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Interesting that the paper starts by attacking "quantum mysticism". Seems to me that the argument it's making renders quantum mysticism easier to believe rathe
by ScottBurson 10y ago
Interesting that the paper starts by attacking "quantum mysticism". Seems to me that the argument it's making renders quantum mysticism easier to believe rather than harder. The concept of particles, after all, appeals to our Newtonian "billiard ball" intuitions; particles are the essence of locality, and our intuitions suggest that a particle universe should be deterministic.
On the other hand, if particles are epiphenomenal, and everything is really infinite fields which only have a certain probability of interacting in certain ways, it seems like, intuitively, there's a lot more room for consciousness to influence those fields in a nonlocal manner. No?
Just playing devil's advocate here :-)
- Houshalter 10y agoNot at all. Fields are a precise mathematical model that could, in principle, be simulated on a computer to arbitrary precision. There's no room for mysticism or "consciousness" nonsense.
- crististm 10y ago<ironic> right... and you also can simulate initial conditions to infinitely arbitrary precision as well.
- andrewflnr 10y agoin principle You're missing the point, which is no room for mysticism or "consciousness" nonsense not anything to do with the limits of computation.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoyou're missing the point, which is you're all idiots.
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- RivieraKid 10y agoAgree with the first part but I also believe that physics can't explain the hard problem of consciousness.
- Houshalter 10y agoNothing can ever explain the "hard problem" of consciousness. It's nonscientific nonsense that's totally disconnected from reality.
- monochromatic 10y agoConsciousness exists. Science either can explain it, or it cannot.
- simonh 10y agoPresumably you're not familiar with the term the 'Hard Problem' of conciousness [0]. It's a specific supposition that there's something special about 'qualia' of experience that can't be explained by a physical model (or scientific explanation as you term it) of conciousness. There is considerable dispute as to whether the idea makes any sense or not and therefore if the 'Hard Problem' is even a thing. Which IMHO it isn't. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...
- tomhoward 10y agoWe're getting off topic, but it is at least worth considering just why it's described as a "hard problem", which is that science involves the observation (via human consciousness) of things in relation to other things. But because consciousness is the medium of observation, it can't be independently observed relative to other things, thus the ultimate nature of consciousness can only ever be postulated, not objectively proven.
- faktorialas 10y ago
- scythe 10y ago>in principle, be simulated on a computer to arbitrary precision. However, for any finite precision, the simulation is valid for only a finite time -- and the precision required to guarantee a certain accuracy for a given time increases exponentially: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_time That means that finite-memory simulations are limited even in principle (even for a computer whose memory is as large as the Universe, there is a rather short limit on prediction!)
- danharaj 10y ago> Fields are a precise mathematical model Let's not get ahead of ourselves here; unless you've solved a millennium problem!
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- joelthelion 10y agoWhich one is it?
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- johndoe4589 10y agoI don't understand the implicit relationship you see between the regularity observed in our reality and consciousness. Why can't one go with the other? That consciousness nonsense has you reading a post and reacting to it. The simulation argument is silly, because all it does is "postpone the explanation" as Alan Watts joked in "Time and the more it changes". If our universe can be simulated, then so what? It is the same puzzle with the Matrix as Jed Mac Kenna explained in his famous trilogy: in Matrix 2 or 3 (don't remember), Neo escapes from his "simulated" reality, only to find himself in another. What if the other one is simulated? The movie just stops there, and Neo isn't actually free. He just switched one reality for another.
- Houshalter 10y agoParent comment was talking about "quantum mysticism". Which is a set of quasi-religious beliefs that have no justification whatsoever in scientific theories and often misunderstand distort real science a great deal.