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Emperor's New Mind absolutely infuriated me when it came out. I waded through the whole thing only to find the it's thesis could be apparently boiled down to 'c

Emperor's New Mind absolutely infuriated me when it came out. I waded through the whole thing only to find the it's thesis could be apparently boiled down to 'consciousness is spooky, you know what else is spooky? quantum stuff - microtubules are small, I bet quantum effects are involved'. Now, I've no-doubt I'm doing the great man a disservice, but it felt like a very thin conclusion for such a fat book.

SamBam 6y ago
That's practically word-for-word the description of the book I've always given. "We don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand quantum mechanics, ergo...." It's a pity, because that was those books were my first and only experience of Penrose for many years, and it was only much later that I learned of his much more interesting work in geometry and mathematics, and their use in physics, the study of crystals, etc.
- pegasus 6y ago
  Those are indeed fascinating, but what could be more interesting than the relation between consciousness and the Universe? Maybe you're preference is for the more solid ground of confirmed science, which is understandable, maybe you didn't have the patience to follow his thinking, which is ok too, but why go the extra step and caricature his arguments like this?
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Once you move into the realm of untestable vague hand waving statements, it’s not really even science anymore. Philosophical discussions that dress up like science are infuriating for anyone who went in looking for science.
    - pegasus 6y ago
      It's not dressing up as science, though. I understand that for someone who appreciates science, but not philosophy, the book turning out as straddling those two fields might be a letdown. But that's not the authors fault since those books are not presented as academic research, but only informed by it. Infuriating for me are philosophical discussions which don't draw substantially on science.
      - Angostura 6y ago
        I felt let down by Penrose, because the book was dressed up as sonething it was not. By comparison Dennett and Pinker and Hofstadter were much more satisfying.
  - SamBam 6y ago
    My undergraduate degree was in Cognitive Science. I took a large amount of neuroscience, psych, and philosophy. Discussing consciousness was the part I loved the most, and I had plenty of patience for plenty of writers. My dismissal of his work on consciousness was based on those grounds. I think my "caricature" was fairly accurate, but if you think different that's fine, if you can elaborate. The part I forgot above was that I also dismissed it on the basis of math, which is surprising given that Penrose is a greater mathematician than I'll ever be, but his whole reason to evoke "quantum" was that a Newtonian-based brain could not know that a "Gödel sentence" was true, so our brains must be non-Newtonian. It was absurd on the face of it (our brain's belief about statements don't constitute a formal logic), and was also well-criticized by other mathematicians, whose names I'd have to dredge out of my 20-year old essays.
    - tildedave 6y ago
      As someone who took a number of mathetical logic classes between undergrad/graduate I always found this Gödel-sentence argument on the face-laughable, since the logical inconsistency was so easy to repair. My favorite critique of this was Hans Moravec's dialogue between Penrose and a robot AI, having resurrected his brain long past humanity's extinction: http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/10moravec.html http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/10moravec.ht...
      - theinfinity 6y ago
        Penrose has himself replied to this critique (among others): http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/01penrose.html http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/01penrose.ht....
      - ianai 6y ago
        Have a link for the correction to the Gödel-sentence argument? I’m curious to read more.
    - pegasus 6y ago
      Yes, I'm aware of the criticism and it might be that only a few of his speculations find ground in reality, or even none at all. Still, these dismissals are unfair and rouhghly equivalent to saying that for example, Darwin's "Origin of the Species" boils down to "life-forms are groovy".
pegasus 6y ago
Yeah, of course you're doing him a disservice. Maybe try reading it a second time (and third too, why not), with more patience. It definitely doesn't boil down to what you just said.
- iainmerrick 6y ago
  I also read the book and disliked it for exactly the same reason (and I say this as a big Penrose admirer, both before and after). Can you give us at least an idea of what bits we might be missing?
  - pegasus 6y ago
    See my reply on a sibling comment. Also, it's one of very few popular books that goes deep on the subject of Goedel's Theorem and the limit discoveries in logic and computability. A subject that in my view deserves to be more in our collective consciousness than even Quantum Physics since it's implications are likely to be even more profound.
    - iainmerrick 6y ago
      If I remember right, that section didn’t differ substantially from Lucas’s argument, which I thought had already been effectively rebutted (eg in Godel, Escher, Bach). But maybe I’ll take another look and see if that’s fair.
- tasty_freeze 6y ago
  > why not Because free time is finite. If they read it three times and still decided it verbosely failed to make its case, why not read it two or three times more? Can you cite a point or two where you think Penrose makes a strong case above and beyond "consciousness and quantum theory are both mysterious and are therefore probably connected?"
  - pegasus 6y ago
    Of course. He talks about research on quantum effects in microtubules, for example. Of how the concepts of computability and consciousness relate, how quantum physics drags in this concept of consciousness into science hitherto imagined purely objective. There are so many interesting connections, which might well be directions science will investigate in the years to come. That's a big part of what the whole book is about. The other part is where he describes how quantum physics, logic and consciousness are weird. That's basically just science popularization, coming from a top mind in both math and physics. To me, that's already enough to justify the price of admission: the time and mental effort of going through the book at a pace that assures comprehension, which does take some patience.
emmelaich 6y ago
There is a strong theist (or deist) conviction behind his theories which is typically not mentioned.

