>I cannot imagine how "us" being the "down" part of the module can make a decision that's not influenced at any point by the "top" part of the module being our environment that's the universe.
Because we're all just a limited interface to the same singleton, and we act in an 'environment' module. The singleton is the one that controls the 'environment' instance, so the closer you are to the singleton the more you can override the 'environment'.
That's consciousness. I believe consciousness is entanglement with the reality 'outside' of our physical dimension (ether). And since that isn't a part of this physical universe, your thoughts are free. And the more you're 'conscious' the more you can override your environment and biology. 'Force of will', going against your biological and sociological programming to do something that you imagined in your head. And acting upon those thoughts only depends on you, but it takes a large amount of will (consciousness, mindfulness, faith, call it as you wish) to override the deterministic environment defaults and actually do it.
Because we're all just a limited interface to the same singleton, and we act in an 'environment' module. The singleton is the one that controls the 'environment' instance, so the closer you are to the singleton the more you can override the 'environment'.
That's consciousness. I believe consciousness is entanglement with the reality 'outside' of our physical dimension (ether). And since that isn't a part of this physical universe, your thoughts are free. And the more you're 'conscious' the more you can override your environment and biology. 'Force of will', going against your biological and sociological programming to do something that you imagined in your head. And acting upon those thoughts only depends on you, but it takes a large amount of will (consciousness, mindfulness, faith, call it as you wish) to override the deterministic environment defaults and actually do it.