4 ms·

When Marvin Minsky described one perspective on consciousness as "hey, we don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand gravity, maybe consciousness i

by rspeer 10y ago

When Marvin Minsky described one perspective on consciousness as "hey, we don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand gravity, maybe consciousness is made of gravity", I thought he was just mocking the ever-popular idea that "maybe consciousness is made of quantum mechanics". I didn't know that there really was a prominent thinker who postulated gravity (and quantum mechanics) as the place where subjective consciousness is hiding.

DonaldFisk 10y ago
I don't think anyone's seriously put forward the idea that consciousness and quantum mechanics are related because they're both mysterious, so that is a straw man. In any case, we do understand gravity and quantum mechanics pretty well, at least compared to consciousness. The reason some people think QM and consciousness are related is that some interpretations of quantum mechanics requires a conscious observer to collapse the wave function and make the final measurement (e.g. by taking a reading from a measuring apparatus, or listening to someone else (who they can't be sure is conscious) telling you the measurement over lunch. I'm not familiar with Penrose's argument re gravity, but so far general relativity has resisted attempts to quantize it, so maybe he's saying that GR and QM must be incorporated into a more general theory yet to be worked out, like electricity and magnetism are incorporated into Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.
- rspeer 10y ago
  It's a straw man, sure. It's an exaggeration about people being willingly baffled by physics. May I ask, where did you get the part about "conscious observer"? Yes, there's a thing in QM about observation collapsing the wave function, and there's disagreement on what that actually means. But I can't imagine that an interpretation promoted by actual physicists would use a squishy term like "conscious" in their hard science.
  - Strilanc 10y ago
    'Consciousness-causes-collapse' is also known as the 'Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation' [1]. Yes, THAT Von Neumann. It's got no explanatory power over other interpretations, obviously. But actual physicists demonstrably used squishy terms like "conscious" when talking about their hard science. Embarrassing, but true. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_int...
    - DonaldFisk 10y ago
      And indeed THAT Wigner. At some point a measurement is made, and the only way you can be sure of the result is by consciously experiencing it. And until you ask your colleague, her quantum state is entangled with whatever is being measured, and with the measuring apparatus. I don't see why it's embarrassing about physicists and other scientists using "squishy" terms about things they know (or even suspect) are there but can't explain. Magnetism was just as squishy a term until it was understood. The only difference is that consciousness seems to be exclusively a first-person experience, but that arguably makes it even more real. (You might be a brain in a vat, in which case everything you sense would be bogus, but your experience of it would still be real.)

by rspeer 10y ago

DonaldFisk 10y ago

I don't think anyone's seriously put forward the idea that consciousness and quantum mechanics are related because they're both mysterious, so that is a straw man. In any case, we do understand gravity and quantum mechanics pretty well, at least compared to consciousness. The reason some people think QM and consciousness are related is that some interpretations of quantum mechanics requires a conscious observer to collapse the wave function and make the final measurement (e.g. by taking a reading from a measuring apparatus, or listening to someone else (who they can't be sure is conscious) telling you the measurement over lunch. I'm not familiar with Penrose's argument re gravity, but so far general relativity has resisted attempts to quantize it, so maybe he's saying that GR and QM must be incorporated into a more general theory yet to be worked out, like electricity and magnetism are incorporated into Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.

rspeer 10y ago
It's a straw man, sure. It's an exaggeration about people being willingly baffled by physics. May I ask, where did you get the part about "conscious observer"? Yes, there's a thing in QM about observation collapsing the wave function, and there's disagreement on what that actually means. But I can't imagine that an interpretation promoted by actual physicists would use a squishy term like "conscious" in their hard science.
- Strilanc 10y ago
  'Consciousness-causes-collapse' is also known as the 'Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation' [1]. Yes, THAT Von Neumann. It's got no explanatory power over other interpretations, obviously. But actual physicists demonstrably used squishy terms like "conscious" when talking about their hard science. Embarrassing, but true. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_int...
  - DonaldFisk 10y ago
    And indeed THAT Wigner. At some point a measurement is made, and the only way you can be sure of the result is by consciously experiencing it. And until you ask your colleague, her quantum state is entangled with whatever is being measured, and with the measuring apparatus. I don't see why it's embarrassing about physicists and other scientists using "squishy" terms about things they know (or even suspect) are there but can't explain. Magnetism was just as squishy a term until it was understood. The only difference is that consciousness seems to be exclusively a first-person experience, but that arguably makes it even more real. (You might be a brain in a vat, in which case everything you sense would be bogus, but your experience of it would still be real.)