# Consciousness May Be Substrate-Independent Twice Over by Max Tegmark > "I've been arguing for decades that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. This leads to a radical idea that I really like: If consciousness is the way that information feels when it’s processed in certain ways, then it must be substrate-independent; it's only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter doing the information processing. In other words, consciousness is substrate-independent twice over!" > **— Max Tegmark**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [Substrate-Independence](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27126) — Edge published this passage in its 2017 Annual Question collection, *What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?*. The full response preserves the qualifications and argument surrounding this exact extract. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2017 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2017 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first archive record for the complete yearly response cohort. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] - **Article:** [[articles/Escape Hatch in the Skull|Escape Hatch in the Skull]] - **Article:** [[articles/Science of Digital Consciousness|Science of Digital Consciousness]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Host Infrastructure Overview]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Substrate Independence|Substrate Independence]] - [[wiki/Qualia|Qualia]] - [[wiki/Functionalism|Functionalism]] - [[wiki/Receiving Substrate|Receiving Substrate]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "I've been arguing for decades that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. This leads to a radical idea that I really like: If consciousness is the way that information feels when it’s processed in certain ways, then it must be substrate-independent; it's only the structure of the information processing that matters, not the structure of the matter doing the information processing. In other words, consciousness is substrate-independent twice over!" — Max Tegmark, 2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-max-tegmark-consciousness-substrate-independent-twice ```