4 ms·

Roger Penrose interview: “Consciousness must be beyond computable physics.”

22 points by olalonde 4y ago

vixen99 4y ago
Most of the article is paywalled.
m-p-3 4y ago
Posted 5 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607695
gxt 4y ago
Newton was an Alchemist. Everything has to be evaluated for what it is. It's not because it's Penrose that it has any value. I think this time, this is just mumbo jumbo.
ilaksh 4y ago
People have been repeating Penrose's nonsense for decades because it supports a dualistic view generally motivated by religious views. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism I think you can probably track the popularity of this idea with the development of neuroscience and decreasing popularity of hardcore religious worldviews and other types of superstition. https://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/09mcdermott.html https://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/09mcdermott...
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  'Penrose's nonsense' Scientists have repeated all kinds of nonsense in centuries past. Newton said that space was empty, so because that Pope had spoken, the idea that meteors fell from space conflicted with that orthodoxy. Finally the evidence won out. Humans have long shared 'numinous experiences' fairly universally. They gave rise to many religions, which cooked up a lot of orthodoxies and belief structures (impervious to evidence), which needed to be enforced (e.g. Servetus, Bruno), largely to support a range of power structures. I hardly think Penrose is so naive. Denying consciousness is the more naive. Denying the universality of mankind's life-changing experiences is akin to denying meteors ... but the evidence is perhaps too subtle for determined materialists.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
jll29 4y ago
The argument sounds like "1. consciousness is not Turing-complete. 2. Here is a process that is not Turing-complete. 3. Therefore, this process must explain consciousness.", which is a bit naive. Just because of some shared properties, it does not need to form the basis for consciousness. But even so, it should be investigated carefully - ideological biases in either direction are not helpful. I hope I will live long enough to see that researchers can measure an actual thought, even if I may not live long enough to see that we understand how it is represented. (No "grandmother cell", but also no, not high level MRI "there's more activity in this region", that's not good enough.)
Koshkin 4y ago
Not everything is physics. Love is not physics (according to Feynman). So what? What is all the fuss about?
yummypaint 4y ago
I always thought of consciousness as like a double pendulum or other chaotic system. Governed entirely by physics, and you can simulate it given hypothetical initial conditions. However, the sensitivity to the initial conditions is so high that it's impossible to look at a real world instance of the system and then predict its behavior more than a trivial amount of time into the future. It's entirely possible for consciousness to be mechanistic without being deterministic.
egberts1 4y ago
That is, "... beyond computable physics," until today's computable advances from 2-state logic CPU into N-state logic to mimic dendrites of brain cells.

22 points by olalonde 4y ago

vixen99 4y ago

Most of the article is paywalled.

m-p-3 4y ago

Posted 5 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607695

gxt 4y ago

Newton was an Alchemist. Everything has to be evaluated for what it is. It's not because it's Penrose that it has any value. I think this time, this is just mumbo jumbo.

ilaksh 4y ago

People have been repeating Penrose's nonsense for decades because it supports a dualistic view generally motivated by religious views. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism I think you can probably track the popularity of this idea with the development of neuroscience and decreasing popularity of hardcore religious worldviews and other types of superstition. https://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/09mcdermott.html https://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/09mcdermott...

8bitsrule 4y ago
'Penrose's nonsense' Scientists have repeated all kinds of nonsense in centuries past. Newton said that space was empty, so because that Pope had spoken, the idea that meteors fell from space conflicted with that orthodoxy. Finally the evidence won out. Humans have long shared 'numinous experiences' fairly universally. They gave rise to many religions, which cooked up a lot of orthodoxies and belief structures (impervious to evidence), which needed to be enforced (e.g. Servetus, Bruno), largely to support a range of power structures. I hardly think Penrose is so naive. Denying consciousness is the more naive. Denying the universality of mankind's life-changing experiences is akin to denying meteors ... but the evidence is perhaps too subtle for determined materialists.
- canadianfella 4y ago

jll29 4y ago

The argument sounds like "1. consciousness is not Turing-complete. 2. Here is a process that is not Turing-complete. 3. Therefore, this process must explain consciousness.", which is a bit naive. Just because of some shared properties, it does not need to form the basis for consciousness. But even so, it should be investigated carefully - ideological biases in either direction are not helpful. I hope I will live long enough to see that researchers can measure an actual thought, even if I may not live long enough to see that we understand how it is represented. (No "grandmother cell", but also no, not high level MRI "there's more activity in this region", that's not good enough.)

Koshkin 4y ago

Not everything is physics. Love is not physics (according to Feynman). So what? What is all the fuss about?

yummypaint 4y ago

I always thought of consciousness as like a double pendulum or other chaotic system. Governed entirely by physics, and you can simulate it given hypothetical initial conditions. However, the sensitivity to the initial conditions is so high that it's impossible to look at a real world instance of the system and then predict its behavior more than a trivial amount of time into the future. It's entirely possible for consciousness to be mechanistic without being deterministic.

egberts1 4y ago

That is, "... beyond computable physics," until today's computable advances from 2-state logic CPU into N-state logic to mimic dendrites of brain cells.