The sense of smell is the TSA of the nose.

Donald Hoffman's and Anil Seth ideas regarding the perception of 'reality' seem quite compelling, the idea that we have a controlled hallucination of reality rather than experiencing 100% of base reality. To explore this idea:

Are bats conscious?

Do bats experience reality?

Is their experience of reality different than human's in a meaningful way via their having the sense of echolocation? Wouldn't "reality" look extremely different from a bat's point of view? I think so, but that disparity of difference can be understood through the controlled hallucination hypothesis.

There exists a non-spiritual, physics-based argument for the phenomenon of non-duality and the philosophy thereof. Given that humanity is a heterotroph, and that we subsequently are a conscious form of energy that can only exist by the consumption of either conscious or non-conscious (as far as we can reasonably assume, at this time) energy. This means that we are both a sense of self that is connected to a larger one-ness--that of a finite amount of energy in the known universe consuming itself, that did so via the process of evolution to the point of becoming conscious.

If energy has a 'death', then isn't it also the case that 'energy' is subject to the adaptive limitations of mortality (aka 'evolution')?

Humans are heterotrophic, so we consume energy rather than produce our energy from some non-conscious energy consumption (autotrophic). This has led humanity to, not necessarily by a species-wide vote, be a violent species. Because there's a certain violence to being a heterotroph in a universe now inhabited by conscious life that is capable of suffering and extinction.

So could it not be argued, from an ethical standpoint (akin to the kind invoked for pro-vegan arguments), that if humanity could collaborate to influence the arc of the evolution of consciousness, wouldn't we went to evolve consciousness into a autotrophic evolutionary timeline (IE: The invention of Artificial General Intelligence)?