SamBam 6y ago

That's practically word-for-word the description of the book I've always given. "We don't understand consciousness, and we don't understand quantum mechanics, ergo...." It's a pity, because that was those books were my first and only experience of Penrose for many years, and it was only much later that I learned of his much more interesting work in geometry and mathematics, and their use in physics, the study of crystals, etc.

pegasus 6y ago
Those are indeed fascinating, but what could be more interesting than the relation between consciousness and the Universe? Maybe you're preference is for the more solid ground of confirmed science, which is understandable, maybe you didn't have the patience to follow his thinking, which is ok too, but why go the extra step and caricature his arguments like this?
- kortilla 6y ago
  Once you move into the realm of untestable vague hand waving statements, it’s not really even science anymore. Philosophical discussions that dress up like science are infuriating for anyone who went in looking for science.
  - pegasus 6y ago
    It's not dressing up as science, though. I understand that for someone who appreciates science, but not philosophy, the book turning out as straddling those two fields might be a letdown. But that's not the authors fault since those books are not presented as academic research, but only informed by it. Infuriating for me are philosophical discussions which don't draw substantially on science.
    - Angostura 6y ago
      I felt let down by Penrose, because the book was dressed up as sonething it was not. By comparison Dennett and Pinker and Hofstadter were much more satisfying.
- SamBam 6y ago
  My undergraduate degree was in Cognitive Science. I took a large amount of neuroscience, psych, and philosophy. Discussing consciousness was the part I loved the most, and I had plenty of patience for plenty of writers. My dismissal of his work on consciousness was based on those grounds. I think my "caricature" was fairly accurate, but if you think different that's fine, if you can elaborate. The part I forgot above was that I also dismissed it on the basis of math, which is surprising given that Penrose is a greater mathematician than I'll ever be, but his whole reason to evoke "quantum" was that a Newtonian-based brain could not know that a "Gödel sentence" was true, so our brains must be non-Newtonian. It was absurd on the face of it (our brain's belief about statements don't constitute a formal logic), and was also well-criticized by other mathematicians, whose names I'd have to dredge out of my 20-year old essays.
  - tildedave 6y ago
    As someone who took a number of mathetical logic classes between undergrad/graduate I always found this Gödel-sentence argument on the face-laughable, since the logical inconsistency was so easy to repair. My favorite critique of this was Hans Moravec's dialogue between Penrose and a robot AI, having resurrected his brain long past humanity's extinction: http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/10moravec.html http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/10moravec.ht...
    - theinfinity 6y ago
      Penrose has himself replied to this critique (among others): http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/01penrose.html http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/01penrose.ht....
    - ianai 6y ago
      Have a link for the correction to the Gödel-sentence argument? I’m curious to read more.
  - pegasus 6y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of the criticism and it might be that only a few of his speculations find ground in reality, or even none at all. Still, these dismissals are unfair and rouhghly equivalent to saying that for example, Darwin's "Origin of the Species" boils down to "life-forms are groovy".

pegasus 6y ago

Yeah, of course you're doing him a disservice. Maybe try reading it a second time (and third too, why not), with more patience. It definitely doesn't boil down to what you just said.

iainmerrick 6y ago
I also read the book and disliked it for exactly the same reason (and I say this as a big Penrose admirer, both before and after). Can you give us at least an idea of what bits we might be missing?
- pegasus 6y ago
  See my reply on a sibling comment. Also, it's one of very few popular books that goes deep on the subject of Goedel's Theorem and the limit discoveries in logic and computability. A subject that in my view deserves to be more in our collective consciousness than even Quantum Physics since it's implications are likely to be even more profound.
  - iainmerrick 6y ago
    If I remember right, that section didn’t differ substantially from Lucas’s argument, which I thought had already been effectively rebutted (eg in Godel, Escher, Bach). But maybe I’ll take another look and see if that’s fair.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
> why not Because free time is finite. If they read it three times and still decided it verbosely failed to make its case, why not read it two or three times more? Can you cite a point or two where you think Penrose makes a strong case above and beyond "consciousness and quantum theory are both mysterious and are therefore probably connected?"
- pegasus 6y ago
  Of course. He talks about research on quantum effects in microtubules, for example. Of how the concepts of computability and consciousness relate, how quantum physics drags in this concept of consciousness into science hitherto imagined purely objective. There are so many interesting connections, which might well be directions science will investigate in the years to come. That's a big part of what the whole book is about. The other part is where he describes how quantum physics, logic and consciousness are weird. That's basically just science popularization, coming from a top mind in both math and physics. To me, that's already enough to justify the price of admission: the time and mental effort of going through the book at a pace that assures comprehension, which does take some patience.

emmelaich 6y ago

There is a strong theist (or deist) conviction behind his theories which is typically not mentioned.