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I am glad this paper has been written, but already by page 3 there are serious problems with it. For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by an

by jblow 13y ago

I am glad this paper has been written, but already by page 3 there are serious problems with it. For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory. Yet Max's list on page 3 has stuff like "independence", "utility", "integration" which have nothing to do with observations of what consciousness is actually like. Rather, they are more like high-level ideas of what human beings are like. But we don't need to explain human beings (complex biological organisms that walk around and do stuff). Science has got that covered already, at least kind of. So if you are going to clearly think about consciousness, you need to factor out what consciousness really is and look at the properties of that. This is supposed to be a foundational principle of science: that your hypotheses are attempts to explain things that are actually observed. The first step is to observe things carefully! You don't just go making up hypotheses. So it's a giant red flag any time a scientist writes a paper about consciousness where they conflate it with memory in some way (which is almost every time). It's a red flag because it indicates that the scientist has not actually spent any time observing consciousness, because they aren't noticing things that are obvious to people who have done that. (You might think that because we are all walking around conscious every day, there would be no need to observe consciousness, but this isn't true. We walk around in a space governed by Newtonian physics, but it took until Newton to figure out this thing called inertia and that a frictional force is required to make things stop, etc, because if you don't look carefully and make careful measurements, most of the everyday world doesn't appear that way at all. Same thing with consciousness.)

mullingitover 13y ago
> For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory. If you're meditating, how do you know that you're meditating without having, at minimum, a working short-term memory? If meditating actually disabled your memory, wouldn't you immediately forget that you were meditating and stop?
- webwanderings 13y ago
  The ultimate of meditation is to stay in here-now, be present in a present. So technically and logically speaking, you don't need a memory in such state.
  - iandanforth 13y ago
    So it's a tautology? Not useful.
  - mej10 13y ago
    Now the question is, do meditators just hallucinate a feeling that gets processed into a memory of having achieved such a state?
    - webwanderings 13y ago
      By hallucinate you mean, not knowing what/where you are or doing, in that particular moment? Then yes, one can use that word. The simplest analogy of here-now is when you are watching an exceptional movie (as per your taste) and you get lost in those moments of watching. The same phenomenon is apparent in observing other forms of arts (songs, paintings etc). So, are such states hallucination? Every person (human being) knows for sure that they are real.
    - yarou 13y ago
      Do humans "hallucinate" what is in front of them? It's fairly well understood that our visual cortex is the product of evolution. So we will see things as they are meant to be seen, by our visual cortex. This is completely different from what is really there.
  - kordless 13y ago
    You can state intent all day long, but even while meditating your brain is keeping state. Reference breathing, heartbeat, intent, etc. I believe meditation is pulling focus into the present moment, but I also believe that moment is far from discrete.
crystaln 13y ago
> So it's a giant red flag any time a scientist writes a paper about consciousness where they conflate it with memory in some way (which is almost every time). It's a red flag because it indicates that the scientist has not actually spent any time observing consciousness, because they aren't noticing things that are obvious to people who have done that. Give me a break. Would you mind sharing what makes you more qualified than the author to "observe consciousness" and come to conclusions regarding the requirement of memory? I'd say it's a "red flag" when a game designer on hacker news throws out unsubstantiated attacks on an extensive well-written rational analysis about the physical manifestation of consciousness by a prominent MIT physics professor and cosmologist. Additionally, I think you are quite clearly wrong. Consciousness does require memory. It is not possible to observe, experience, or process without memory, all of which are required for the integration of consciousness. Even to perceive requires memory, since it requires the integration, filtering, and processing of large amounts data into consistent perception and a conscious interpretation thereof - none of which is instantaneous and all of which takes time, requiring memory.
- X4 13y ago
  >> Give me a break. […]what makes you more qualified than the author[…] I had the exact same thought. It's understandable that people want to disagree, because it's not in their logical realm, or they find it's out of their scope of normal and accepted, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong at all. When someone comes over that negative, to an author who has put so much effort into the paper. One would find it fair to have an equally professional, detailed and long answer. Imagine a time where everybody has the power to publicly "try to refute" your paper with a tweet, absolute horror.
eric_cc 13y ago
I am glad this comment has been written, but already by paragraph 2 there are serious problems with it. > consciousness is independent of something like memory. I'm not going to say you are completely wrong here but where is your proof?
scott_s 13y ago
Whether you are conscious of your memory is independent of whether you are using memory.
joe_the_user 13y ago
I am glad this paper has been written... What is there to celebrate about half-baked philosophy dressed as science and published? Philosophers and theologians have spent the last two thousand years not agreeing what consciousness is and there is no clear consensus now. That's not really surprising - all the seemingly "basic" qualities people perceive - say lightness, darkness, wetness or coldness, are very "high level" compared to what we know about the real states of matter The argument that consciousness is a state of matter because consciousness is something we intuitively perceive is something of a throw-back to the "four elements of matter" thinking - the prescientific system where matter is organized by its perceived properties in contrast to any serious investigation of the causes of those perceived properties.
mattheww 13y ago
These off-base criticisms reflect the fact that commenter did not read the whole paper and likely did not even read the introduction, which ends on page 3, where he found "serious" problems. For example, the paper nowhere conflates consciousness and memory. Instead, the paper repeats the suggestion that a requirement of consciousness may be the ability to process a substantial amount of information. This idea is related to the idea of memory, but it's not really the same. The paper is not about describing the biological experience of consciousness at all. This paper asks the question: "Is there some way to understand from the Hamiltonian and density matrix of our universe that it should contain consciousness?" Tegmark then proposes some criteria that are probably necessary for consciousness to arise and then presents some metrics for the various criteria and calculates those metrics for various conditions. The paper is really describing a framework for how consciousness can be considered in the context of a physical representation. The calculations should be relatively straight-forward to follow for anyone with a decent memory of their linear algebra class. To put it another way: If you had a Hamiltonian and density matrix that described a universe that you thought contained consciousness, what kind of things would you calculate for that Hamiltonian and density matrix to try and find out if it did or didn't? This paper suggests some ways to think about this question. So I don't understand why this comment spends so long talking about "observing consciousness."

