A neuroscientist's radical theory of how networks become conscious

ChaoticOrder
All I'm saying is that there is a degree of true randomness in the universe, where as mbkennel is trying to argue that at the heart of reality everything is completely predictable and deterministic, which is clearly wrong.

Go into the Heisenberg picture. Start integrating equations of motion for a coupled system. Where's the randomness? Tell me what moment the axiomatic randomness comes in and what the physics of that is.

reply to post by mbkennel

For any practical purpose the inability to exactly prepare a state down to every phase of every atom and every electromagnetic fluctuation is just as good as any other source of randomness

I don't understand what you mean. Why would you need to prepare such things when dealing with a deterministic computer running a deterministic equation? The chances of the computer randomly malfunctioning and generating consciousness is unimaginably small, and if it did happen it would be due to the inherent randomness in nature.

mbkennel

ChaoticOrder
All I'm saying is that there is a degree of true randomness in the universe, where as mbkennel is trying to argue that at the heart of reality everything is completely predictable and deterministic, which is clearly wrong.

Go into the Heisenberg picture. Start integrating equations of motion for a coupled system. Where's the randomness? Tell me what moment the axiomatic randomness comes in and what the physics of that is.

The evolution of the wave function is deterministic, it's the collapse of the wave function when a measurement is made which is the random part. Taking into consideration Bell's Theorem, we know that any form of a hidden variable theory cannot be true and so the only way that determinism can exist is in the form of superdeterminism, and if you want to push the philosophy of superdeterminism as being real then you need to believe that you have no free will and the words you have written in this thread were determined at the moment of the big bang or even before that.

John Bell discussed superdeterminism in a BBC interview:

There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance. But it involves absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be.

Superdeterminism has also been criticized because of perceived implications regarding the validity of science itself. For example, Anton Zeilinger has commented:

We always implicitly assume the freedom of the experimentalist... This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could determine what our questions are, and that could guide our questions such that we arrive at a false picture of nature.

Further information concerning Bell’s Theorem in relation to quantum randomness:

How is it that Bell’s Theorem proves that there are no “hidden variables” in quantum mechanics? How do we know that God really does play dice with the universe?

Random Numbers Certified by Bell's Theorem

ChaoticOrder

mbkennel

ChaoticOrder
All I'm saying is that there is a degree of true randomness in the universe, where as mbkennel is trying to argue that at the heart of reality everything is completely predictable and deterministic, which is clearly wrong.

Go into the Heisenberg picture. Start integrating equations of motion for a coupled system. Where's the randomness? Tell me what moment the axiomatic randomness comes in and what the physics of that is.

The evolution of the wave function is deterministic, it's the collapse of the wave function when a measurement is made which is the random part.

That's just my point---that the interaction and entanglement of QM particles during 'observation' is still laws of quantum mechanics on particles.

Explain, in the real world, how wavefunctions 'collapse' without interaction with measuring equipment which itself is made out of particles obeying that same Heisenberg equation. So, when do they get to collapse? (that's actually the point Schroedinger was trying to make with his cat idea----Schroedinger thought the idea pointed out a clear lack of complete understanding) And how can the interaction with 10^23 particles which can't be prepared in any known state NOT result in chaos making apparent randomness? (it can't, you can't turn off equations of motion, EVER)

Entanglement & decoherence is where it's at and we know more than in 1928, and sophomore quantum mechanics texts aren't the final word. They're very useful for giving procedures to answer problem sets.

The fact that interaction with thermodynamically large systems (known as an 'observation') results in apparent randomness is a very useful thermodynamic approximation valid in virtually relevant experimental situations. Imagining otherwise is like the statistical mechanical thought experiment that says that 'in principle' one might find all the air molecules on the left hand side of the room by accident. The fact that it has never been observed to happen like that in the history of the universe (and won't ever) doesn't mean there is some axiomatic principle prohibiting it. Or, more to the point, measuring pressure fluctuations on a macroscopic sensor in thermodynamical equilibrium, and thinking there must be something axiomatically "random" about that (gee it looks zero-autocorrelation and Gaussian always)---when it isn't, because buttloats of deterministic particles working together do exactly the same thing with infinitesimally infrequent exceptions.

