15 ms·

New research on anesthesia and microtubules gives new clues about consciousness

150 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

isaacfrond 2y ago
original paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 Popular write-up: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62373322/quantum-theory-of-consciousness/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62373322/quantum-t...
rbanffy 2y ago
This only shows the mechanism that impairs the brain enough for it to become unconscious is related to the microtubules. Absolutely everything in the real world is quantum-related because that’s the very structure of reality.
- crispyambulance 2y ago
  > Absolutely everything in the real world is quantum-related because that’s the very structure of reality. Yes but AFAIK, reality is "quantum" in the sense that something like the scale of Avogadro's number (N=10^23) quantum processes interact and average out to typical classical behavior. It's only in limited situations where the actual quantum mechanical nature pops up in the macro world, right? (eg Bose-Einstein condensate, the ultraviolet catastrophe, energy bands of semiconductors, emission spectra, etc). The idea that Penrose posited is intrinsically HARD to measure. Moreover, consciousness itself is not well defined to begin with. If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    > Yes but AFAIK, reality is "quantum" in the sense that something like the scale of Avogadro's number (N=10^23) quantum processes interact and average out to typical classical behavior. It's only in limited situations where the actual quantum mechanical nature pops up in the macro world, right? (eg Bose-Einstein condensate, the ultraviolet catastrophe, energy bands of semiconductors, emission spectra, etc). This is not very clear at the moment. Of course, observations make it obvious that classical objects don't behave like quantum objects, and all quantum objects we know of are small, and all classical objects are big. We even know of one mechanism that prevents certain quantum effects from influencing large systems - decoherence. Decoherence explains why, when a quantum system that is all in the same phase interacts with a large system where everything is out of phase, the various parts of the quantum system also quickly go out of phase, and thus can't constructively or destructively interfere with each other any more. This explains for example why, if you repeat the double-slit experiment with ping pong balls instead of atoms, or if you repeat it in a dense gas at high temperature, you won't see the interference patterns form. However, we don't understand at a high level why it is that quantum experiments only have "a single result". Basically the schrodinger equation applied for the double slit experiment, even taking decoherence into account, still predicts that the particle-wave will move through both slits to some extent. And yet, with or without decoherence, we only ever see a single photon or tennis ball hit the screen, with some probability that can be deduced from the square of the amplitude of the Schrodinger function. And even worse, this single measurement outcome only happens if the quantum particle has hit a classical screen. If instead at the same distance we only have other quantum particles, then it can actually hit several of them, and change all of their positions and momenta. This despite the fact that, of course, even the classical wall itself is made of particles which should obey the same laws of quantum mechanics.
    - tasty_freeze 2y ago
      > all quantum objects we know of are small There are quantum effects that manifest at macroscopic scale. For instance, superconductivity and superfluidity occur on bulk volumes but are due to quantum effects.
      - seanw444 2y ago
        One might even say emergent behaviour.
  - danhau 2y ago
    > If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical. I know next to nothing about either, but I wanna try to disagree with that. LLMs fool people into believing they‘re conscious, because they‘ve been trained on extraordinary amounts of thoughts and data outputted by the world‘s top conscious creature. They appear conscious because consciousness is in the training data. To me, neural networks more closely mimic the brain in what I would (poorly) call „bodily functions“. I include language processing and speech in this definition. There are people that don‘t have an inner monologue - which is totally fascinating to me - who are perfectly conscious like everyone else. Simon Roper, who doesn‘t, has fascinating YouTube videos on these topics.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      > There are people that don‘t have an inner monologue - I think it's more likely they do and just don't 'hear' it or 'verbalize' it.
      - danhau 2y ago
        I guess that‘s more or less the definition. They don‘t hear a voice in their head when they think, but their thinking is completely „normal“ otherwise. I believe in a video, Simon mentions some examples where people with an inner monologue can experience a lack thereof. I think one is the moment _right_ after you wake up. You‘re able to think, but usually without a voice in your head. I could be misremembering that though.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      How are people that do not have inner monologue able to write? And if they are capable of writing how does whatever they output as writing differ from inner monologue?
      - danhau 2y ago
        They write just like everyone else, there‘s no apparent difference. The parts of their brain responsible for speech works just fine, but it doesn‘t vocalize their thoughts „back to them“.
  - dogprez 2y ago
    > If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical. Neural networks are also way less power efficient. Quantum computing allows us to calculate things that would take a lot of power or time to calculate (not calculate things that are impossible). If one could create consciousness with classical physics it wouldn't prove anything about how the human brain works. In fact if it was wildly less power efficient it might even suggest non-classical physics in the brain.
    - Nasrudith 2y ago
      Wouldn't the scaling of time be a more reliable tell of quantum computing? If humans can marginally solve problems with a slower increase over time than conventional algorithms that would hint at a quantum algorithm being in use. It certainly wouldn't be faster compared to clocked silicon, and there would probably be a lot of noise and overhead involved.
    - aeonik 2y ago
      Thermodynamic analysis would actually be a really useful way to attack this problem, but unfortunately (though fortunately for stability) the brain and our computers are no where near the Landauer limit of computation. I actually wonder if the Landauer limit applies to quantum computing.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > The idea that Penrose posited is intrinsically HARD to measure. Moreover, consciousness itself is not well defined to begin with. Indeed. Penrose's hypothesis is very much in the untestable realm. Until there is some way to test it, it deserves little consideration. If there is something like an ad hominem praise, taking this seriously might be a good example.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  The two great miracles of quantum entanglement are: (1) Solid matter. Solid matter is impossible in classical physics but possible in the real world because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics (2) The laser. Unlike 1/2-spin particles that can't be in the same quantum state, spin 1 particles want to dogpile in the same state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statisti... --- I could care less about EPR (real but not so profound) and speculations about quantum mechanics in consciousness. My first instinct is to think that quantum entanglement around black holes is the same kind of woo but I could be wrong about that.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    While the behaviors of fermions and of bosons are indeed responsible for what you consider miracles, I fail to see which is the special relationship between the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics and "quantum entanglement" that you have in mind.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Like so. Using the Schrodinger formulation it is invalid to talk about two particles having separate wavefunctions like ψ(x₁) and ψ(x₂) but rather you have a single wavefunction written ψ(x₁,x₂) and in the case of Fermions you have ψ(x₁,x₂) = -ψ(x₂,x₁) and for Bosons you have ψ(x₁,x₂) = ψ(x₂,x₁). People get confused about EPR because they think the world is ψ(x₁) and ψ(x₂) when it is really ψ(x₁,x₂).
