The conscious universe
Food for cosmic thought [hat tip: commenter “Mrs Whatsit”).
I don’t really buy the application of the multiple personality template to the universe as a whole. I have, however, read a number of fascinating articles recently on the idea of consciousness being part and parcel of the universe, and basic to it. These rely heavily on discussions of quantum phenomena. I can’t say I fully understand them, because I don’t.
We certainly don’t understand consciousness, that’s for sure. And by the way, I’m with the set that believes consciousness is a stumbling block to creating a true AI that mimics life forms.
But this is one of the most interesting findings reported in the linked article:
In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of which claimed to be blind. Using EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s body, even though her eyes were open. Remarkably, when a sighted alter assumed control, the usual brain activity returned.
Fascinating, but to me unsurprising. The mind and body are connected in a loop, so that each influences the other (and “mind” and “body” may not really be separate entities at all). I also recall from my childhood, when I first read about the case of Eve and her multiple personalities (a pseudonym; her real name was Chris Costner Sizemore), that the doctors treating her noted that one of her personalities had an allergy to nylon stockings. I’m doing this from memory, but I recall that when that personality “came out,” the patient removed her stockings because otherwise she would actually get hives. The hives were visible to the doctors, and did not occur with the other personalities.
Now, hives may be especially susceptible to mind-body (psychosomatic) influences. But so are a great many physical processes—perhaps including the amount of activity in the part of the brain that processes vision.
Fascinating stuff, but to me it doesn’t have much to do with the way the universe functions.
All this would make sense if the universe was a computer simulation like Matrix.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if humans were capable of bringing the subconscious into conscious thought, and what that might unlock in the human body.
Would we have to be mindful to keep our heart beating, or our lungs expanding when we breath? Could we force muscles and such to “grow” to become stronger, provided there was an ample energy source? Perhaps consciously turn fat to muscle with thought instead of hard work? Keep the body in ketosis regardless of the amount of potatoes consumed?
It’s not really a useful exercise in thought, I suppose, but it’s definitely clear that the mind (and mind “state”, perhaps in the case of alters) has an incredible amount of control over the body.
I also don’t really see how it would really go into the realm of the “multi-verse” theory, unless supposing that an alter is a kind of… crossing over, for a period, to a version of yourself in a different universe in the multi-verse where you have unique traits/characteristics in a quantum entanglement sort of way, but I have always found questions of the mind, as well as the multiverse, fascinating.
When I read this I thought of the stigmata some saints in the Catholic church are said to have experienced. When I looked it up at Catholic Online, under the “Scientific Research” heading, it states this:
“Some modern research has indicated stigmata are of hysterical origin,[21] or linked to dissociative identity disorders,[22] especially the link between dietary constriction by self-starvation, dissociative mental states and self-mutilation, in the context of a religious belief.[23]”
This was the inspiration for the recent M. Night Shyamalan film, “Split”.
It was a pretty decent flick.
part of the stumbling block with AI consciousness is the bias against admitting how much of what we think is free will is hardwired. Either generally (human) or family (being like your parents).
Random example; I had a task at work that I needed to do once or twice a year. I’d do it once a year when it came to mind and seemed like a good time to do. I noticed on year three I did it on the same day of the year twice and one day off the other the other time.
AI will need a lot of hardwired opinions / preferences in the code before getting to rational thought. Enough that it will be the majority of its personality….
Or consciousness (soul) is non-material and we are tied to a material host in this dimension.
“To circumvent this problem, some philosophers have proposed an alternative: that experience is inherent to every fundamental physical entity in nature. Under this view, called “constitutive panpsychism,” matter already has experience from the get-go, not just when it arranges itself in the form of brains. Even subatomic particles possess some very simple form of consciousness. Our own human consciousness is then (allegedly) constituted by a combination of the subjective inner lives of the countless physical particles that make up our nervous system.”
I apparently have a different definition of consciousness than materialists. I assume consciousness has a component of self-awareness unbounded by the physical. I’m not sure how matter could fit that criteria.
Now if we accept in general that the Universe was created with an intelligent design outside it’s material structure, you aren’t trying to stuff non-material concepts like memory, or consciousness into material properties.
Brian E, there was one person who gave a very convincing argument as to how human conscience could be different than an artificial one and attributed it to the fact that our brains functions do connect to the infinite where simulations don’t (and suffer from a really bad case of rounding errors that lead to dysfunction as errors propagate unless corrected, which is kind of why we go nutters when stimulation is taken away and or how maladaptive we behave. this gives the illusion of the blank slate when conflated with learning).
the mans name is…
Roger Penrose On Why Consciousness Does Not Compute
The emperor of physics defends his controversial theory of mind.
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/roger-penrose-on-why-consciousness-does-not-compute
sadly… for me… who has read all his stuff deeply among tons of others, and tons of papers from where i work.
