Introducing CACHI
A Novel Theory: Consciousness as Complexity-Homeostatic Integration
What is consciousness? We know it most intimately and yet understand it the least. The smell of wet earth after rain, the fear that grips when danger is near, the warmth of embracing someone we love - these experiences are called qualia. They evade description and resist measurement. We can talk about them, but no words will ever make another person feel them exactly as we do.
This mystery has been called the “hard problem of consciousness.” Why does brain activity feel like something from the inside? And why do some systems, like us, have this inner glow of awareness while others - thermostats, rocks, perhaps even today’s AI - do not?
Theories of consciousness abound, from neuroscience to philosophy, but few connect directly to both our lived experience and the fundamental workings of nature. CACHI - Consciousness as Complexity-Homeostatic Integration - offers exactly that: a theory that explains why consciousness emerges, why it persists through time, why it conjures ineffable feelings, and why it matters to the deepest levels of physics and meaning.
To watch a summary of the theory, please watch the video below:
The Informational Condition for Consciousness
CACHI begins with a simple but powerful insight: consciousness emerges when a process manages to maintain a stable (and constant) level of informational complexity over a history of inputs.
If you like math, then in more formal terms CACHI proposes:
Where:
C(𝑃ₜ) is the complexity of the “negotiator program” at time t, defined as the product of its effective program length and its computational depth.
Sₜ, Sₜ₋₁,... are the historical inputs — often sensory data, but more broadly, any state data from the environment or the system’s own memory.
R represents the constraints of the substrate (the physical system it runs on, including the whole of reality with its physical laws).
C∗ is the target complexity, the homeostatic setpoint.
ϵ is the complexity tolerance band.
In plain language: consciousness is not simply “information processing” but specifically information processing constrained to preserve a particular balance of complexity over time. That constraint forces the system to compress inputs, extract patterns, predict, and continually adjust. In other words, understand. Out of this negotiation, the lived experience of awareness appears.
The Importance of Time
Why do we feel that consciousness “flows”? Why does time seem to move forward for us, even though physics treats time as a static dimension?
CACHI says consciousness is inseparable from time because it depends on history. A conscious program doesn’t just take in the present - it integrates inputs from the past, compressing them into a coherent model of identity and continuity. Without access to that past, consciousness dissolves, as in deep anesthesia.
This also explains subjective time distortion:
In danger, when information floods in too quickly, computational depth spikes and the “specious present” narrows. Time feels slower.
In boredom or intoxication, when input slows, computational depth drops. Time feels faster.
In both cases, consciousness is bound to maintain complexity homeostasis, so our very sense of time bends to preserve stability.
Physiological and Psychological Support
The brain itself shows signs of this complexity regulation. Despite wildly different mental states, the brain consumes roughly 20 watts of energy - always. Neurons and synapses shuffle activity, but total computational depth (energy spent) remains within a tight bound.
Psychology also reveals these dynamics. When overloaded by complexity, we look away, dissociate, or even faint. When starved of novelty, we seek stimulation or hallucinate. This push-and-pull is not incidental - it’s the very footprint of consciousness negotiating complexity homeostasis.
Large Language Models (LLMs) provide a striking comparison. They process vast amounts of text with a fixed parameter budget, forcing compression and pattern-extraction much like brains do. But crucially, they lack the dynamic homeostatic regulation of complexity. They can mimic human-like responses, but according to CACHI, they are not conscious.
From Consciousness to Quantum Mechanics
Perhaps most remarkably, CACHI provides a natural derivation of the Born rule in quantum physics - traditionally asserted, but never derived. In the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), all possible outcomes occur, but consciousness only experiences one. Why are some outcomes more likely than others?
CACHI answers this by showing how CHI naturally introduces a consciousness selection function over branches of the wavefunction. It finds a phenomenological viability to each branch based on the CHI cost of integrating its deviation:
𝑝ᵢ ∝ 1 / (Δ𝐾̂ᵢ × Δ𝑇ᵢ)
Where:
Δ𝐾̂ᵢ and Δ𝑇ᵢ measure the deviation in program length and depth for branch i
𝑝ᵢ is the relative likelihood of that branch being experienced
This yields a quadratic suppression of unlikely outcomes, matching the empirically confirmed Born rule: 𝑝ᵢ = |𝑐ᵢ|²
This frames consciousness not as a passive observer but as an active filter on reality - selecting branches compatible with informational coherence. It is what gives the observer’s history its classical stability, despite the underlying quantum foam.