by jblow 13y ago

mullingitover 13y ago

> For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory. If you're meditating, how do you know that you're meditating without having, at minimum, a working short-term memory? If meditating actually disabled your memory, wouldn't you immediately forget that you were meditating and stop?

webwanderings 13y ago
The ultimate of meditation is to stay in here-now, be present in a present. So technically and logically speaking, you don't need a memory in such state.
- iandanforth 13y ago
  So it's a tautology? Not useful.
- mej10 13y ago
  Now the question is, do meditators just hallucinate a feeling that gets processed into a memory of having achieved such a state?
  - webwanderings 13y ago
    By hallucinate you mean, not knowing what/where you are or doing, in that particular moment? Then yes, one can use that word. The simplest analogy of here-now is when you are watching an exceptional movie (as per your taste) and you get lost in those moments of watching. The same phenomenon is apparent in observing other forms of arts (songs, paintings etc). So, are such states hallucination? Every person (human being) knows for sure that they are real.
  - yarou 13y ago
    Do humans "hallucinate" what is in front of them? It's fairly well understood that our visual cortex is the product of evolution. So we will see things as they are meant to be seen, by our visual cortex. This is completely different from what is really there.
- kordless 13y ago
  You can state intent all day long, but even while meditating your brain is keeping state. Reference breathing, heartbeat, intent, etc. I believe meditation is pulling focus into the present moment, but I also believe that moment is far from discrete.

crystaln 13y ago

> So it's a giant red flag any time a scientist writes a paper about consciousness where they conflate it with memory in some way (which is almost every time). It's a red flag because it indicates that the scientist has not actually spent any time observing consciousness, because they aren't noticing things that are obvious to people who have done that. Give me a break. Would you mind sharing what makes you more qualified than the author to "observe consciousness" and come to conclusions regarding the requirement of memory? I'd say it's a "red flag" when a game designer on hacker news throws out unsubstantiated attacks on an extensive well-written rational analysis about the physical manifestation of consciousness by a prominent MIT physics professor and cosmologist. Additionally, I think you are quite clearly wrong. Consciousness does require memory. It is not possible to observe, experience, or process without memory, all of which are required for the integration of consciousness. Even to perceive requires memory, since it requires the integration, filtering, and processing of large amounts data into consistent perception and a conscious interpretation thereof - none of which is instantaneous and all of which takes time, requiring memory.

X4 13y ago
>> Give me a break. […]what makes you more qualified than the author[…] I had the exact same thought. It's understandable that people want to disagree, because it's not in their logical realm, or they find it's out of their scope of normal and accepted, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong at all. When someone comes over that negative, to an author who has put so much effort into the paper. One would find it fair to have an equally professional, detailed and long answer. Imagine a time where everybody has the power to publicly "try to refute" your paper with a tweet, absolute horror.

eric_cc 13y ago

I am glad this comment has been written, but already by paragraph 2 there are serious problems with it. > consciousness is independent of something like memory. I'm not going to say you are completely wrong here but where is your proof?

scott_s 13y ago

Whether you are conscious of your memory is independent of whether you are using memory.

joe_the_user 13y ago

I am glad this paper has been written... What is there to celebrate about half-baked philosophy dressed as science and published? Philosophers and theologians have spent the last two thousand years not agreeing what consciousness is and there is no clear consensus now. That's not really surprising - all the seemingly "basic" qualities people perceive - say lightness, darkness, wetness or coldness, are very "high level" compared to what we know about the real states of matter The argument that consciousness is a state of matter because consciousness is something we intuitively perceive is something of a throw-back to the "four elements of matter" thinking - the prescientific system where matter is organized by its perceived properties in contrast to any serious investigation of the causes of those perceived properties.

mattheww 13y ago

These off-base criticisms reflect the fact that commenter did not read the whole paper and likely did not even read the introduction, which ends on page 3, where he found "serious" problems. For example, the paper nowhere conflates consciousness and memory. Instead, the paper repeats the suggestion that a requirement of consciousness may be the ability to process a substantial amount of information. This idea is related to the idea of memory, but it's not really the same. The paper is not about describing the biological experience of consciousness at all. This paper asks the question: "Is there some way to understand from the Hamiltonian and density matrix of our universe that it should contain consciousness?" Tegmark then proposes some criteria that are probably necessary for consciousness to arise and then presents some metrics for the various criteria and calculates those metrics for various conditions. The paper is really describing a framework for how consciousness can be considered in the context of a physical representation. The calculations should be relatively straight-forward to follow for anyone with a decent memory of their linear algebra class. To put it another way: If you had a Hamiltonian and density matrix that described a universe that you thought contained consciousness, what kind of things would you calculate for that Hamiltonian and density matrix to try and find out if it did or didn't? This paper suggests some ways to think about this question. So I don't understand why this comment spends so long talking about "observing consciousness."