      - adrian_b 2y ago
        Having a single wavefunction just corresponds to the normal rule for the probabilities of events that are not independent. I still do not see any connection with "quantum entanglement". Quantum entanglement is a very special case of the single wavefunction, not frequently encountered at large scales. In the general case that is valid for almost everything around us that single wavefunction differs only slightly from the product of many simpler wavefunctions that correspond to parts of the environment between which the interactions are non-existent or minimal.
n4r9 2y ago
This looks like it's related to the "Orchestrated objective reduction" theory of consciousness [0], which is a brainchild of physicist Roger Penrose and an anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff. After 30 years it continues to have very serious problems and is generally rejected by physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...
- ricksunny 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Ralfp 2y ago
    > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
    - ricksunny 2y ago
      * edited.
  - deleted 2y ago
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- PaulHoule 2y ago
  If it wasn't too old to be the case I'd think that article was just A.I. Slop or charitably something like technobabble from the Sternbach and Okuda era of Star Trek. "I can do math because I'm a thetan" shows that emotionally true stories can beat out factually true stories in science as well as politics.
- deleted 2y ago
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- halifaxbeard 2y ago
  I recently explained my personal beliefs around how you square free-will and determinism (and subsequently consciousness) to GPT-4 and it told me this was the more formal name for it. I posited that if you can observe and reconstruct the entire state of a complex system then you can predict future states- score one for determinism and no free will. But, we know there exists places that we cannot directly observe or perceive, aka quantum uncertainty, represented by σxσp ≥ ℏ/2 [1]. So based completely in theory, I figure the only way we square FW & determinism, is that free will exists somewhere/in a form we cannot directly observe, and it manifests as tiny influences that add up, in the complex system that is a brain. This is the way more speculative part and it's more fun than anything to think about- it doesn't change the way I live my life buuuut- Folded brains dramatically increase the influence a given region in space-time can have, simply due to the increased number of neurons. So our brains double as an antenna for some unseen influence that manifests through quantum uncertainty. So when I explained this to ChatGPT it told me that OORT was very similar to this, but even the mechanism they use for it seems to be a stretch for me. edit: But I do think that in order for neural networks to become anything other than outwardly really really good approximations of human minds, there needs to be a way to introduce a small amount of genuine randomness into their calculations, without utterly breaking them. I could see early attempts at doing this causing a form of LLM schizophrenia because the neural network wasn't resilient enough to the induced error. [1] the standard deviation of position σx and the standard deviation of momentum σp is greater than or equal to half the reduced planck's constant
bondarchuk 2y ago
Understanding unconsciousness is quite different from understanding consciousness...
- ryandvm 2y ago
  Not as long as you only define consciousness as the opposite of unconsciousness. /s
johndunne 2y ago
Can anyone recommend a good book on the subject of microtubules and consciousness?
- crispyambulance 2y ago
  It's a highly speculative subject, but one source is Roger Penrose's book from the early 90's: "The Emperor's New Mind". Not sure if that's where the hypothesis originated about quantum mechanics and microtubules... I think there's another work by Bohm and the guy who invented holograms that predates Penrose's thinking (but doesn't mention microtubules).
  - kordlessagain 2y ago
    Penrose speculated about the source, but was Stuart Hameroff that brought the idea it could be the tubules to Penrose's attention. Hameroff thought anesthesia nerfed the tubules properties, which then caused loss of consciousness. Then there's the recent articles on how the tubes might be able to entangle signals, which was from experimental research on meta materials. I realize all of this is speculative at this point, and nobody is trying to say YES this is how it works. It's simply exploring one possibility, in a positive way, that allows us to think further outside the box.
    - johndunne 2y ago
      It’s a very interesting hypothesis. And I guess research is difficult given the size of these structures and lack of tools available to monitor them with a high level of granularity.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Makes me think of this discussion which is going on right now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41694025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41694025
- jugg1es 2y ago
  This is all very new science. No one has written the kind of book you are talking about yet. There have been theories about the quantum nature of of consciousness for a while but the microtubule theory is pretty new.
projektfu 2y ago
"Since we don't know of another (i.e,. classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness." This is an incredible leap of reasoning. Flumazenil binds to GABA receptors and blocks diazepam. So since we don't know of another (i.e. mechatronic) way that binding to GABA would cause sedation, it must be the frobbles.
- jackyinger 2y ago
  Yeah, that quote stuck me as well. What an irresponsible way to jump to conclusions.
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  Like that Venus phosphine gas story, "the only synthesis route we know is biological, thus it's presence must mean life if there"
  - digging 2y ago
    > thus it's presence must mean life if there Nobody said that. It's on you for making the leap, whether out of hope or misguided combativeness, to the assertion that it must mean life, which I don't recall ever being stated by any of the researchers involved or any reputable articles.
- nickpsecurity 2y ago
  A quantum leap of reasoning.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    Discrete conclusions with no continuous path connecting them? Apt!
- authorfly 2y ago
  Yeah it's abduction/induction over deduction. Part of the reason why we misunderstand other processes in the brain and have since the Lobotomy times enshrined that approach.
bbor 2y ago
"Since we don't know of another (i.e,. classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness."… "When it becomes accepted that the mind is a quantum phenomenon, we will have entered a new era in our understanding of what we are," he says. Wow, that’s absurdly biased. Talk about jumping to conclusions! Here’s the actual paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 Take this summary, for example: Cytoskeletal microtubules (MTs) have been considered as a candidate target of anesthetic action for over 50 years (Allison and Nunn, 1968; S. Hameroff, 1998). Other membrane receptor and ion channel proteins were ruled out as possible unitary targets by exhaustive studies culminating in Eger et al. (2008). However, MTs (composed of tubulin subunits) were not ruled out and remain a candidate for a unitary site of anesthetic action. But if you actually click the paper: The essay continues with an examination of the potential contributions of specific ligand-gated channels, concluding that one or two such channels (e.g., glycine) might play a role, but that present evidence suggests that no one channel can explain more than a portion of anesthetic-induced immobility. Voltage-gated potassium channels seem unable to explain the production of immobility, but the voltage-gated sodium channels remain a plausible candidate. How inhaled anesthetics act to block this and other sites remains a mystery, but some new concepts are proposed. Sure, it could be microtubules, it’s not ruled out by that paper - they also don’t rule out witchcraft or god or little tiny ratmen that run the brain. I don’t understand how that absurdly misleading citation usage got through peer review; it makes it seem like MTs are one of the few remaining answers, which is very far from the truth. The other big paper in the intro is this one from Hammerhoff n co: We found that these gases alter collective terahertz dipole oscillations in a manner that is correlated with their anesthetic potency. