Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see that as an accurate description of how Penrose is thinking about the problem (disclaimer: I've only read this interview, and not any of his books). I think he's saying that 1. Everything about QM other than its extremely accurate predictions is wrong 2. We don't have a theory that explains consciousness And since he is looking for a unified theory, he wants his theory to encompass all of general relativit…
I've skimmed one or two of his books. There's no doubt that he knows his physics better than most physicists. However I'm not sure what you're saying he's saying differs from what I'm saying he's saying. In both cases, the basic argument is that since we don't understand physics and we don't understand quantum mechanics then they might be related. Now, that's not a conclusive proof that they're related but it might b…
Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
81–90 of 112 posts
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why some researchers are so quick to blame our failure to understand consciousness on the fact that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. I was under the impression that we're still nowhere near fully understanding the brain even from a classical perspective.
Okay, so, let me try to enumerate these. (1) The hardest part of quantum mechanics to understand is intimately tied to our nature as subjects. Quantum mechanics is an entirely deterministic theory about waves in superpositions which even explains how, why, and when it disappears and averages out into classical probabilities. Except it doesn't tell you why we don't see your television as 50% in your bedroom and 50% in…
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've skimmed one or two of his books. There's no doubt that he knows his physics better than most physicists. However I'm not sure what you're saying he's saying differs from what I'm saying he's saying. In both cases, the basic argument is that since we don't understand physics and we don't understand quantum mechanics then they might be related. Now, that's not a conclusive proof that they're related but it might b…
I think we are saying similar things, but I'm getting the sense that you don't think there is a single unified theory to be found (not simply that humans are incapable of understanding it). Do you have a particular reason for thinking this? I (and Penrose, I believe) like to think that there is a unified theory out there waiting to be found, because the alternative is that reality arbitrarily behaves in different way…
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why some researchers are so quick to blame our failure to understand consciousness on the fact that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. I was under the impression that we're still nowhere near fully understanding the brain even from a classical perspective.
Okay, so, let me try to enumerate these. (1) The hardest part of quantum mechanics to understand is intimately tied to our nature as subjects. Quantum mechanics is an entirely deterministic theory about waves in superpositions which even explains how, why, and when it disappears and averages out into classical probabilities. Except it doesn't tell you why we don't see your television as 50% in your bedroom and 50% in…
(1) It's deterministic w.r.t. the wave functions, but you can't really measure wave functions, you can only measure classical things like momentum or energy. (A measurement is actually an interaction, of course.) If you manage to give your TV a wave function 50% in the bedroom and 50% in the living room, then you decide to watch TV, you've just given yourself a wave function that is 50% in the bedroom and 50% in the living room, and 100% correlated with the TV's wave function. A wave function can't be measured because if you try to measure it, all you're really doing is correlating yourself with the wave function. So the real problem is that it's hard to reconcile our description of quantum mechanics with our experience of it. We describe QM as if we're outside Schroedinger's box, but we experience it from the inside. "Many worlds" describes it from the inside, but people don't like the many worlds interpretation exactly because it doesn't privilege one of the worlds as "real".
(2 & 3) Theories of free will were kind of worn out during the 17th century. Associating free will with quantum mechanics is kind of like shoving the Christian god into the cracks in evolutionary theory. There's little actual evidence that the brain takes advantage of QM decoherence on any scale worth appreciating. QM consciousness theories seem to have forgotten all of the progress during the age of enlightenment (David Hume, for example) wrt the definition of free will itself, and the phrasing of questions about free will in such a way that the discussion can be productive. The discussion about "qualia" in philosophical circles is equally unproductive. They call it "qualia" because they don't want to be called dualists, which is understandable.
(4) I'm not sure how this has anything to do with QM. The fact that our brain can do to things at once (which it demonstrably can) doesn't have anything to do with quantum mechanics. A car can do things that engines or wheels never can, but you'd never call it quantum.
(5) QM provides an "out" for objects which are cloned in the classical sense. In QM, there is no such thing as identity; two electrons (for example) are interchangeable. This means that if you prepare a classical clone of yourself but the two clones get mixed up, from a QM perspective the question of identity is meaningless. So if you say X is the clone and Y is the original and Y is dead, the labels "clone" and "original" are actually arbitrary and you could relabel X as the original and Y as the clone, so the clone is dead and the original is alive.
It's like you have a bucket of electrons, and you paint one of them orange so you can remember it later. Can't do that in QM. Even if you put one electron in a magnetic trap, there's no saying it doesn't swap places with one of the electrons still in your bucket. You can't paint one copy of yourself as "clone" and one as "original". Of course, two copies of a person (neither privileged over the other as "original") don't stay interchangeable for long.