ChaoticOrder
There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance.

The other way is to accept it as an experimentally justified fact, which I do. How many more experiments do we need to get the message?

It comes from the equations of motion in QM not being representable as classical deterministic differential (and not integral) equations on fields in ordinary space, in contrast to e.g. classical acoustics or E&M.

That quantum dynamics happen in a bizarre functional space is mindblowing and apparently true, and the source of all the mystery.

Einstein's axioms of relativistic covariance put on requirements on the transformation structure of the underlying dynamical equations---it's one of the essential symmetries. That this prohibits certain superluminal behaviors is true only when you also combine this with classical evolution of fields by differential equations.

If you stop clinging to that, then what's the problem?

There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be

What's the difference between a 'signal' and an interaction by the laws of physics which have mutual interactions?

In functional space the notion of "distance" could be entirely different.

If interactions with cosmic background radiation or vacuum states or anything ontribute to apparent randomness thanks to chaos which is indistinguishable from "free will" what's the problem?

If it thinks like a duck, it's a duck.

reply to post by sirhumperdink


Well first the definition of a soul has to be established. Is it awareness? Is it creativity and personality? If you can tie a soul to certain qualities, then you can predict where it will be and measure the difference between those with/without "souls" to figure out its makeup.

It then needs to be determined what to measure it by. Is it affected by gravity fields (does it have mass)? Electromagnetic fields? What is its nature?

Are you just saying that lack of evidence is evidence of lack? Maybe the scientific method is limited to one plane of observation after all since one of the principals of scientific method is observation and because you know that souls are the point that observing is done FROM. Think about it like how we can't actually see atoms, we can only see the affected light that passes through them that changes due to their nature and how the shape of their energy fields are used too we can't actually be sure of WHAT their actual shapes are because we are limited by the tools used to observe them. One of the experiments that shows the fear of losing one's soul is to have the observer (Jimmy) cloned. Then you proceed to hit the kill switch on the original and let the cloned Jimmy continue on. I'm sure you wouldn't want to try that experiment on yourself, though I'm sure if you did, that your clone would plead that it went as planned and it is the real you.

It's like you and your cloned self being put up on a game show, they spin the wheel in a game of roulette and eliminate one clone based on what they land up getting. Wouldn't this game terrify you? Why? You still "survive" the game, right? Right?!



Think.

Don't know if it's been said or not but consciousness, it seems to me, is something that is outside of our 5-senses-world.

Nothing to do with arrangement or complexity.

More like a cloud, or field, of influence...like the Higgs field.

Networks don't become conscious, because there is no consciousness in anything that isn't alive.

So.

What is life?

Then...

What is consciousness?

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by mbkennel

 

For any practical purpose the inability to exactly prepare a state down to every phase of every atom and every electromagnetic fluctuation is just as good as any other source of randomness

I don't understand what you mean. Why would you need to prepare such things when dealing with a deterministic computer running a deterministic equation?

Experimenters see things as "random" when they can't make that exact preparation. When they can maintain the full quantum coherence, it's called a 'quantum computer' and the randomness goes away. Which is why I don't believe quantum mechanical randomness to be something fundamental at the smallest level but to arise out of the same kinds of statistical mechanical fluctuations of classical phyiscs---except there are even more degrees of freedom (e.g. quantum mechanical phase and all the vacuum modes) to make the apparent randomness even better.

The chances of the computer randomly malfunctioning and generating consciousness is unimaginably small, and if it did happen it would be due to the inherent randomness in nature.

edit on 28/11/2013 by ChaoticOrder because: (no reason given)

I'm talking about the origin of apparent randomness when you make a quantum mechanical 'observation'. I don't know what you think the relationship between that and random is---but certainly any system sufficiently complex to be conscious has enough degrees of atomic freedom to make things appear to be effectively stochastic from any external observer's point of view.