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to see that “anesthetics impede one kind of electrical (atom? Quantum?) activity in the brain” is far from proving “that activity is essential for consciousness”. To adapt the old SMBC joke: a bullet would impede terahertz dipole oscillations in the brain, too! I would consider this study — and today’s, really - as confirming that we can’t say for sure that it’s not related to microtubules. Which, hey, that’s useful science! But the way they described it to this science journalist is just intellectually disrespectful, and incredibly misleading. IMO, as someone with a PhD in DoingMyOwnResearch ;) They casually drop this then move on never to mention it again, which I feel like is a fantastical example of scientific bias via burying the lede: Isoflurane directly activates sleep-promoting neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, and this contributes to causing unconsciousness. And this: It is conceivable that binding to MTs by volatile anesthetics could impair intracellular transport, which might disrupt synaptic transmission, which might reduce neural activity generally. Yeah… yeah that does sound conceivable. “Anesthetics inhibit neurons” seems a LOT more likely than “anesthetics inhibit the unimaginably tiny + completely unexplained quantum entanglements that control neurons”. They then, briefly, repeat my exact criticism from above. Somehow this didnt seem important enough for the journalist to quote, tho? Namely: Our results are potentially consistent with classical models of consciousness, but they represent a more stringent test of these MT-based models Where “test” means “doesn’t yet rule out”. Overall the Orch OR theory, in which MTs mediate anesthetic action, has more explanatory power, biological connection, and experimental validation than the classical theories. That is an absurd summary of the available evidence. Just absurd. Even if you restrict it just to the papers they cite here. And then, wow, it ends. I really really want to support these folks as a fellow brain/consciousness crank, but they make it hard. If you’re on the fence on whether they’re fairly framing the results of this (n=8!!) study or not, just read the last sentence: These recent technical developments support the hope that “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see” conclusive experimental tests of the quantum consciousness hypothesis.
lupusreal 2y ago
The whole microtubules hypothesis is based on flimsy reasoning. Correct me if I've gotten any of this terribly wrong: The premise of Gödel's incompleteness theorems applying to his own brain hurt Penrose's feelings, so he decided there must be a way around that. Quantum woo was such a way, a least he believes, so he decided that must be what's going on. Later, microtubules were determined to be the most plausible quantum woo found in brains so far. The reason microtubules being a keystone of consciousness is considered in the first place is because people are fishing for quantum stuff to protect their egos from the implications of brains being having classical computation equivalence.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Your first sentence is wrong…
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    You sure showed me.
rrock 2y ago
Surprising that anyone still thinks the Penrose model could work. Microtubules do not exhibit harmonic motion like violin strings. The reason is that all motion at the length scale of cells or smaller is heavily overdamped. The environment within a cell is nonintuitive. To find out more about this, read “Life at low Reynolds number” or “Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton” by Joe Howard.
- vixen99 2y ago
  For Penrose on microtubules see Shadows of the Mind - Quantum theory of the Mind.
fredgrott 2y ago
Warning.......conclusion wrong....microtubyles cannot do quantum anything as they do not hold a state long enough to do so due to the temp of human body....given that basic fact is questionable how such a clear conclusion mistake could be made in such a lab based research paper.. Now, no one has asked the question about the field effect outside the microtubule, hint its a brief magnetic field perpendicular to the microtubule....
teekert 2y ago
I’m a molecular biologist and this reads like pseudo science to me. Be incredibly sceptical whenever you read quantum and consciousness in one abstract. It’s all Deepak Chopra style mysticism.
- tucnak 2y ago
  Thank God we have scientists rallying against Wolfram, Penrose, et al. It would be great if next-up, you guys actually had the guts to challenge your _actual_ peers, who are turning tricks of mainstream scientific literature at the highest levels of academia. Bread and butter. Western blot party for everyone!
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Penrose is a scientist gone crackpot in the tradition of Josephson. His "I can do math because I am a thetan" shtick is based on a ridiculous misunderstanding of Godel since Godel's theorems don't apply to a piece of wetware which is by no means consistent or complete. (e.g. if he does math by being a thetan why can't he solve Collatz?) Wolfram is something else. A New Kind of Science isn't really wrong yet it's not really right. It's sad to see him spend decades looking for more systems like Rule 30 and finding systems that are similar but not so simple, not so pretty, and he never gets an insight out of it that really applies to anything else. He's like a crackpot in that he works tirelessly on a research program that's unconnected to anything else anyone else is working on, however. Maybe that comes out of being rich and not having to apply for grants. On the other hand, there are major fields of physics, such as string theory, which very well be based on a delusion, yet in that case it is a shared delusion. In the pandemic he went on a vainglorious and grandiose quest for a "theory of everything" yet he has the good judgement to base it on causal networks which I think is one of the best grounded approaches to quantum gravity (e.g. given two points in space-time aren't they spacelike or timelike or lightlike and in the last two cases isn't one of them in the future or past of the other?)
    - tucnak 2y ago
      I'm sure Wolfram is for real; it's just funny how supposed scientists would jump out of their trousers to criticise him, all the while happily ignoring fraud in their immediately field, their own faculties, etc. Talk spineless. Then the next big fraud is revealed, and they suddenly go back to the usual pikachu face routine. Surprise!
foundart 2y ago
> Wiest and his research team found that when they gave rats a drug that binds to microtubules, it took the rats significantly longer to fall unconscious under an anesthetic gas. This seems to be confounding wakefulness and consciousness. While we do use the term unconscious to refer to the state induced by general anesthesia, and conscious to its opposite, to me that is different from and much less interesting than the experience of consciousness.
binarno_sp 2y ago
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics", Richard Feynman. Quantum indeterminism is negative free will: if free will is based on random events then it's not free will.
- IWeldMelons 2y ago
  It is not "negative free will". Quantum Randomness allows us to move the force behind the outcomes into non-physical world; you can call it soul, if you inclined so.
- deleted 2y ago
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Aqueous 2y ago
What's odd about the current moment is that in the very same era in which it seems there is conclusive evidence (LLMs) that quantum explanations are not necessary to explain at the very least linguistic intelligence as advanced linguistic intelligence is possible in a purely classical computing domain, there is at the same time an insistence elsewhere that consciousness must be a quantum phenemonon. Frankly I am increasingly skeptical that this is the case. LLMs show that intelligence is at least mostly algorithmic, and the brain is far too warm and wet for quantum effects to dominate. Why should intelligence be purely classical but consciousness (another brain phenemenon) be quantum? It lacks parsimony.
- mrbgty 2y ago
  > it seems there is conclusive evidence (LLMs) that quantum explanations are not necessary to explain at the very least linguistic intelligence as advanced linguistic intelligence is possible in a purely classical computing domain Any reference explaining this? It isn't clear to me that LLMs have proven advanced linguistic intelligence
  - xg15 2y ago
    Have you used one?
  - Aqueous 2y ago
