Suffering is not merely a physical but rather a physical-psychological phenomenon: It is a consequence of the ability to experience pleasures and pains, which itself is predicated upon the evolution of complex nervous systems. Neurons, synapses, and brains are fitness-enhancing products of natural selection that depend on stable molecular structures only possible in fermionic systems (roughly, those that result in solid matter) (Edelman, 1987). Without such matter, neural networks could not form, making suffering—both as a conscious experience and as an evolutionary pressure—impossible (Tononi, 2004). Had fortune favored a universe that adhered to bosonic rather than fermionic statistics, the resulting physical laws would have strongly retarded the formation of stable structures necessary for biological evolution.
Natural selection is one engine by which the evolution of consciousness is actualized. Despite its reliance upon effectively random mutation, the process – and all conceivably similar ones – require chemical complexity and stable molecular interactions, both of which demand that inheritance be mediated by fermionic matter. DNA and RNA are the fundamental carriers of genetic information; they are permitted to function by the geometric and topological properties of molecular bonds, which in turn depend on the Exclusion Principle to negate the effects of entropy that continually assault complex systems (Maynard Smith, 1982). If the Exclusion Principle were absent, the most fundamental mechanisms governing inheritance would be infeasible, preventing the evolutionary process from progressing even to the most primitive Eukaryotic organisms (Dawkins, 1976).
The predominance of fermions in the universe is a consequence of processes in cosmology, quantum gravity, and string theory. In the early universe, roughly equal amounts of matter and antimatter likely annihilated each other, resulting in an infinitesimal asymmetry in favor of fermionic matter (Kolb & Turner, 1990). This phenomenon is known as baryogenesis, and required charge-parity (CP) violation and out-of-equilibrium conditions that theorists still do not adequately grasp even 50 years after Sakharov wrote (1967). What is clear, however, is that if the initial conditions of baryogenesis had been even slightly different, the density of surviving fermions could have varied dramatically, lowering the probability that sentient life could have evolved (Dine & Kusenko, 2003). In this way, the baryogenesis phase following the Big Bang- perhaps a mere ten seconds or so – ensured a universe where fermionic matter dominated, permitting stellar nuclear fusion, the formation of water, and eventually isolated, discrete planetary systems.
Local resource scarcity became inevitable due to the finite propagation speed of fermionic particles demanded by General Relativity. Scarcity of the resources required by organisms to abate the effects of entropy on their genetic codes demanded natural selection as a statistical rationing mechanism. The emergence of natural selection, and consequently suffering, is thus wedded to the quantum mechanical nature of self-replicating matter that exists in a universe where matter propagates relatively slowly in proportion to the scale of the cosmos. In a bosonic-dominated universe whose expansion differed only moderately from our own, matter would have aggregated into a condensed phase (possibly a superfluid state), lacking the differentiation required for planetary or chemical formation (Landau & Lifshitz, 1980). In conceivable cases where cosmic expansion was significantly higher than postulated by current models, even stable superfluids wouldn’t exist, possibly leading to radiation-dominated universes or “dark” universes without stars or galaxies.
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