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We're veering away from physics here, but isn't consciousness actually quite "magical". It's beyond remarkable to me that stimulating nervous tissue, composed o

by kmm 6y ago

We're veering away from physics here, but isn't consciousness actually quite "magical". It's beyond remarkable to me that stimulating nervous tissue, composed of quite mundane things like protons and electrons, yields a subjective experience. I know many people reject the hard problem of consciousness, but to those who don't, the implications of thought experiments like Wigner's friend, like superpositions or entanglement of subjective experiences, are truly paradoxical. You are calling certain viewpoints obviously wrong or false because you adhere to certain philosophical viewpoints. There's nothing wrong with that, and they're all justifiable, but none of them are complete consensus among philosophers. Coming back to physics, there's an assumption you and other commenters are silently making, which is that quantum mechanics is even applicable to macroscopic objects like humans. The largest objects which have been shown to act wave-like are a few thousand atoms large. While it's indisputable that at the lowest level the universe is fundamentally quantum mechanical, it's a little brazen to extrapolate that over more than 20 orders of magnitude. As a physicist myself, I'll believe it when I see it, and I'm looking forward to getting results from proposed experiments like FELIX and its successors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-orbit_experiment_with_laser_interferometry_X-rays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-orbit_experiment_with_las...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
keymone 6y ago
Pretty sure I’m dunnig-krugering this, but is consciousness really that magical? Nervous system evolved from ability to respond to external stimuli to centralized control of various processes to evaluation of risks/benefits of actions and finally to predictive modeling of external processes. Rudimentary concept of “self” and understanding of surrounding environment exists in various animals, so why is it strange that an animal with most complex brain has the most sophisticated concept of “self” and it’s placement in the ultimate surrounding environment - the universe?
- kmm 6y ago
  Of course, apart from how the actual implementation works I don't think many people have a problem with that. And if it was just that, Wigner's friend wouldn't be nearly as interesting, it would suffice to say that if quantum mechanical effects really keep working all the way up to the macroscopic level (which again is anything but obvious), that his friend's body and brain would simply be in a superposition of both states. But this understand of the surroundings and capability to react to stimuli comes with a subjective experience, which is what is actually meant with "consciousness". This is the hard problem of consciousness[0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
  - keymone 6y ago
    One of brain’s responsibilities is to model the environment, which means modeling all it’s parts. Since each brain is unique - those models are different and “personal”. Physical stimuli evoke some of those models and that’s what we call “blue color” or whatever else we’re experiencing. I don’t think I understand the problem enough to understand why it’s a problem.
    - felipeko 6y ago
      By inner experience, we mean that there's a subject which gets to have perception of such models. There's no need for such subject to exist. For example, most people assume that, so far, computers do not have any inner experience. A computer could, conceivably, execute the same functions as our brain, yet have no inner experience of anything. Numbers get in, numbers get out, without any inner experience being needed.
      - keymone 6y ago
        Sure, just like a thermostat doesn’t experience the feeling of temperature, there is no need for human to feel it, so I understand that we need to explain why is it that we still feel the feeling rather than just observe the signal and react. So why is it wrong to explain this by the necessary recursiveness of predictive modeling that includes modeling “self”? We observe the temperature but we also observe ourselves observing the temperature. First is the signal, second is the introspection of the model evoked by that signal - the feeling.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
>Coming back to physics, there's an assumption you and other commenters are silently making, which is that quantum mechanics is even applicable to macroscopic objects like humans. It follows from schrodinger equation, it provides no exception for macroscopic objects. You can say quantum effects indeed happen at the lowest level, and macroscopic behavior follows what happens at the lowest level. It's a question of reducibility. > The largest objects which have been shown to act wave-like are a few thousand atoms large. Large objects have wave-like behavior, e.g. you can't determine their size with femtometer resolution, they don't suffer from ultraviolet catastrophe and have macroscopic quantum effects like superconductivity.

by kmm 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

keymone 6y ago

Pretty sure I’m dunnig-krugering this, but is consciousness really that magical? Nervous system evolved from ability to respond to external stimuli to centralized control of various processes to evaluation of risks/benefits of actions and finally to predictive modeling of external processes. Rudimentary concept of “self” and understanding of surrounding environment exists in various animals, so why is it strange that an animal with most complex brain has the most sophisticated concept of “self” and it’s placement in the ultimate surrounding environment - the universe?

kmm 6y ago
Of course, apart from how the actual implementation works I don't think many people have a problem with that. And if it was just that, Wigner's friend wouldn't be nearly as interesting, it would suffice to say that if quantum mechanical effects really keep working all the way up to the macroscopic level (which again is anything but obvious), that his friend's body and brain would simply be in a superposition of both states. But this understand of the surroundings and capability to react to stimuli comes with a subjective experience, which is what is actually meant with "consciousness". This is the hard problem of consciousness[0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
- keymone 6y ago
  One of brain’s responsibilities is to model the environment, which means modeling all it’s parts. Since each brain is unique - those models are different and “personal”. Physical stimuli evoke some of those models and that’s what we call “blue color” or whatever else we’re experiencing. I don’t think I understand the problem enough to understand why it’s a problem.
  - felipeko 6y ago
    By inner experience, we mean that there's a subject which gets to have perception of such models. There's no need for such subject to exist. For example, most people assume that, so far, computers do not have any inner experience. A computer could, conceivably, execute the same functions as our brain, yet have no inner experience of anything. Numbers get in, numbers get out, without any inner experience being needed.
    - keymone 6y ago
      Sure, just like a thermostat doesn’t experience the feeling of temperature, there is no need for human to feel it, so I understand that we need to explain why is it that we still feel the feeling rather than just observe the signal and react. So why is it wrong to explain this by the necessary recursiveness of predictive modeling that includes modeling “self”? We observe the temperature but we also observe ourselves observing the temperature. First is the signal, second is the introspection of the model evoked by that signal - the feeling.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

>Coming back to physics, there's an assumption you and other commenters are silently making, which is that quantum mechanics is even applicable to macroscopic objects like humans. It follows from schrodinger equation, it provides no exception for macroscopic objects. You can say quantum effects indeed happen at the lowest level, and macroscopic behavior follows what happens at the lowest level. It's a question of reducibility. > The largest objects which have been shown to act wave-like are a few thousand atoms large. Large objects have wave-like behavior, e.g. you can't determine their size with femtometer resolution, they don't suffer from ultraviolet catastrophe and have macroscopic quantum effects like superconductivity.