    In just 2-3 years we've gone from primitive LLMs to LLMs reaching Graduate PhD-level knowledge and intelligence in multiple domains. LLMs can complete almost any code I write with high accuracy given sufficient context. I can have a naturalistic dialog with an LLM that goes on for hours in multiple languages. Frankly (and humblingly, and frighteningly) they have already surpassed my own knowledge and intelligence in many, probably most, domains. Obviously they aren't perfect and make a lot of errors - but so do most humans.
    - IWeldMelons 2y ago
      You are delusional. Each and every LLM (by design) is uncapable of having arbitrary long conversation as it has finite context window, and hallucinate left and right. But that is all irrelevant, as Penroses point is not about that. In fact what Penrose saying is that LLMs are Searles Chinese rooms, as they lack qualia, and he offers quantum processes as basis for the qualia, however vagues it sounds. So the point is not intelligence, not consciosness; cats arguably has less intelligence than LLM, but they clearly have emotions and are conscious.
jfoster 2y ago
How about starting with a decent objective definition? So far, there doesn't seem to be any good definitions that include humans, don't include ChatGPT, and offer clear boundaries on which animals, insects, and bacteria experience "consciousness".
- deleted 2y ago
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- ruthmarx 2y ago
  Well, that's because consciousness is an overloaded general term, we just need to use more specifics words. For example: > there doesn't seem to be any good definitions that include humans, Self-awareness with a theory of mind. The opening paragraph on the wiki page for self-awareness is pretty much perfect. > don't include ChatGPT, LLMs are not aware in any sense, just intelligent in the same way a slime mold or plant can be. > and offer clear boundaries on which animals, insects, and bacteria experience "consciousness". Bacteria are likely just cellular automata, but animals (which includes insects btw) are all sentient due to having the ability to sense, due to having at a minimum body self-awareness.
  - bccdee 2y ago
    "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, which IMO are the most important part of consciousness discourse. What people mean when they say "consciousness" has more to do with a certain ineffable sense of here-ness and me-ness that I think is closely tied with qualia. If you limit your definition to "self-awareness with a theory of mind," I think you're going to mostly talk past people who are trying to engage with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      > "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, Sure it does. "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" has sentience, i.e. the ability to process external stimuli via senses, as a base prerequisite. > which IMO are the most important part of consciousness discourse. I've never understood why some people think so. I think it's the least interesting. It's basic biological machinery. The only difference between how you, a worm, and in the not too distant future a successor to the robot that implements the 300 neuron connectome of that same worm experience qualia, is that you have self-awareness. You have the ability to reflect on your experiences. That's what's special and interesting IMO. > a certain ineffable sense of here-ness and me-ness that I think is closely tied with qualia. I don't think it's tied to qualia at all. I think it's basically irrelevant aside from sentience being a necessary prerequisite. The here-ness and me-ness you refer to is a function of self-awareness, not qualia. "I think, therefore I am". > I think you're going to mostly talk past people who are trying to engage with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. One of the problems in discussing this stuff is agreeing on terms so everyone can be sure to understand everyone else's point, but personally I don't think the so called "hard problem" of consciousness is the hard problem at all.
adrian_b 2y ago
The actual research paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 The language of the research paper is much better than that of the parent article, but it still uses the word "quantum" spuriously, without defining what they mean by that. As others posters have also noticed, the only experimental result is a confirmation of the older hypothesis that the microtubules must have some role in the normal operation of a neuron and when that role is impaired consciousness is lost. The mechanism of how the microtubules work is determined by quantum physics as for anything else of molecular sizes and it is neither more quantum nor less quantum than how other cellular organelles work. The research paper appears to use "quantum" with a special meaning, which however is not explained clearly. The protein molecules that compose a microtubule have various vibrational states, like any other molecules. Normally, the vibrational state of a certain molecule is one of the possible vibrational states, chosen at random with a probability distribution that is a function of temperature. What the authors appear to believe is that the vibrational states of the microtubules are not random, but many microtubules, including from different neurons, might be in the same vibrational state. However any such theory needs to be described with a great amount of detail, in order to be falsifiable. A microtubule is composed from many molecules of proteins, of several different kinds of proteins. The different protein molecules have different kinds of vibrational states. They do not say if in their theory all the protein molecules of a microtubule must be in the same state and which will be the correspondence between the vibrational states of different protein molecules, which cannot be the same. Normally, any molecule remains in a given vibrational state only for an extremely short duration, because at normal temperatures it interacts with the neighboring molecules, exchanging energy with them and transitioning to a different vibrational state, chosen at random. The paper does not give any explanation about what would prevent a microtubule to transition to another vibrational state, or if the transitions are acknowledged to happen, what would make any other microtubule to transition in the same way. Even supposing that the vibrational states of distant microtubules would somehow be synchronized at a given time moment, the paper does not mention any mechanism by which such a synchronization could affect in any way the functions of the neurons. So all the references to "quantum" in the paper are just some kind of mumbo-jumbo that does not provide any information about what they mean by it. What remains is that the microtubules must indeed have a crucial role inside a neuron, which is not yet understood. The paper itself mentions the most plausible role of the microtubules. The microtubules, which are molecular motors capable of contraction, are normally used for the transport inside a cell of various cell components. They might be involved in the transport towards the synapses of the neurotransmitters.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Interesting result, but it seems doubtful that we’ll ever understand consciousness without some huge new theoretical framework. https://dynomight.net/consciousness/ https://dynomight.net/consciousness/
mannanj 2y ago
pan psychism tells you a lot about consciousness that our self obsessed grandiosity numbs ourselves to seeing.
fatliverfreddy 2y ago
Shocking
WhitneyLand 2y ago
I sometimes wonder what’s more likely, that a towering intellect like Penrose is really advocating such weak conjectures or that he’s messing with us.
- bondarchuk 2y ago
  Fear of mortality is a really strong motivator even for towering intellects.
arde 2y ago
For anyone interested in the phenomenon of consciousness who finds this microtubules idea suspiciously impenetrable like I do, I suggest to look into the Reticular Activation System in the human brain, which acts as its on-off switch and could well be its seat too.
dangitman 2y ago
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monkeycantype 2y ago
I like the perspective shift that consciousness is the only thing that we know, from direct experience is real, the existence of the physical world is something we only infer via conscious experience. what I like about this is that when trying to understand how consciousness arises from matter, we need to keep in mind we don’t really know what matter is, we only know some things about how it behaves, we have a mental model of matter, we only know that model. So ideas that seem woo woo nonsense, is a rock conscious?, does matter arise from consciousness not the other way around, are in-fact no less woo woo than the bold assumption that consciousness must arise from matter

