I have no evidence or proof, but personally, I believe that the whole consciousness thing is an illusion. There's certain level of abstraction required for a bran as advanced as human's, but in the end, it's just matter following the laws of physics, same as everything else.
String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
11–20 of 82 posts
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#12And he would know...
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#13I have no evidence or proof, but personally, I believe that the whole consciousness thing is an illusion. There's certain level of abstraction required for a bran as advanced as human's, but in the end, it's just matter following the laws of physics, same as everything else.
>> following the laws of physics
The question is, which laws of physics, and are the interaction between those laws of physics, interactions we already know, or new ones we have not discovered yet?
Otherwise we might as well say consciousness follows the will of God.
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#14If the simulation theory is true, our memory, and all brain activity is done in the simulation (aka real world), but consciousness no. With no consciousness we could have a identical behavior, we would be intelligent zombies. Its cool to think that the world is rendered only when conscious beings see the world ("is the moon there when nobody looks?"). Or... are YOU the only one with consciousness? :)
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#15Rather than physics, I think computational neurology and machine learning / deep learning / AI have a much better chance at elucidating what consciousness is.
I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not. Machine learning has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. From where people get that connection?
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#16I have no evidence or proof, but personally, I believe that the whole consciousness thing is an illusion. There's certain level of abstraction required for a bran as advanced as human's, but in the end, it's just matter following the laws of physics, same as everything else.
>> following the laws of physics The question is, which laws of physics, and are the interaction between those laws of physics, interactions we already know, or new ones we have not discovered yet? Otherwise we might as well say consciousness follows the will of God.
In terms of brain, it seems that the classical physics and electromechanics is quite enough — we don't really need to invoke quantum physics to explain the basic neurons (except as by proxy with all chemical reactions), and current progress with neural networks shows that these structures can indeed result in extremely complicated behaviour.
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#17Rather than physics, I think computational neurology and machine learning / deep learning / AI have a much better chance at elucidating what consciousness is.
I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not. Machine learning has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. From where people get that connection?
> I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not.
Me too. Sometimes one informs or inspires the other, but so far it seems that is about it.
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#18I have no evidence or proof, but personally, I believe that the whole consciousness thing is an illusion. There's certain level of abstraction required for a bran as advanced as human's, but in the end, it's just matter following the laws of physics, same as everything else.
I agree with you. It certainly is following laws of physics (known and unknown) because everything is. It is a useful abstraction for a complicated system. However, it doesn't make it any less interesting for me.
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> following the laws of physics The question is, which laws of physics, and are the interaction between those laws of physics, interactions we already know, or new ones we have not discovered yet? Otherwise we might as well say consciousness follows the will of God.
In terms of brain, it seems that the classical physics and electromechanics is quite enough — we don't really need to invoke quantum physics to explain the basic neurons (except as by proxy with all chemical reactions), and current progress with neural networks shows that these structures can indeed result in extremely complicated behaviour.
Consciousness must exploit growing entropy somehow - otherwise we'd be completely deterministic and consciousness (as an orthogonal consequence of free will) could not exist.
Re: String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
#20Rather than physics, I think computational neurology and machine learning / deep learning / AI have a much better chance at elucidating what consciousness is.
I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not. Machine learning has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness. From where people get that connection?
Does human learning have anything to do with consciousness?