I'm actually the one who did N-body turing machines: http://rangevoting.org/WarrenSmithPages/homepage/church.pdf While I agree there is a sense in which a small number of point bodies under Newton laws can "simulate a Turning machine running forever" the paper shows this is untrue for more-realistic modified Newton's laws, and also it seems likely that the initial conditions causing this are of measure 0 (although this is not known). Re consciousness (what is that?), I made a paper trying to give a definition of "intelligence", see http://rangevoting.org/WarrenSmithPages/homepage/iq.pdf (too long version) http://rangevoting.org/WarrenSmithPages/homepage/iqshort.pdf (too short version) My definition of intelligence turned out to have been basically the same as one invented by Marcus Hutter a bit earlier (and he published a book); the long paper contrasts me vs Hutter near the end. The long version contains a short section (only a few paragraphs) "Some speculation about what consciousness is" Various posters here have non-explicitly noted that every known life form is a heat engine which depends for survival on energy input and dumping heat to some external cold bath. True. There then seems to be this notion that if there were no energy source & cold bath combination, we'd all die, and "time would not exist" (for us, anyhow). I don't think that is about time, that is about survival. For you time continues even if I die. Would you contend "time does not exist without free oxygen?" Nonsense. Anyhow, consider a tank full of gas, just sitting there in thermal equilibrium very boringly. Does it "experience time?" Well, facts about that gas get "measured" by the "external environment" in particular via gravitons which inherently cannot be shielded. This happens continually, and no thermal equilibrium is ever reached in that respect. As a result the gas "decoheres" preventing it from getting too quantum-weird. This happens continually. The gas therefore "experiences time" in the same time-direction as the rest of the universe, e.g. you.