grounding Filter Hypothesis · TH_07 Making coherent representations and grounding them in reality are separable faculties — and grounding is the conscious one. Researched
Generating fluent, coherent representations and grounding them in reality may be two different faculties. Grounding is the consciousness-linked one — which would explain why a system that is all prediction and no grounding (today's AI) hallucinates by default, confidently and without noticing. A specific extension of the filter model, with AI as a brand-new evidential domain.
Read the full theory ↗Provenance: Extension of the filter model · Status: proposed
The Dislocated Consciousness Hypothesis · TH_06 The "ghost theory": some apparition reports may be an unfinished handoff of consciousness from a failing brain. Researched
Not spirits, not hoaxes — a testable third option. A fraction of ghost phenomena may be best explained as a partial, incomplete transition of consciousness away from a failing biological substrate: the filter breaking down rather than switching cleanly off. It makes predictions, and it names what would sink it.
Read the full theory ↗Provenance: Extension of the filter / survival model · Status: proposed
The Metabolic Consciousness Threshold · TH_02 There may be a minimum rate of information integration, set by physics, below which consciousness can't switch on. Researched
A minimum information-integration rate — derivable from Boltzmann's constant, temperature, and neuron count — may mark the onset of consciousness. Below the line, the lights can't come on no matter the architecture. This is the theory featured in our consciousness episode.
Read the full theory ↗Provenance: Extension (adds a Landauer energy floor to IIT / FEP) · Status: proposed
In Development
Theories the corpus has surfaced but that don’t yet have a full write-up. These boards are open early on purpose — help pressure-test them before they’re formalized.
Consciousness as Information Coherence Consciousness may be a measurable property of how integrated and coherent a system's information is. In development
Not a substance, not a function — maybe consciousness is just how integrated and coherent the information processing of a system is at a given moment (the variable PCI already tracks across anesthesia, sleep, and brain injury with >95% accuracy). Neurons would be one specialization of a more general principle.
Substrate-Independent Information Persistence Information may have an identity separate from whatever physical stuff is carrying it. In development
Planarian memory that survives complete cell replacement, prions, epigenetic inheritance, quantum error correction — several independent cases suggest information can keep its identity as its substrate is swapped out. If that's a real physical category, the implications for consciousness, death, and identity are large.
Placebo, Nocebo, and Information Becoming Biology Belief and expectation may have direct, measurable causal power over the body. In development
The placebo and nocebo effects may be hard proof that information — belief, expectation, ritual context — reaches down into biology through real pathways: endogenous opioids, striatal dopamine, conditioned immune responses. Open-label placebos still work; documented "nocebo death" is real. If so, it's evidence for genuine top-down causation, not mysticism.
The Sensory Gating Unification Anesthesia, meditation, psychedelics, pain, and near-death states may all be one mechanism. In development
Five fields study altered states in isolation. They may all be studying one variable: the modulation of sensory-gating thresholds. What differs between meditation and anesthesia and a psychedelic is which gates move, how far, and how fast — not the underlying mechanism.
Observer-Reality Entanglement Quantum measurement, the Hard Problem, and UAP sensor data may point at one shared question. In development
Our most speculative board, and deliberately so. Three open problems — the quantum measurement problem, the Hard Problem of consciousness, and multi-sensor UAP data — may converge on one structural question about observers and actualization. The claim is not that consciousness collapses wavefunctions; it's that the same question keeps reappearing. Bring your skepticism here.
Cosmic Impact Memory in Mythology Some flood and fire-from-the-sky myths may be real eyewitness records of ancient cosmic impacts. In development
Flood myths in 200+ cultures, sky-serpents, fire from heaven — some may be genuine observational records of cosmic impacts like the Younger Dryas event (~12,800 years ago), carried through oral tradition and possibly carved into Göbekli Tepe. The provocative claim: mythology can be a real data source for reconstructing catastrophe.
Chemistry as a Universal Language The same chemical vocabulary may run from bacteria signaling each other to neurons firing in your brain. In development
Bacterial quorum sensing, cross-kingdom immune signaling, and human neurotransmission share more than a passing resemblance — some of the very same molecules (serotonin, dopamine, GABA) do signaling work at every scale of life, from single cells to nervous systems. Is that one continuous chemical language, or independent systems that just happen to reuse the same parts?
Community theories
Theories built by members: a claim, a named falsifier, and the documents that carry it. Create your own here (it stays a private draft until you submit it for review), attach evidence from any document page, and argue with the ones on the record.
From the community & research base
Thoughts tagged Theory anywhere on the site — on research documents, episodes, and beyond — gather here automatically, each linking back to where it was written.