I have noticed our models are often glaringly obviously wrong, but unassailable in their validity to others without nary a odd look!!!
these models make it hard to conceptualize an answer in which one could get a self organizing system to achieve the end (I solved the French Flag problem, no one was interested, micro ramanujan be damned). http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/French_Flag_problem.html
anyway.. NOT ONE SINGLE MODEL is basic, simple, and can explain the foundations of its existence and the oddities… they all fall apart depending on what question you ask them to explain. like physics, they dont have a cohesive model they have lots of partial funky models that work well within that part but dont play together.
this has held back ai a lot
but there is an answer, and if i say it, no one would believe it
not because they get it, understand it, and can refute it in some way, its just cause it comes from me, in a blog or some other thing and everyone thinks it has to be some other way… that everyone with the chops to be successful is successfor or they dont have the chops… which might be true if the universe was completely deterministic and bad luck doesnt happen and other people dont derail the best of plans (WWII was such a biatch on the idea of living your plan for life as a bad example).
i will explain a simple mechanical theory of the basis which easily explains the different oddities pretty simply and fits how neural nets work in their quirky ways… (did decades of play with those for things like finance).
next post i will just give the nutshell..
you can all yell i am wrong and that’s that.
so we are clear on everyone’s rolls?
good – anything else would shock me
[I also worked out lots of other things as i had lots of time, great access to information, short sleep, and a drive to figure some things out even if only in the abstract]
note its a bit abstract and compact, so give me a break just once.
Neo, do you suppose psychosomatics could influence weight loss results. After the past posts concerning how losing and controlling weight differs between individuals, the thought occurred to me that psychosomatics might be at least part of the reason.
overall the best way to look at us as a model (regardless of creators or other things accepting what is is what is), is that our person hood is merely a shell that protects fertile cells, extends their time, takes the outrageous slings and arrows, and serves those cells in some way… like worker bees who are not allowed (even if they try and do) to procreate, still move their genes forwards by serving the queen…. even if the cells of our bodies cant have children like bacteria can and are locked into a schema, they can procreate through the action of the fertile cells. there is and are models that reflect this if you think of how a landscape in the abstract looks…
but fast forward to conscience and all that… the biological problems of brains that you don’t really hear much about are things like latency. oh, we notice some are slow some are fast, but that is a form of latency. what makes us the same and what is the quality that makes us different that changed it? well, the stuff that is the same is the stuff below our conscience from the world of instinct and learning (but missing something). its obvious one some level we desire another conscience to talk to, whether its god, or the animals or aliens from another world…
the problem with instinct is that it lacks time and certain things related to time that make conscience possible and flights of fancy and hallucinations and all the things we are familiar with knowing and experiencing and even how we organize things to remember and induce and more (including how can dumb people function and smart people dysfunction!)
outside of its reflexive functions and so on, our brain is trying to create a model of the world inside from what it perceives from outside. YOU do not live in a now in which you and others experience things, your conscience started as a way to erase the lagging that thinking has in it and then think forwards in time to anticipate to be in the now..
WITH FOCUS
The average reaction to visual stimulus will be around 250 milliseconds and most people seem to be hard capped at around 190—200 ms with training
and if ya load them, they do even worse, at 500ms… half a second..
hearing is faster,
Audible reaction time as a general rule is much faster but as a side note cannot be faster then 90 milliseconds as anything faster then that is considered a false start for Olympic athletes awaiting a starting gun signal
without this ability, you cant catch anything.. you would be off by the amount of time and miss… (another point of us being predators NOT prey, prey dont need to do that, prey needs to be more psychotic and random than the thinking predator – cause thinking can mess you up too and prey relies on that).
the only way a small box can do the things it does without going computationally nutters with over head is by maintaining a model of the world we know inside our heads… its made to do that, but it also is made ti color, interpret, and do more with the model as well to save space, and try not to clutter it with older stuff…
this model conscience lives in, would create conscience from the sum of its parts… conscience is the alignment of the model with reality, while other things are kind of abusing the model for gain…
we can fantasize because not only do we live in the model, the model allows us to play with its qualities… the more the model is aligned with reality the more the neural net embodies the math and other things in reality and makes them available to the brain… ergo einstein could theoretically work out things in his mental models with GEDANKEN… in a model in which you live gedanken is your conscience playing with the model in an abstract way that works with the way that machine is used to taking in inputs.. by input and abstraction to understanding.
the model colors our words… and we share it too, commonly… we can be in a ‘dark’ mood… why dark? our inner worlds can be dark and depressing, where we make up our internal models by over focusing on bad outcomes, skewing the math and creating a hopeless reality inside… can make one depressed… if the way you place things in the model gets misrepresented in some ways or augmented, you can be paranoid, or think a guru is god…
if the mechanisms of the model that create the people in the model and align them with how you think of them and model their behavior (creating a internal theory of mind for fellow beings), you might be afraid of them and be a loner, or paranoid as your model is being made by warped parts – but you can also make entities in the internal world you really live in that are as real as other beings around you, or just invisible playmates you know are not real… you may see auras, and while the auras are not real in the sense others see them, some are real in the sense they are informative, and others are not.