150 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

original paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 Popular write-up: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62373322/quantum-theory-of-consciousness/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62373322/quantum-t...

rbanffy 2y ago

This only shows the mechanism that impairs the brain enough for it to become unconscious is related to the microtubules. Absolutely everything in the real world is quantum-related because that’s the very structure of reality.

crispyambulance 2y ago
> Absolutely everything in the real world is quantum-related because that’s the very structure of reality. Yes but AFAIK, reality is "quantum" in the sense that something like the scale of Avogadro's number (N=10^23) quantum processes interact and average out to typical classical behavior. It's only in limited situations where the actual quantum mechanical nature pops up in the macro world, right? (eg Bose-Einstein condensate, the ultraviolet catastrophe, energy bands of semiconductors, emission spectra, etc). The idea that Penrose posited is intrinsically HARD to measure. Moreover, consciousness itself is not well defined to begin with. If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  > Yes but AFAIK, reality is "quantum" in the sense that something like the scale of Avogadro's number (N=10^23) quantum processes interact and average out to typical classical behavior. It's only in limited situations where the actual quantum mechanical nature pops up in the macro world, right? (eg Bose-Einstein condensate, the ultraviolet catastrophe, energy bands of semiconductors, emission spectra, etc). This is not very clear at the moment. Of course, observations make it obvious that classical objects don't behave like quantum objects, and all quantum objects we know of are small, and all classical objects are big. We even know of one mechanism that prevents certain quantum effects from influencing large systems - decoherence. Decoherence explains why, when a quantum system that is all in the same phase interacts with a large system where everything is out of phase, the various parts of the quantum system also quickly go out of phase, and thus can't constructively or destructively interfere with each other any more. This explains for example why, if you repeat the double-slit experiment with ping pong balls instead of atoms, or if you repeat it in a dense gas at high temperature, you won't see the interference patterns form. However, we don't understand at a high level why it is that quantum experiments only have "a single result". Basically the schrodinger equation applied for the double slit experiment, even taking decoherence into account, still predicts that the particle-wave will move through both slits to some extent. And yet, with or without decoherence, we only ever see a single photon or tennis ball hit the screen, with some probability that can be deduced from the square of the amplitude of the Schrodinger function. And even worse, this single measurement outcome only happens if the quantum particle has hit a classical screen. If instead at the same distance we only have other quantum particles, then it can actually hit several of them, and change all of their positions and momenta. This despite the fact that, of course, even the classical wall itself is made of particles which should obey the same laws of quantum mechanics.
  - tasty_freeze 2y ago
    > all quantum objects we know of are small There are quantum effects that manifest at macroscopic scale. For instance, superconductivity and superfluidity occur on bulk volumes but are due to quantum effects.
    - seanw444 2y ago
      One might even say emergent behaviour.
- danhau 2y ago
  > If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical. I know next to nothing about either, but I wanna try to disagree with that. LLMs fool people into believing they‘re conscious, because they‘ve been trained on extraordinary amounts of thoughts and data outputted by the world‘s top conscious creature. They appear conscious because consciousness is in the training data. To me, neural networks more closely mimic the brain in what I would (poorly) call „bodily functions“. I include language processing and speech in this definition. There are people that don‘t have an inner monologue - which is totally fascinating to me - who are perfectly conscious like everyone else. Simon Roper, who doesn‘t, has fascinating YouTube videos on these topics.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    > There are people that don‘t have an inner monologue - I think it's more likely they do and just don't 'hear' it or 'verbalize' it.
    - danhau 2y ago
      I guess that‘s more or less the definition. They don‘t hear a voice in their head when they think, but their thinking is completely „normal“ otherwise. I believe in a video, Simon mentions some examples where people with an inner monologue can experience a lack thereof. I think one is the moment _right_ after you wake up. You‘re able to think, but usually without a voice in your head. I could be misremembering that though.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    How are people that do not have inner monologue able to write? And if they are capable of writing how does whatever they output as writing differ from inner monologue?
    - danhau 2y ago
      They write just like everyone else, there‘s no apparent difference. The parts of their brain responsible for speech works just fine, but it doesn‘t vocalize their thoughts „back to them“.
- dogprez 2y ago
  > If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical. Neural networks are also way less power efficient. Quantum computing allows us to calculate things that would take a lot of power or time to calculate (not calculate things that are impossible). If one could create consciousness with classical physics it wouldn't prove anything about how the human brain works. In fact if it was wildly less power efficient it might even suggest non-classical physics in the brain.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Wouldn't the scaling of time be a more reliable tell of quantum computing? If humans can marginally solve problems with a slower increase over time than conventional algorithms that would hint at a quantum algorithm being in use. It certainly wouldn't be faster compared to clocked silicon, and there would probably be a lot of noise and overhead involved.
  - aeonik 2y ago
    Thermodynamic analysis would actually be a really useful way to attack this problem, but unfortunately (though fortunately for stability) the brain and our computers are no where near the Landauer limit of computation. I actually wonder if the Landauer limit applies to quantum computing.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > The idea that Penrose posited is intrinsically HARD to measure. Moreover, consciousness itself is not well defined to begin with. Indeed. Penrose's hypothesis is very much in the untestable realm. Until there is some way to test it, it deserves little consideration. If there is something like an ad hominem praise, taking this seriously might be a good example.
PaulHoule 2y ago
The two great miracles of quantum entanglement are: (1) Solid matter. Solid matter is impossible in classical physics but possible in the real world because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics (2) The laser. Unlike 1/2-spin particles that can't be in the same quantum state, spin 1 particles want to dogpile in the same state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statisti... --- I could care less about EPR (real but not so profound) and speculations about quantum mechanics in consciousness. My first instinct is to think that quantum entanglement around black holes is the same kind of woo but I could be wrong about that.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  While the behaviors of fermions and of bosons are indeed responsible for what you consider miracles, I fail to see which is the special relationship between the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics and "quantum entanglement" that you have in mind.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Like so. Using the Schrodinger formulation it is invalid to talk about two particles having separate wavefunctions like ψ(x₁) and ψ(x₂) but rather you have a single wavefunction written ψ(x₁,x₂) and in the case of Fermions you have ψ(x₁,x₂) = -ψ(x₂,x₁) and for Bosons you have ψ(x₁,x₂) = ψ(x₂,x₁). People get confused about EPR because they think the world is ψ(x₁) and ψ(x₂) when it is really ψ(x₁,x₂).
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      Having a single wavefunction just corresponds to the normal rule for the probabilities of events that are not independent. I still do not see any connection with "quantum entanglement". Quantum entanglement is a very special case of the single wavefunction, not frequently encountered at large scales. In the general case that is valid for almost everything around us that single wavefunction differs only slightly from the product of many simpler wavefunctions that correspond to parts of the environment between which the interactions are non-existent or minimal.

