Consciousness as a State of Matter

I am glad this paper has been written, but already by page 3 there are serious problems with it. For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory. Yet Max's list on page 3 has stuff like "independence", "utility", "integration" which have nothing to do with observations of what consciousness is actually like. Rather, they are more like…

To me, this read like Alan Sokal's Postmodernism troll piece. I understand Tegmark is a reputable physicist, but the abstract could have been written by Deepak Chopra after skimming a math text.

From my really ignorant, but introspective, point of view, this notion that life and consciousness somewhat escape from the physical rules that govern rocks, air and the rest of the universe seems like holding onto the theist idea of soul after the decline of religion. I think the universe doesn't care about us, we are just the natural result of the fundamental interactions of matter, the same interactions that burn stars. We are complex automatons.

Has this been posted before here at HN ?