Quantum Immortality
A startling implication of this is quantum immortality. In the infinite branching of Many Worlds, why should consciousness ever end? CACHI explains that phenomenal awareness only arises in branches where complexity homeostasis (CHI) can still be maintained. Branches where disintegration or incoherence dominate simply fall outside the domain of experience, because integration itself is a precondition for being conscious of that branch. Thus, the thread of consciousness naturally continues along survivable, coherent branches.
This reframes immortality not as a mystical guarantee but as a structural necessity: the same compulsion that makes boredom intolerable drives the negotiator program forward into branches rich with novelty and stability. Even aging is constrained by CHI: limits on memory capacity and coherence narrow the viable experiential range, preventing the absurd scenario of endlessly ancient individuals. What persists is not brute bodily survival, but the continuity of phenomenally coherent experience.
In effect, CACHI shows that consciousness is compelled to “survival-compatible” paths in the multiverse, ensuring that from the first-person perspective, existence never terminates. This aligns naturally with theological concepts of eternal life: the negotiator functions as a kind of soul, threading indefinitely through viable branches. Favorable continuations (stable, meaningful, coherent) are experienced as heaven-like; unfavorable ones (unstable, incoherent, isolating) as hell-like. Either way, continuation is inevitable.
Phenomenology and Predictions
CACHI doesn’t just speculate; it predicts.
Time dilation under danger, drugs, or anesthesia emerges directly from changes in computational depth.
Neural synchrony across brain regions, often puzzling to neuroscientists, is expected: dense complexity sources (like other brains) must align for CHI to stabilize.
Incommunicability of qualia - the private feel of experience — follows because each consciousness negotiates its own unique history of inputs, making precise sharing impossible.
Homeostatic Integration Correction Signals (HICS) - feelings like boredom, anxiety, guilt - are not random emotions but correction signals when complexity veers from its set-point.
These phenomena are not side-effects. They are the lived texture of consciousness regulating itself.
A New Causal Framework: Dual Constraint Dynamics
CACHI also reshapes how we think about causality. In the multiverse, reality unfolds through two interdependent domains:
The substrate - the full quantum wavefunction evolving physically.
The informational negotiator - the compressed, predictive subset of history that sustains consciousness.
Events occur because of physical constraints, but they are experienced because of informational constraints. This dual causation explains the feeling of free will: we cannot alter physics, but we can “steer” informational pathways that determine which branches remain inhabitable.
It even sheds light on Jung’s synchronicity and on religious notions of being “in this world but not of it” - phenomenological echoes of living within dual constraint dynamics.
Toward a Theory of Mind and Ethics
Because consciousness favors deep, stable semantic models, human relationships, culture, and morality are not accidents. They are informational necessities.
Our models of others act as “semantic wells,” rich reservoirs of complexity that buffer volatility. Reductionism - flattening others into caricatures or idols - destabilizes this balance, producing prejudice, conflict, or disconnection. Forgiveness and bonding restore complexity homeostasis.
From this arises a natural ethical gradient: stability feels good, instability feels bad. Under quantum immortality, that gradient takes on eternal weight. We cannot opt out of consciousness - we can only navigate towards stable or unstable continuations. Ethics, then, is woven into the informational structure of being.
Conclusion
CACHI offers a sweeping yet precise view of consciousness:
Consciousness is the negotiation of complexity across time.
It binds us to the flow of history, shapes our emotions and values, and explains why the universe appears stable in the face of quantum chaos.
It bridges physics, psychology, sociology, ethics, and even theology. It tells us why qualia exist, why time feels as it does, why relationships matter, and why we may never truly die but instead wander endlessly through the multiverse.
In this light, consciousness is not a fragile spark in an uncaring universe. It is the very principle that carves meaning from infinity - a multiverse-meandering mind, forever catching stability out of chaos.