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The theory that consciousness is a quantum system gains support
- JojoFatsani 3y agoThis is basically the plot of the Ender’s Game sequel series (Speaker for the Dead/Xenocide/etc)
- klysm 3y agoConnecting quantum physics and consciousness feels like a God in the Gaps fallacy to me, but I don’t have any real strong argument against it
- tommiegannert 3y agoI'm sure it felt the same when neurons were found to use that weird stuff in lightning, what-do-you-call-it, electricity. Are you telling me my brain is like lightning!? If quantum physics can model consciousness, it'll take a few generations before it feels normal to talk about it that way.
- klysm 3y agoThat’s different though, because it was _found_. People have been postulating that consciousness is somehow related to consciousness with hand wavy arguments for decades
- graphe 3y agoOrch OR isn't taken seriously by people in this field, and I annoyed a lot of people asking about it since I knew about it online and most people only know of it because Penrose's name is on it so it means it must be true. Everyone who watched YouTube knows about this theory and thinks it to be true. The consensus seems to be IIT. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theor...
- eynsham 3y agoThere is no consensus amongst philosophers on consciousness, and if there is, it isn’t IIT. I don’t know about cogsci people though.
- graphe 3y agoIt was a consensus of the people I talked to orch OR isn't taken seriously, and IIT is. I only hear of orch OR from people who watched the video online and heard of the great toilet paper maker rodger Penrose.
- heckraiser 3y agoWhy sniping Penrose? Some scandal for which I am not aware? His explanations of manifold contours was an epiphany of enlightenment for me.
- graphe 3y agoSorry, it's just what people remember about him for some reason. That hes a Nobel prize winner who must be right about consciousness, sued a toilet paper company and won. Hard for the laymen to speak of his scientific work.
- eynsham 3y agoPenrose’s excursion into logic and philosophy by way of Gödel is nearly universally rejected in my experience and according to the standard reference work: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/#GdeArgAgaMec https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/#Gd...
- heckraiser 3y agoI would disagree on one hand as mechanisms can and shall inevitably outperform human thought capacity at some scale. And agree on another, the human mind is an efficient quantum computer (I know …) which uses constructive and destructive interference for some holographic rendering rather than a composition of linear conditional logic. Do not let the confines of human ignorance set the horizon for Truth! Allow that science is only a tool for undeceiving ourselves. Universal rejection sounds like dogma, not science.
- taneq 3y ago> In short, it says that consciousness arises when gravitational instabilities in the fundamental structure of space-time collapse quantum wave functions in tiny structures called microtubules that are found inside neurons – and, in fact, in all complex cells. What... this isn't even wrong.
- Terr_ 3y agoBasically the punchline to this SMBC comic [0] (this is your chance to stop reading because of spoilers.) > If you don't talk to your kids about quantum computing... Someone else will: > "Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivalent!" [0] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
- grantcas 3y ago[dead]
- heckraiser 3y agoModernity sees state as the building block of reality. Quantum dynamics says it is POTENTIAL through constructive and destructive interference resolving into state in the moment of now (a continuously transitive and ephemeral moment.) Is it so hard to see consciousness as the domain of existential POTENTIAL, and living systems as a feedback loop into this echo chamber of potential? Does potential not sound more like consciousness than the arrangement of state?
- flir 3y agoIf I'm reading you right, I'd say post-chaos maths and post-computing revolution it's much easier for us to see process, not state, as the crucial element (see Ted Chiang's Exhalation). Whether that process requires QM... that's so far above my pay grade I don't even have an opinion.
- heckraiser 3y agoNot process. Potential is composed of the super-amplitude. Process would be the physical system influencing the resolve (which may vary allowing different technological approaches, i.e. organic or silicon or otherwise.) QM exclusively allows this super-amplitude. No physical process can compare, yet without some physical medium the amplitudes would be unbound.
- jacknews 3y agoFor example, the order in which questions are asked is important in quantum physics but not in classical physics. But in that respect, the human mind often behaves more in a quantum way, he says: For example, in a study published 20 years ago about the effects that question order has on respondents’ answers, subjects were asked whether they thought the previous US president, Bill Clinton, was honest. They were then asked if his vice president, Al Gore, seemed honest. ... (the question order affected the outcome -ed). This to me seem like a ludicrous leap in logic. It's absolutely certain that quantum processes are involved in the brain, as part of basic chemistry. Whether any strange quantum effects 'bubble up' beyond this, and are exploited for consciousness is what needs to be proved, and I am skeptical. The recent rise of LLM's indicates to me that you don't need exotic physics to get spectacularly complex behaviour.
- beardyw 3y agoQuantum physics is a part of physics and brains work using physics. They are not digital, however much some would like them to be. So of course quantum physics plays a part in how they work. I am not sure that leads inexorably to the conclusions reached here. Consciousness is poorly defined and quantum physics is weird and wobbly, that doesn't make them connected.