n4r9 2y ago

This looks like it's related to the "Orchestrated objective reduction" theory of consciousness [0], which is a brainchild of physicist Roger Penrose and an anesthesiologist named Stuart Hameroff. After 30 years it continues to have very serious problems and is generally rejected by physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

ricksunny 2y ago
[flagged]
- Ralfp 2y ago
  > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
  - ricksunny 2y ago
    * edited.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
PaulHoule 2y ago
If it wasn't too old to be the case I'd think that article was just A.I. Slop or charitably something like technobabble from the Sternbach and Okuda era of Star Trek. "I can do math because I'm a thetan" shows that emotionally true stories can beat out factually true stories in science as well as politics.
deleted 2y ago
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halifaxbeard 2y ago
I recently explained my personal beliefs around how you square free-will and determinism (and subsequently consciousness) to GPT-4 and it told me this was the more formal name for it. I posited that if you can observe and reconstruct the entire state of a complex system then you can predict future states- score one for determinism and no free will. But, we know there exists places that we cannot directly observe or perceive, aka quantum uncertainty, represented by σxσp ≥ ℏ/2 [1]. So based completely in theory, I figure the only way we square FW & determinism, is that free will exists somewhere/in a form we cannot directly observe, and it manifests as tiny influences that add up, in the complex system that is a brain. This is the way more speculative part and it's more fun than anything to think about- it doesn't change the way I live my life buuuut- Folded brains dramatically increase the influence a given region in space-time can have, simply due to the increased number of neurons. So our brains double as an antenna for some unseen influence that manifests through quantum uncertainty. So when I explained this to ChatGPT it told me that OORT was very similar to this, but even the mechanism they use for it seems to be a stretch for me. edit: But I do think that in order for neural networks to become anything other than outwardly really really good approximations of human minds, there needs to be a way to introduce a small amount of genuine randomness into their calculations, without utterly breaking them. I could see early attempts at doing this causing a form of LLM schizophrenia because the neural network wasn't resilient enough to the induced error. [1] the standard deviation of position σx and the standard deviation of momentum σp is greater than or equal to half the reduced planck's constant

bondarchuk 2y ago

Understanding unconsciousness is quite different from understanding consciousness...

ryandvm 2y ago
Not as long as you only define consciousness as the opposite of unconsciousness. /s

johndunne 2y ago

Can anyone recommend a good book on the subject of microtubules and consciousness?

crispyambulance 2y ago
It's a highly speculative subject, but one source is Roger Penrose's book from the early 90's: "The Emperor's New Mind". Not sure if that's where the hypothesis originated about quantum mechanics and microtubules... I think there's another work by Bohm and the guy who invented holograms that predates Penrose's thinking (but doesn't mention microtubules).
- kordlessagain 2y ago
  Penrose speculated about the source, but was Stuart Hameroff that brought the idea it could be the tubules to Penrose's attention. Hameroff thought anesthesia nerfed the tubules properties, which then caused loss of consciousness. Then there's the recent articles on how the tubes might be able to entangle signals, which was from experimental research on meta materials. I realize all of this is speculative at this point, and nobody is trying to say YES this is how it works. It's simply exploring one possibility, in a positive way, that allows us to think further outside the box.
  - johndunne 2y ago
    It’s a very interesting hypothesis. And I guess research is difficult given the size of these structures and lack of tools available to monitor them with a high level of granularity.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Makes me think of this discussion which is going on right now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41694025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41694025
jugg1es 2y ago
This is all very new science. No one has written the kind of book you are talking about yet. There have been theories about the quantum nature of of consciousness for a while but the microtubule theory is pretty new.

projektfu 2y ago

"Since we don't know of another (i.e,. classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness." This is an incredible leap of reasoning. Flumazenil binds to GABA receptors and blocks diazepam. So since we don't know of another (i.e. mechatronic) way that binding to GABA would cause sedation, it must be the frobbles.

jackyinger 2y ago
Yeah, that quote stuck me as well. What an irresponsible way to jump to conclusions.
dist-epoch 2y ago
Like that Venus phosphine gas story, "the only synthesis route we know is biological, thus it's presence must mean life if there"
- digging 2y ago
  > thus it's presence must mean life if there Nobody said that. It's on you for making the leap, whether out of hope or misguided combativeness, to the assertion that it must mean life, which I don't recall ever being stated by any of the researchers involved or any reputable articles.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
A quantum leap of reasoning.
- itishappy 2y ago
  Discrete conclusions with no continuous path connecting them? Apt!
authorfly 2y ago
Yeah it's abduction/induction over deduction. Part of the reason why we misunderstand other processes in the brain and have since the Lobotomy times enshrined that approach.

bbor 2y ago

"Since we don't know of another (i.e,. classical) way that anesthetic binding to microtubules would generally reduce brain activity and cause unconsciousness," Wiest says, "this finding supports the quantum model of consciousness."… "When it becomes accepted that the mind is a quantum phenomenon, we will have entered a new era in our understanding of what we are," he says. Wow, that’s absurdly biased. Talk about jumping to conclusions! Here’s the actual paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 Take this summary, for example: Cytoskeletal microtubules (MTs) have been considered as a candidate target of anesthetic action for over 50 years (Allison and Nunn, 1968; S. Hameroff, 1998). Other membrane receptor and ion channel proteins were ruled out as possible unitary targets by exhaustive studies culminating in Eger et al. (2008). However, MTs (composed of tubulin subunits) were not ruled out and remain a candidate for a unitary site of anesthetic action. But if you actually click the paper: The essay continues with an examination of the potential contributions of specific ligand-gated channels, concluding that one or two such channels (e.g., glycine) might play a role, but that present evidence suggests that no one channel can explain more than a portion of anesthetic-induced immobility. Voltage-gated potassium channels seem unable to explain the production of immobility, but the voltage-gated sodium channels remain a plausible candidate. How inhaled anesthetics act to block this and other sites remains a mystery, but some new concepts are proposed. Sure, it could be microtubules, it’s not ruled out by that paper - they also don’t rule out witchcraft or god or little tiny ratmen that run the brain. I don’t understand how that absurdly misleading citation usage got through peer review; it makes it seem like MTs are one of the few remaining answers, which is very far from the truth. The other big paper in the intro is this one from Hammerhoff n co: We found that these gases alter collective terahertz dipole oscillations in a manner that is correlated with their anesthetic potency. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to see that “anesthetics impede one kind of electrical (atom? Quantum?) activity in the brain” is far from proving “that activity is essential for consciousness”. To adapt the old SMBC joke: a bullet would impede terahertz dipole oscillations in the brain, too! I would consider this study — and today’s, really - as confirming that we can’t say for sure that it’s not related to microtubules. Which, hey, that’s useful science! But the way they described it to this science journalist is just intellectually disrespectful, and incredibly misleading. IMO, as someone with a PhD in DoingMyOwnResearch ;) They casually drop this then move on never to mention it again, which I feel like is a fantastical example of scientific bias via burying the lede: Isoflurane directly activates sleep-promoting neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, and this contributes to causing unconsciousness. And this: It is conceivable that binding to MTs by volatile anesthetics could impair intracellular transport, which might disrupt synaptic transmission, which might reduce neural activity generally. Yeah… yeah that does sound conceivable. “Anesthetics inhibit neurons” seems a LOT more likely than “anesthetics inhibit the unimaginably tiny + completely unexplained quantum entanglements that control neurons”. They then, briefly, repeat my exact criticism from above. Somehow this didnt seem important enough for the journalist to quote, tho? Namely: Our results are potentially consistent with classical models of consciousness, but they represent a more stringent test of these MT-based models Where “test” means “doesn’t yet rule out”. Overall the Orch OR theory, in which MTs mediate anesthetic action, has more explanatory power, biological connection, and experimental validation than the classical theories. That is an absurd summary of the available evidence. Just absurd. Even if you restrict it just to the papers they cite here. And then, wow, it ends. I really really want to support these folks as a fellow brain/consciousness crank, but they make it hard. If you’re on the fence on whether they’re fairly framing the results of this (n=8!!) study or not, just read the last sentence: These recent technical developments support the hope that “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see” conclusive experimental tests of the quantum consciousness hypothesis.

