4 ms·

> At the end of the day we’re just a weighted neural net making seat of the pants confidence predictions too. We might be. Or we might be something else entire

by acchow 2y ago

> At the end of the day we’re just a weighted neural net making seat of the pants confidence predictions too. We might be. Or we might be something else entirely. Who knows?

willy_k 2y ago
Roger Penrose knows, imo
- adastra22 2y ago
  Penrose has no fucking clue. Sorry for the language, but direct speech is required here. It’s about as physically realistic as “intelligent design” is as an alternative to Darwinism. And similarly motivated. I would recommend Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” if you want a more serious take on the subject.
  - namaria 2y ago
    If mental faculties are emergent properties, what is illogical about propounding that a larger system than us or than Earth itself might have conceived of designs such as we have for our systems?
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Where did that system come from? What designed it?
      - willy_k 2y ago
        You have to answer that question for any model of the universe - what came before the Big Bang? Another universe? What before it? And intelligent design is essentially analogous to simulation theory, and answers more questions than it creates (the anthropic principle, for starters). My personal mental model is that the ‘intelligence’ guides quantum collapse and so the progression of the universe is somewhat deterministic but also not really because ‘important’ collapse decisions are guided towards some higher purpose. This model also doesn’t necessarily require an actual intelligence, I imagine that with the quasi omnitemporal aspect of qm, in this model something like love or consciousness could be an optima that the system moves towards, the ‘love’ optimum would be maximum interpersonal quantum entanglement and ‘consciousness’ being maximizing coherent networks. Not that I have any delusions about my theory being the case, it’s just a model I’ve built up over a while and find interesting to think about, but I doubt it bears any weight on reality.
        adastra22 2y ago
        Evolution doesn’t require an original designer. It is itself a means of lifting design from disorder. I think you are very confused about quantum mechanics and so-called collapse, as what you are parroting is a very old misconception. Observers don’t cause collapse, as collapse doesn’t happen. Observer doesn’t mean a conscious entity, but rather any interacting particle. And that interaction causes the multi-particle state to become entangled. That is all.
        willy_k 2y ago
        I know, I wasn’t going off of that. I meant that whatever mysterious, emergently random force that determines what path a given quantum system will take, would be either driven by certain consciousness (assuming quantum processes in consciousness) related maxima, or it would be the so called hand of god. For example, the fact that there’s an infinitesimal chance for particles to suddenly become something else under QM, one might call that a miracle.
        adastra22 2y ago
        There is no "mysterious, emergently random force that determines what path a given quantum system will take." This is complete BS. Sorry to pull an argument from authority, but I am a trained physicist. This is a persistent misunderstanding of entanglement and so-called "collapse" of the wave function, dating back to a popular science misunderstanding of an incomplete and since discredited interpretation of quantum mechanics by Niels Bohr over a century ago. There is no guiding hand, metaphorical or literal, choosing how a quantum system evolves. You can posit one, if it makes your metaphysics more agreeable, but it is a strictly added assumption, like any other attempt to insert god into physics.
        dlenski 2y ago
        > There is no guiding hand, metaphorical or literal, choosing how a quantum system evolves. Indeed, nicely put. To be even more specific about why not: Bell's theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem) shows that, with some reasonable assumptions about locality, quantum mechanics cannot be explained away by a set of hidden variables that guide an "underlying" deterministic/non-random system.
adastra22 2y ago
We can put electrodes in the brain and in neurons in Petri dishes, and see with our own eyes their activating behaviors. Our brains are weighted neural networks. This is certain.

by acchow 2y ago

> At the end of the day we’re just a weighted neural net making seat of the pants confidence predictions too. We might be. Or we might be something else entirely. Who knows?

willy_k 2y ago

Roger Penrose knows, imo

adastra22 2y ago
Penrose has no fucking clue. Sorry for the language, but direct speech is required here. It’s about as physically realistic as “intelligent design” is as an alternative to Darwinism. And similarly motivated. I would recommend Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” if you want a more serious take on the subject.
- namaria 2y ago
  If mental faculties are emergent properties, what is illogical about propounding that a larger system than us or than Earth itself might have conceived of designs such as we have for our systems?
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Where did that system come from? What designed it?
    - willy_k 2y ago
      You have to answer that question for any model of the universe - what came before the Big Bang? Another universe? What before it? And intelligent design is essentially analogous to simulation theory, and answers more questions than it creates (the anthropic principle, for starters). My personal mental model is that the ‘intelligence’ guides quantum collapse and so the progression of the universe is somewhat deterministic but also not really because ‘important’ collapse decisions are guided towards some higher purpose. This model also doesn’t necessarily require an actual intelligence, I imagine that with the quasi omnitemporal aspect of qm, in this model something like love or consciousness could be an optima that the system moves towards, the ‘love’ optimum would be maximum interpersonal quantum entanglement and ‘consciousness’ being maximizing coherent networks. Not that I have any delusions about my theory being the case, it’s just a model I’ve built up over a while and find interesting to think about, but I doubt it bears any weight on reality.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        Evolution doesn’t require an original designer. It is itself a means of lifting design from disorder. I think you are very confused about quantum mechanics and so-called collapse, as what you are parroting is a very old misconception. Observers don’t cause collapse, as collapse doesn’t happen. Observer doesn’t mean a conscious entity, but rather any interacting particle. And that interaction causes the multi-particle state to become entangled. That is all.
        willy_k 2y ago
        I know, I wasn’t going off of that. I meant that whatever mysterious, emergently random force that determines what path a given quantum system will take, would be either driven by certain consciousness (assuming quantum processes in consciousness) related maxima, or it would be the so called hand of god. For example, the fact that there’s an infinitesimal chance for particles to suddenly become something else under QM, one might call that a miracle.
        adastra22 2y ago
        There is no "mysterious, emergently random force that determines what path a given quantum system will take." This is complete BS. Sorry to pull an argument from authority, but I am a trained physicist. This is a persistent misunderstanding of entanglement and so-called "collapse" of the wave function, dating back to a popular science misunderstanding of an incomplete and since discredited interpretation of quantum mechanics by Niels Bohr over a century ago. There is no guiding hand, metaphorical or literal, choosing how a quantum system evolves. You can posit one, if it makes your metaphysics more agreeable, but it is a strictly added assumption, like any other attempt to insert god into physics.
        dlenski 2y ago
        > There is no guiding hand, metaphorical or literal, choosing how a quantum system evolves. Indeed, nicely put. To be even more specific about why not: Bell's theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem) shows that, with some reasonable assumptions about locality, quantum mechanics cannot be explained away by a set of hidden variables that guide an "underlying" deterministic/non-random system.

adastra22 2y ago

We can put electrodes in the brain and in neurons in Petri dishes, and see with our own eyes their activating behaviors. Our brains are weighted neural networks. This is certain.