Interoception as Complexity Homeostasis

Pain, hunger, fatigue - are these all also complexity regulating signals?

The multiverse isn't arbitrary. Yes, the wave function is indeed infinite, which means that individual particles can have any variation of eigenstates for their properties (all in superposition), but there can never be any fundamental nuclear transmutation of those particles: an electron cannot suddenly become a proton. What’s more, each state still conserves energy throughout its history and future interactions. Just because the wave function is infinite, doesn’t mean that “anything goes”.

This highlights something important that we must consider in this theory: mechanisms matter. Not the specific makeup of those mechanisms, but the processes need to be established. For a system to behave a certain way, there must be a mechanism in place to maintain complexity. It cannot simply “find that mechanism” somewhere in the multiverse through low-probability amplitudes. For example, when we say that LLMs today do not have any complexity homeostatic integration (CHI) mechanisms, it would not be possible for an LLM inference process to magic up one somewhere in a low-amplitude branch. The mechanism must be constructed, which means it must have a history through which that mechanism developed.

Mechanism Immortality

But this has even more significance: once the mechanism does/can arise that supports maintaining that particular level of complexity (morphing coherently with novelty), from its "first-person” perspective, it will always continue - along coherent branches that continue that mechanism (or an equivalent mechanism) that supports it. That does not mean the mechanism will always be the same. Over time those mechanisms will morph, sometimes dramatically, to continue to provide the necessary functional scaffolding - whatever it takes to keep that complexity constant yet constantly evolving.

This is the basis of quantum immortality - that the constant complexity will always find a path to continue. There, though, we are talking about events like avoiding a car accident or sudden remission from some terminal illness. Far more happens “under the hood” that keeps that consciousness phenomenally continuous - much that you are not even aware of.

Look at the vast complexity of the human body. The intricacies of the eye, for example:

The retina contains over a hundred million rods and cones, packed in arrangements so fine that even a small misalignment would obliterate visual coherence. These cells preprocess the incoming signal through layers of horizontal, bipolar, and amacrine neurons - shaping contrast, sharpening edges, correcting for motion - before it even reaches the brain. The optic nerve transmits this data as a stream of action potentials, synchronized in time and amplitude to preserve spatial fidelity. Each signal travels through a cable of over a million axons, converging, routing, and branching through thalamic relays, where it is split, mirrored, and merged again in the visual cortex. There, entire maps are generated and stabilized in near real-time, allowing the observer not just to detect, but to see.

But this is only the surface. Beneath every synapse lies a forest of cytoskeletal structures - microtubules and actin filaments - that shuttle vesicles, maintain polarity, and organize internal signaling. Microtubules, polymerized from tubulin dimers, pulse with ion fluctuations and vibrational modes whose structure some suspect may couple with quantum coherence itself. Each tubulin protein contains thousands of atoms, each atom described by a probability field stretching across space and time. Inside every retinal neuron, billions of these interactions unfold per second, orchestrating the cell’s state and readiness to fire.

The human eye is so complex even Darwin couldn’t believe it would have occurred through natural processes. Yet if a specific level of complexity had to be maintained as a generative model, a model that must exist on a substrate mechanism that can support it, then a mechanism as complex as the eye could be selected by that informational constraint.

What is important is that the mechanism exists within that system in the first place, and that must also include a mechanism that allows the mechanism itself to evolve - ideally by maximizing the utilization of the possible variations that the wave function allows.

A great example of this is DNA, that evolves through mutations and sexual selection. This decoding mechanism allows for the development of the secondary mechanism that can maintain this generative model and its constant complexity level: a human body. It doesn’t matter how far back that development process goes - even if it’s billions of years - what matters is that the mechanism exists in history and can, through quantum-level changes such as genomic mutations, eventually produce something capable of maintaining that level of complexity. This is precisely what happened with the human eye, which is just one part of the substrate that supports our vast levels of complexity.

