New laws of physics will not help us understand consciousness or how the brain works

[John Clark]

In this video Sean Carroll makes a very strong case that new laws of physics will not help us understand consciousness or how the brain works:

Quantum Mechanics Limits our knowledge of Universe

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

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[spudb...@aol.com]

Carroll is drawing a magical imaginary line across physical, material, reality. 

He is doing Cartesian Dualism starting with pure physics.  

Rene' DesCarte, Two kind of matter. 

He hasn't proven this in any sense. 

Other physicists and scientists have opined that maybe "mind" does "influence" what goes on in these 3 apparent dimensions. 

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[John Clark]

On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 9:25 PM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

> Carroll is drawing a magical imaginary line across physical, material, reality. 

He is doing Cartesian Dualism starting with pure physics.  

Rene' DesCarte, Two kind of matter. 

What on earth are you talking about?!  Carroll specifically says that the Many Worlds idea has NOTHING to do with consciousness, and for me that has always been one of its great appeals, unlike Copenhagen Many Worlds does not need to explain consciousness because it has nothing to do with it. If Many Worlds was proved or disproved tomorrow nobody's idea about consciousness would need to be changed one bit.

 

> Other physicists and scientists have opined that maybe "mind" does "influence" what goes on in these 3 apparent dimensions. 

Name those physicists. The Standard Model of Particle Physics and General Relativity both completely ignore "mind", so why are the predictions they make so amazingly good?

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

8eg

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[spudb...@aol.com]

I can name 3 for ya. 

1. Roger Penrose. Oxford, right?

2. Christianne Mornais Smith

Christiane de Morais Smith Lehner is a Brazilian theoretical physicist and professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Utrecht, where she leads a research group studying condensed matter physics, cold atoms and strongly-correlated systems.

3. Henry Stapp of course. 

For Carroll and the Multiverse? I am ok with materialism or dualism as long as it works well? 

The only appeal of the Multiverse is more fun for everyone. Good science fiction tales, perhaps a place to have an afterlife? 

Of course if you really want to define consciousness, you were claiming pantheism as ChatGpt4 being conscious, correct? Like in April, remember? For me, I was demanding that such a mind be based on the mammalian brain. So, I could be way wrong. Now, here was a physics team (with 1 comsci guy, Lanier) promoting consciousness as primo to the universe. 

[2104.03902] The Autodidactic Universe (arxiv.org)

"We present an approach to cosmology in which the Universe learns its own physical laws. It does so by exploring a landscape of possible laws, which we express as a certain class of matrix models. We discover maps that put each of these matrix models in correspondence with both a gauge/gravity theory and a mathematical model of a learning machine, such as a deep recurrent, cyclic neural network. This establishes a correspondence between each solution of the physical theory and a run of a neural network. This correspondence is not an equivalence, partly because gauge theories emerge from N→∞ limits of the matrix models, whereas the same limits of the neural networks used here are not well-defined. We discuss in detail what it means to say that learning takes place in autodidactic systems, where there is no supervision. We propose that if the neural network model can be said to learn without supervision, the same can be said for the corresponding physical theory. We consider other protocols for autodidactic physical systems, such as optimization of graph variety, subset-replication using self-attention and look-ahead, geometrogenesis guided by reinforcement learning, structural learning using renormalization group techniques, and extensions. These protocols together provide a number of directions in which to explore the origin of physical laws based on putting machine learning architectures in correspondence with physical theories."

If quantum woo is wrong, I don't wanna be right! 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 9:18 PM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

>I can name 3 for ya. 

1. Roger Penrose. Oxford, right?

Wrong. About 25 years ago Roger Penrose suggested that microtubules inside of neurons might be involved in quantum computing (he didn't say how) which helped to tell the neuron when to fire, but since that time not a particle of evidence has surfaced in support of the idea and conditions are so hot and chaotic inside a microtube it's very hard to see how it could be true. But even in the unlikely event it turned out to be correct it wouldn't contradict anything that Sean Carroll has been saying because we've already been able to make small Quantum Computers and we didn't need new laws of physics or changes to the Standard Model Of Particle Physics or of General Relativity to do so. In fact if it had turned out that Quantum Computing was impossible then that WOULD have required a change in our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics.

> 2. Christianne Mornais Smith

I've never heard of her before but I looked her up and apparently she believes that the brain’s neural system forms an intricate network and that the consciousness this produces should obey the rules of quantum mechanics. But that's not very controversial, in fact it's a bit of a platitude. EVERYTHING obeys quantum mechanics.

 

> 3. Henry Stapp of course.

I've never heard of him either but according to Google he believes that classical physics cannot describe the brain, and thinks that a quantum framework is needed for a full explanation. Well duh, a quantum framework is required for a full explanation of ANYTHING. 

> For Carroll and the Multiverse? I am ok with materialism or dualism as long as it works well? 

If you had read Carroll's Book on the subject or even bothered to watch the video that I recommended (which of course you did not do) you would know that his views about the Multiverse have NOTHING to do with his idea of how the brain works. 

 

> The only appeal of the Multiverse is more fun for everyone.

The only appeal of the Multiverse is that unlike its competitors it has NOTHING to do with consciousness and so does not need to open that can of worms. 

> Of course if you really want to define consciousness, you were claiming pantheism as ChatGpt4 being conscious, correct?

Let me put it this way, the evidence I have that GPT-4 is conscious is just as strong as the evidence I have that you are conscious. That's because we have never met so the only evidence I have about either of you is the string of ASCII characters that you and GPT-4 have produced.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

f7z

8eg 

What on earth are you talking about?!  Carroll specifically says that the Many Worlds idea has NOTHING to do with consciousness, and for me that has always been one of its great appeals, unlike Copenhagen Many Worlds does not need to explain consciousness because it has nothing to do with it. If Many Worlds was proved or disproved tomorrow nobody's idea about consciousness would need to be changed one bit.

 

> Other physicists and scientists have opined that maybe "mind" does "influence" what goes on in these 3 apparent dimensions. 

Name those physicists. The Standard Model of Particle Physics and General Relativity both completely ignore "mind", so why are the predictions they make so amazingly good?