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Is a neuroscientist more qualified than a physicist on this particular topic? Personally I'd leave it to the philosophy guys since we're that far from any unde

Is a neuroscientist more qualified than a physicist on this particular topic? Personally I'd leave it to the philosophy guys since we're that far from any understanding of it.

JulianMorrison 10y ago
If I was to give my unqualified, layperson opinion, I'd say "horse feathers". Consciousness probably isn't "hard" at all. It's a massively parallel brain architecture (which by its widely-spread and slow nature can't accurately self monitor) using theory-of-mind circuitry (developed to handle interpersonal social relations) to model and monitor its own operation. But it feels more sparkly and special to treat it as a mystery.
- igf 10y ago
  Okay, fine, but why am I in here experiencing it?
  - JulianMorrison 10y ago
    You mostly don't self-experience. Mostly you experience what's going on around you, and what you're doing and physically feeling. Mostly, you don't act consciously. But when you direct attention at your own experiencing, or at your own actions in a deliberate way, a subsystem dedicated to that task wakes up and provides you with a homunculus self-model. That would be the 'I'.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      And how do you get from a homunculus self-model to the subjective experience of the colour blue? (Or any other colour?) ...Which would be a subjective experience that seems to have curiously objective elements to it, because colours have been shown to correlate with specific sensations and associations across populations. And then there's the much deeper question of the extent to which quantum phenomena need an objective observer. If you think that question is trivial, try to design an experiment which provides objective evidence of change without ultimately relying on the subjective experience of a human experimenter.
      - JulianMorrison 10y ago
        They're separate, of course. People tend to over-attribute things to their consciousness. Blue is an analysis and categorization being done by the visual processing part of your brain. That part of your brain is grown by basically the same genes as everyone else's. It would be more surprising if it wasn't similar in operation. Your subjectivity is your brain is you. But only tiny scraps of it are consciously accessible. Nearly all of it just does, it doesn't reflect on the doing. You only notice your visual processing when you force it to glitch or strain with optical illusions and the like.
      - JulianMorrison 10y ago
        As for the quantum stuff, it doesn't need a conscious observer at all. This is why an experimental qbit can decohere in a sealed box no human could possibly peek into. What it needs is one interaction whose result is contingent on state - that's a "measurement" or in unintentionally confusing terminology, an "observation".
- zubat 10y ago
  It's one of the kinds of problem statements that gets habitually distorted by the technology we have to hand. Here we naturally envision it as something that a computational system might represent. But as soon as we solve some fraction of the problem with scientific means, a small fragment remains to be probed further, still mysterious. Solve that and a yet smaller facet still remains, as in Zeno's paradox. That has been the case with AI, with simulations and physics models and medicine and most fields of study. Our notion of the authentic is always on fragile ground, and this is most easily seen in music, where technology has enabled total control of the sound on a theoretical level of adding harmonics, but not in the practical sense of "reproduce this sound but make it Better". At the extreme ends it becomes a matter of taste again - why else should vinyl or vacuum tubes or analog filters remain so cherished? As we gain more technology, more of our lives enters this limbo where science can provide deductions that identify and change the measurable, but do not tell us how to pick good measures for ourselves. Philosophizing it is just a matter of continuing to ask those kinds of hard questions and inching forward ever so slightly each time.
- collyw 10y ago
  Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just your pet theory?
  - JulianMorrison 10y ago
    Various things read in the past, but nothing I can cite. Feel free to consider it a pet theory.
Capt-RogerOver 10y ago
Are you a neuroscientist?

Is a neuroscientist more qualified than a physicist on this particular topic? Personally I'd leave it to the philosophy guys since we're that far from any understanding of it.

JulianMorrison 10y ago

If I was to give my unqualified, layperson opinion, I'd say "horse feathers". Consciousness probably isn't "hard" at all. It's a massively parallel brain architecture (which by its widely-spread and slow nature can't accurately self monitor) using theory-of-mind circuitry (developed to handle interpersonal social relations) to model and monitor its own operation. But it feels more sparkly and special to treat it as a mystery.

igf 10y ago
Okay, fine, but why am I in here experiencing it?
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  You mostly don't self-experience. Mostly you experience what's going on around you, and what you're doing and physically feeling. Mostly, you don't act consciously. But when you direct attention at your own experiencing, or at your own actions in a deliberate way, a subsystem dedicated to that task wakes up and provides you with a homunculus self-model. That would be the 'I'.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    And how do you get from a homunculus self-model to the subjective experience of the colour blue? (Or any other colour?) ...Which would be a subjective experience that seems to have curiously objective elements to it, because colours have been shown to correlate with specific sensations and associations across populations. And then there's the much deeper question of the extent to which quantum phenomena need an objective observer. If you think that question is trivial, try to design an experiment which provides objective evidence of change without ultimately relying on the subjective experience of a human experimenter.
    - JulianMorrison 10y ago
      They're separate, of course. People tend to over-attribute things to their consciousness. Blue is an analysis and categorization being done by the visual processing part of your brain. That part of your brain is grown by basically the same genes as everyone else's. It would be more surprising if it wasn't similar in operation. Your subjectivity is your brain is you. But only tiny scraps of it are consciously accessible. Nearly all of it just does, it doesn't reflect on the doing. You only notice your visual processing when you force it to glitch or strain with optical illusions and the like.
    - JulianMorrison 10y ago
      As for the quantum stuff, it doesn't need a conscious observer at all. This is why an experimental qbit can decohere in a sealed box no human could possibly peek into. What it needs is one interaction whose result is contingent on state - that's a "measurement" or in unintentionally confusing terminology, an "observation".
zubat 10y ago
It's one of the kinds of problem statements that gets habitually distorted by the technology we have to hand. Here we naturally envision it as something that a computational system might represent. But as soon as we solve some fraction of the problem with scientific means, a small fragment remains to be probed further, still mysterious. Solve that and a yet smaller facet still remains, as in Zeno's paradox. That has been the case with AI, with simulations and physics models and medicine and most fields of study. Our notion of the authentic is always on fragile ground, and this is most easily seen in music, where technology has enabled total control of the sound on a theoretical level of adding harmonics, but not in the practical sense of "reproduce this sound but make it Better". At the extreme ends it becomes a matter of taste again - why else should vinyl or vacuum tubes or analog filters remain so cherished? As we gain more technology, more of our lives enters this limbo where science can provide deductions that identify and change the measurable, but do not tell us how to pick good measures for ourselves. Philosophizing it is just a matter of continuing to ask those kinds of hard questions and inching forward ever so slightly each time.
collyw 10y ago
Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just your pet theory?
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  Various things read in the past, but nothing I can cite. Feel free to consider it a pet theory.

Capt-RogerOver 10y ago

Are you a neuroscientist?