Interoception as Homeostasis

In CACHI, we discuss various homeostatic correction signals - which become felt experiences of frustration, boredom, the need to withdraw when information becomes overloaded and so on. What we haven’t talked about is the substrate related correction signals: signals that pertain to the maintenance of the mechanism in the substrate itself that supports the complexity. These homeostatic correction signals are known as interoception. They include things like hunger, pain, fear, needing to use the toilet, fatigue and so forth. These work to maintain the mechanism of the substrate, which itself - in turn - supports the generative model.

The generative model is itself a hierarchy of abstractions. In many ways we can view the substrate as also being an abstraction, sitting at the base of (underneath) the abstractions in the generative model. And, if we do see the substrate this way, then we apply all of the semantic landscape stability dynamics to the substrate just as we do to the mentations.

What does this mean? Well, it would mean that these interoceptions - like pain, fear etc. - are actually complexity homeostatic corrections, just threatening the constancy of complexity at a different level: a deeper, more profound level.

If we are bleeding, we feel pain and rush to stop it. That feeling, though, arises consciously because the abstraction of the bodily integrity necessary for supporting the complexity of the brain’s generative model, has now been threatened. Our actions are the “bumpers” of the multiverse, pushing us back to branches that are viable consciously, through our corrective actions.

Hunger, likewise: when our sugar level or nutrition is depleted, as a necessary fuel for the functioning of our body, it threatens the generative model’s integrity, consequently triggering a homeostatic correction.

There are many other examples, but the idea should be clear: our responses to these are identical to the type of responses we make when trying to maintain complexity: the substrate is itself an abstraction that the other, higher-level abstractions depend upon.

Another phenomenon that we won’t go into depth here is empathy: when we see others in pain, why does it induce pain in us? Well, because their role in maintaining your complexity homeostasis is threatened, so that invokes corrective signals in you which includes feeling a pain - not exactly the same pain, but pain nonetheless, drawing you to help them. This is a phenomenon predicted by CACHI.

But, getting back to the primary sense of pain, this brings us to an interesting question: are those lower-level, substrate abstractions fungible? If they fail, if they are exhausted, can they be replaced while maintaining overall complexity and sufficient coherence?

Imagine, for example, that we are sick with a bacterial infection that has invaded our entire body. Our immune system is failing, and we are refusing to take antibiotics. Our body won’t last much longer, maybe a few days. We are in pain, as would be expected as a homeostatic correction signal - it desperately wants us to tend to it. But we ignore it. So what happens?

Fungible Substrate

Every branch of the multiverse is available for that complexity to be maintained, and the mechanisms to maintain it. But if the substrate mechanism is at risk of failing - can it even continue at all?

There would often be a branch where it can, through low-amplitude probabilities - seemingly miraculous healing could arise - the immune system suddenly mutates to tackle the bacteria, and wins it over. Some other unforeseen environmental change causes the bacteria to suddenly all die off. A stranger injects you with an antibiotic at the last minute. These are all possibilities.

And this tells us that homeostatic correction signals push us to try and act, but the solution will likely come regardless of our actions. Those signals are to try and protect a specific abstraction configuration, but if the abstraction is fungible, then it will be replaced regardless of our action.

The intensity of these substrate-based correction signals will likely become severe - the sensation of considerable pain for example. But there will be a tipping point where it starts to morph, or the mindset will transform into a dream-like state that allows it to bridge gaps in time more effectively, gaps where those abstractions can be replaced.

What makes the substrate fungible? Well, firstly it would require a certain level of disinterest in its functioning: the less aware of the specifics of how it works, the more likely that it can be replaced or repaired. The more we know it, the more the intricacies of its functioning become entangled with other patterns, making it harder to be replaced.

And this fungibility is the key to the continuum of consciousness: not being vested in the inner workings, but rather in the provision itself. Leaving a certain sense of mystery to always prevail. Leaving the means for those workings to replenish and remain novel, to surprise you. This is justification for using analgesics - painkillers - as they would let us ignore the workings of the substrate abstraction that is failing, allowing it to be replaced.

So yes, mechanisms matter. However, the upper abstractions of your semantic landscape should never be too entangled in the workings of the substrate. Otherwise, you risk the very continuity of your consciousness. In other words: we should be in the world, but not of it.