lupusreal 2y ago

The whole microtubules hypothesis is based on flimsy reasoning. Correct me if I've gotten any of this terribly wrong: The premise of Gödel's incompleteness theorems applying to his own brain hurt Penrose's feelings, so he decided there must be a way around that. Quantum woo was such a way, a least he believes, so he decided that must be what's going on. Later, microtubules were determined to be the most plausible quantum woo found in brains so far. The reason microtubules being a keystone of consciousness is considered in the first place is because people are fishing for quantum stuff to protect their egos from the implications of brains being having classical computation equivalence.

mensetmanusman 2y ago
Your first sentence is wrong…
- lupusreal 2y ago
  You sure showed me.

rrock 2y ago

Surprising that anyone still thinks the Penrose model could work. Microtubules do not exhibit harmonic motion like violin strings. The reason is that all motion at the length scale of cells or smaller is heavily overdamped. The environment within a cell is nonintuitive. To find out more about this, read “Life at low Reynolds number” or “Mechanics of Motor Proteins and the Cytoskeleton” by Joe Howard.

vixen99 2y ago
For Penrose on microtubules see Shadows of the Mind - Quantum theory of the Mind.

fredgrott 2y ago

Warning.......conclusion wrong....microtubyles cannot do quantum anything as they do not hold a state long enough to do so due to the temp of human body....given that basic fact is questionable how such a clear conclusion mistake could be made in such a lab based research paper.. Now, no one has asked the question about the field effect outside the microtubule, hint its a brief magnetic field perpendicular to the microtubule....

teekert 2y ago

I’m a molecular biologist and this reads like pseudo science to me. Be incredibly sceptical whenever you read quantum and consciousness in one abstract. It’s all Deepak Chopra style mysticism.

tucnak 2y ago
Thank God we have scientists rallying against Wolfram, Penrose, et al. It would be great if next-up, you guys actually had the guts to challenge your _actual_ peers, who are turning tricks of mainstream scientific literature at the highest levels of academia. Bread and butter. Western blot party for everyone!
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Penrose is a scientist gone crackpot in the tradition of Josephson. His "I can do math because I am a thetan" shtick is based on a ridiculous misunderstanding of Godel since Godel's theorems don't apply to a piece of wetware which is by no means consistent or complete. (e.g. if he does math by being a thetan why can't he solve Collatz?) Wolfram is something else. A New Kind of Science isn't really wrong yet it's not really right. It's sad to see him spend decades looking for more systems like Rule 30 and finding systems that are similar but not so simple, not so pretty, and he never gets an insight out of it that really applies to anything else. He's like a crackpot in that he works tirelessly on a research program that's unconnected to anything else anyone else is working on, however. Maybe that comes out of being rich and not having to apply for grants. On the other hand, there are major fields of physics, such as string theory, which very well be based on a delusion, yet in that case it is a shared delusion. In the pandemic he went on a vainglorious and grandiose quest for a "theory of everything" yet he has the good judgement to base it on causal networks which I think is one of the best grounded approaches to quantum gravity (e.g. given two points in space-time aren't they spacelike or timelike or lightlike and in the last two cases isn't one of them in the future or past of the other?)
  - tucnak 2y ago
    I'm sure Wolfram is for real; it's just funny how supposed scientists would jump out of their trousers to criticise him, all the while happily ignoring fraud in their immediately field, their own faculties, etc. Talk spineless. Then the next big fraud is revealed, and they suddenly go back to the usual pikachu face routine. Surprise!

foundart 2y ago

> Wiest and his research team found that when they gave rats a drug that binds to microtubules, it took the rats significantly longer to fall unconscious under an anesthetic gas. This seems to be confounding wakefulness and consciousness. While we do use the term unconscious to refer to the state induced by general anesthesia, and conscious to its opposite, to me that is different from and much less interesting than the experience of consciousness.

binarno_sp 2y ago

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics", Richard Feynman. Quantum indeterminism is negative free will: if free will is based on random events then it's not free will.

IWeldMelons 2y ago
It is not "negative free will". Quantum Randomness allows us to move the force behind the outcomes into non-physical world; you can call it soul, if you inclined so.
deleted 2y ago
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Aqueous 2y ago

What's odd about the current moment is that in the very same era in which it seems there is conclusive evidence (LLMs) that quantum explanations are not necessary to explain at the very least linguistic intelligence as advanced linguistic intelligence is possible in a purely classical computing domain, there is at the same time an insistence elsewhere that consciousness must be a quantum phenemonon. Frankly I am increasingly skeptical that this is the case. LLMs show that intelligence is at least mostly algorithmic, and the brain is far too warm and wet for quantum effects to dominate. Why should intelligence be purely classical but consciousness (another brain phenemenon) be quantum? It lacks parsimony.

