Galileo went on: I have also learned that information only exists if it is integrated—that only consciousness, integrated information—is really real, the only thing that exists in and of itself, and does not need another being to be. But simple aggregates do not exist in and of themselves—if you probe them, they dissolve into much lesser beings, a dust of dust. For you can group disparate objects in a thought, make something one that one is not—a heap of sand, a galaxy, or a crowd—but those exist as one just from the outside, from the perspective of a conscious being. “Yes,” said Alturi, “just
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