Summary: Many philosophers and physicists alike have a warm and fuzzy conception of consciousness, but they're just being noisy and some folks are actually making progress. Warm and fuzzy is old news, and quantum is just the latest flavor of warm and fuzzy.
Daniel Dennett is an example of someone worth listening to about cognition, though I'm not saying he's right.
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why some researchers are so quick to blame our failure to understand consciousness on the fact that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. I was under the impression that we're still nowhere near fully understanding the brain even from a classical perspective.
Okay, so, let me try to enumerate these. (1) The hardest part of quantum mechanics to understand is intimately tied to our nature as subjects. Quantum mechanics is an entirely deterministic theory about waves in superpositions which even explains how, why, and when it disappears and averages out into classical probabilities. Except it doesn't tell you why we don't see your television as 50% in your bedroom and 50% in…
1) Quantum mechanics operates on the quantum level. Macro objects, while composed of countless quantum systems, and thus are the result of the quantum systems of probabilistic particles and waves collapsing and such, are just that: the result of the quantum systems. This isn't subjective experience; it's an underlying behavior baring forth a different level of behavior. Just as it's possible, but doesn't make sense to describe Tetris in terms of electrons flowing through copper and semiconductors, one can describe the quantum behavior of what the TV is constructed of, but that wouldn't relate a bit to the meaningful object you watch shows on.
2) Probability on the quantum scale has nothing to do with the brain making choices; even if understanding quantum mechanics turns out to be essential to understanding consciousness, the brain can't change the laws of physics; it can't decide that certain waveforms will collapse in a way that appeals to it. By the same token, if you're a rational thinker, you'd understand that yes, if one develops an accurate enough model of the universe, the base stuff it's made of, you can predict the future. That's literally what science is; developing models which will predict how certain systems behave in a given condition. However going back to bullet 1, the concept of "free will" has nothing to do meaningfully with the base stuff of the universe. It's technically possible to be described in such terms, but that's not where decisions happen.
3) Again, going back to rationality; humans are part of the same deterministic system, operating under the same deterministic rules as everything else that exists. Sure subjectivity feels different than what we imagine a computer's (non)experience to be, but that's just a result of the conscious process (and the fact that most people don't empathize with machines).
4) I honestly don't even understand what you're trying to say here :\
5) This has nothing to do with anything at all but... you aren't the atoms that comprise you. You aren't even the -cells- that comprise you. "Seven years from now your body will be made of entirely different cells than it is now" and all that.
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Age of the father does have an effect, actually. http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20030... edit: Also, as someone who's had to use sperm donation to conceive... > Wonder if that's his kid? is pretty offensive. It's his kid, whether he's the genetic father or not.
Thought this was important enough to reply again. Wikipedia: > In 1933, Lionel Penrose analyzed data for 727 children in 150 families and found no paternal age effect for the risk of Down syndrome after controlling for the maternal age effect. Largely based on a 2003 paper by Fisch et al. that found a paternal age effect only "in association with a maternal age of 35 years and older", a 2009 review of the literature…
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#87Due to the inconsistency between quantum and relativity, I'm more inclined to believe that the problem is with relativity. The idea that physics is fundamentally non-deterministic satisfies me philosophically. If physics were deterministic, than I should be able to theoretically build a computer, input the state of the universe, and then be able to know what will happen in your life (assuming I don't tell anyone the…
However, I also don't think a deterministic universe would be sufficient to allow you to predict it, because getting the state of the universe is still impossible following the uncertainty principle.
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#88Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telescopes show that Venus displays phases like the moon while Mars and Jupiter don't, which is important evidence for heliocentrism and the order of the planets relative to Earth. Telescopes also show that Jupiter's satellites experience eclipses, which isn't direct heliocentric evidence, but does tell you that Jupiter and its moons shine by reflected sunlight rather than intrinsic luminosity. Telescopes also show s…
Telescopes also show that Mars does loops as it pans across our sky
Re: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics
#90Of course it's wrong; all scientific theories are provisional approximations, and the conflicts between quantum mechanics and general relativity are well known. The hard part is proposing an alternative theory that fits all the known evidence. Quantum mechanics and general relativity both match a ton of observations; anything that is going to replace them will need to at least match the same set of evidence at least…
various random links: http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html http://perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/cfuchs/Oviedo.pdf http://carnap.umd.edu/philphysics/bub_courses.html