mrbgty 2y ago
> it seems there is conclusive evidence (LLMs) that quantum explanations are not necessary to explain at the very least linguistic intelligence as advanced linguistic intelligence is possible in a purely classical computing domain Any reference explaining this? It isn't clear to me that LLMs have proven advanced linguistic intelligence
- xg15 2y ago
  Have you used one?
- Aqueous 2y ago
  In just 2-3 years we've gone from primitive LLMs to LLMs reaching Graduate PhD-level knowledge and intelligence in multiple domains. LLMs can complete almost any code I write with high accuracy given sufficient context. I can have a naturalistic dialog with an LLM that goes on for hours in multiple languages. Frankly (and humblingly, and frighteningly) they have already surpassed my own knowledge and intelligence in many, probably most, domains. Obviously they aren't perfect and make a lot of errors - but so do most humans.
  - IWeldMelons 2y ago
    You are delusional. Each and every LLM (by design) is uncapable of having arbitrary long conversation as it has finite context window, and hallucinate left and right. But that is all irrelevant, as Penroses point is not about that. In fact what Penrose saying is that LLMs are Searles Chinese rooms, as they lack qualia, and he offers quantum processes as basis for the qualia, however vagues it sounds. So the point is not intelligence, not consciosness; cats arguably has less intelligence than LLM, but they clearly have emotions and are conscious.

jfoster 2y ago

How about starting with a decent objective definition? So far, there doesn't seem to be any good definitions that include humans, don't include ChatGPT, and offer clear boundaries on which animals, insects, and bacteria experience "consciousness".

deleted 2y ago
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ruthmarx 2y ago
Well, that's because consciousness is an overloaded general term, we just need to use more specifics words. For example: > there doesn't seem to be any good definitions that include humans, Self-awareness with a theory of mind. The opening paragraph on the wiki page for self-awareness is pretty much perfect. > don't include ChatGPT, LLMs are not aware in any sense, just intelligent in the same way a slime mold or plant can be. > and offer clear boundaries on which animals, insects, and bacteria experience "consciousness". Bacteria are likely just cellular automata, but animals (which includes insects btw) are all sentient due to having the ability to sense, due to having at a minimum body self-awareness.
- bccdee 2y ago
  "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, which IMO are the most important part of consciousness discourse. What people mean when they say "consciousness" has more to do with a certain ineffable sense of here-ness and me-ness that I think is closely tied with qualia. If you limit your definition to "self-awareness with a theory of mind," I think you're going to mostly talk past people who are trying to engage with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    > "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, Sure it does. "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" has sentience, i.e. the ability to process external stimuli via senses, as a base prerequisite. > which IMO are the most important part of consciousness discourse. I've never understood why some people think so. I think it's the least interesting. It's basic biological machinery. The only difference between how you, a worm, and in the not too distant future a successor to the robot that implements the 300 neuron connectome of that same worm experience qualia, is that you have self-awareness. You have the ability to reflect on your experiences. That's what's special and interesting IMO. > a certain ineffable sense of here-ness and me-ness that I think is closely tied with qualia. I don't think it's tied to qualia at all. I think it's basically irrelevant aside from sentience being a necessary prerequisite. The here-ness and me-ness you refer to is a function of self-awareness, not qualia. "I think, therefore I am". > I think you're going to mostly talk past people who are trying to engage with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. One of the problems in discussing this stuff is agreeing on terms so everyone can be sure to understand everyone else's point, but personally I don't think the so called "hard problem" of consciousness is the hard problem at all.

adrian_b 2y ago

The actual research paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 The language of the research paper is much better than that of the parent article, but it still uses the word "quantum" spuriously, without defining what they mean by that. As others posters have also noticed, the only experimental result is a confirmation of the older hypothesis that the microtubules must have some role in the normal operation of a neuron and when that role is impaired consciousness is lost. The mechanism of how the microtubules work is determined by quantum physics as for anything else of molecular sizes and it is neither more quantum nor less quantum than how other cellular organelles work. The research paper appears to use "quantum" with a special meaning, which however is not explained clearly. The protein molecules that compose a microtubule have various vibrational states, like any other molecules. Normally, the vibrational state of a certain molecule is one of the possible vibrational states, chosen at random with a probability distribution that is a function of temperature. What the authors appear to believe is that the vibrational states of the microtubules are not random, but many microtubules, including from different neurons, might be in the same vibrational state. However any such theory needs to be described with a great amount of detail, in order to be falsifiable. A microtubule is composed from many molecules of proteins, of several different kinds of proteins. The different protein molecules have different kinds of vibrational states. They do not say if in their theory all the protein molecules of a microtubule must be in the same state and which will be the correspondence between the vibrational states of different protein molecules, which cannot be the same. Normally, any molecule remains in a given vibrational state only for an extremely short duration, because at normal temperatures it interacts with the neighboring molecules, exchanging energy with them and transitioning to a different vibrational state, chosen at random. The paper does not give any explanation about what would prevent a microtubule to transition to another vibrational state, or if the transitions are acknowledged to happen, what would make any other microtubule to transition in the same way. Even supposing that the vibrational states of distant microtubules would somehow be synchronized at a given time moment, the paper does not mention any mechanism by which such a synchronization could affect in any way the functions of the neurons. So all the references to "quantum" in the paper are just some kind of mumbo-jumbo that does not provide any information about what they mean by it. What remains is that the microtubules must indeed have a crucial role inside a neuron, which is not yet understood. The paper itself mentions the most plausible role of the microtubules. The microtubules, which are molecular motors capable of contraction, are normally used for the transport inside a cell of various cell components. They might be involved in the transport towards the synapses of the neurotransmitters.

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Interesting result, but it seems doubtful that we’ll ever understand consciousness without some huge new theoretical framework. https://dynomight.net/consciousness/ https://dynomight.net/consciousness/

mannanj 2y ago

pan psychism tells you a lot about consciousness that our self obsessed grandiosity numbs ourselves to seeing.

fatliverfreddy 2y ago

Shocking

WhitneyLand 2y ago

I sometimes wonder what’s more likely, that a towering intellect like Penrose is really advocating such weak conjectures or that he’s messing with us.

bondarchuk 2y ago
Fear of mortality is a really strong motivator even for towering intellects.

arde 2y ago

For anyone interested in the phenomenon of consciousness who finds this microtubules idea suspiciously impenetrable like I do, I suggest to look into the Reticular Activation System in the human brain, which acts as its on-off switch and could well be its seat too.

dangitman 2y ago

[dead]

monkeycantype 2y ago

I like the perspective shift that consciousness is the only thing that we know, from direct experience is real, the existence of the physical world is something we only infer via conscious experience. what I like about this is that when trying to understand how consciousness arises from matter, we need to keep in mind we don’t really know what matter is, we only know some things about how it behaves, we have a mental model of matter, we only know that model. So ideas that seem woo woo nonsense, is a rock conscious?, does matter arise from consciousness not the other way around, are in-fact no less woo woo than the bold assumption that consciousness must arise from matter