the clues are all around if you put them together. especially if your a visual artist… because drawing is a talent and skill in which one outputs stuff from the model reality!!!! isnt it odd it took us thousands of years to draw realistically? and that it had to come AFTER things like camera obscure? that our models are augmented by the times and the knowledge in the times (and if yo poison that, what do you do to the functioning of peoples models to make good choices???)
one of the first things a person drawing from a model of some sort of still life… is to not draw what you cant actually see… before you train it, your mind has in force the tools that make the model for you function, and in many instances creates illusions out of odds… when you see a long stick behind a cup, odds favor that the stick is one stick and is one piece, not two pieces aligned at the ends in which the cup blocks them… so people almost always think the former not the latter, and many cant even think OF the latter as a possibility. their models are not that rich they can draw those conclusions… so they don’t even see them..
your brain is constantly updating the model and aligning it with its perceptions in reality and it has lots of tools to do that and incorporate it. this gives the ILLUSION of nurture… because we can ignore that there is this huge virtual reality machine integrating all it knows and has worked out using a model making machine everyone has… without that machine, you could not learn much, because TIME governs the machine as it governs reality…
the machine has to create the illusion of projecting yourself forwards into time to erase the lag between the incoming information, its processing, what your thinking, your energy and other state of health, and then act… yes, Virginia, genetics matters. those that think faster can do this faster, and so act faster compared to another so it became more and more critical to take in info and process it and act on it faster and faster
this machine is a humongous freaking energy hog… we could live a lot easier if we didnt think so much… it uses narly 25% of our daily calories.. what is it computing? the world takes a lot of work to update all the time, and sleep helps..
you know nurture is an illusion when your missing the parts needed to support the illusion! they are invisible to the person in the model, they just are “there”, and they “know” or “just know”… everyone is sure their model is THE model even if they are missing input because to them, it IS their model and without some way to compare there is no way to perceive whats missing… (ask the color blind do they feel it)
the more you know the more you can integrate it into a working knowledge (ie. its part of the model not just facts you memorize), the more you can extrapolate or abstract back out…
some people live in very complicated models that know a lot about a lot and have incorporated tons of facts and principals and things along with talents.. and so on.. (talents.. what are talents but positive mutants? we only think negative in mutations because positive mutations are hidden from us by not being seen as the same thing the other way around… a positron is an electron going backwards in time says the math – reality says otherwise).
i have watched the AI and while they know they need a model of the surroundings to navigate in, they have not taken the leap to making it functional in a way as they are not placing a virtual person in a point perspective inside the model.. like we do.. and why we forget our minds have bodies… and how we can extend our minds into things like cars to use them better… and why not if our mind model is accurate, then our mind car is accurate, and you can skin the hairs and everyone will think it amazing..
[the more time in an area the more the model develops in that area, the model just shrinks things it doesnt work on so you dont notice them. like an escherian image where some parts are magnified and some parts are reduced… ]
penrose was interesting, but he was inventing a quality that he claims is essential, without actually knowing one way or the other… if he is right, its not going to be because he worked out the details of how the thing in the model shold work, he just knows it works because it works in his model in a way he knows is right from other models he has like the other physics. but note, his model may erroneously think that some special item in the model called quantum properties, matters and he got that right (feyman would argue if alive).
godel escher and bach was also interesting
as were the thousands of books on the subject and papers and ancillary things i have read like the arrow of time.
but no one could put a desription down like above, in which one can imagine the model well enough and simple enough that the more you tried to find it was wrong, the more you found it had to be what was going on in abstraction.
i can lay out clue after clue that implies this, here is one
Upside Down Glasses Challenge plays with the tool
but you know if you have glasses that turn things upside down, and you wore them without seeing the world right side up, the world would turn around in your view!
while the first tests were in the 40s and 50s, we still do them
Experiments show we quickly adjust to seeing everything upside-down
A researcher wearing goggles that inverted everything stumbled about wildly at first, but soon enough he was able to ride a bicycle
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable-research-seeing-upside-down
modern AI would not handle this because they are not creating systems that align with reality THEN compute from the model, and score based on feedback of outcome compared to reality.. (learning)
moods and feelings and fears in this model become the language of how the tools communicate with the homunculous!!! especially when the tools can compute something that the concious cant understand as it cant work out the details that way… so it gets hunches… fears… superstitions…
now you can make fun of me
Brian E Says:
“Or consciousness (soul) is non-material and we are tied to a material host in this dimension.”
Schizophrenics often claim to see these kinds connections… the ‘nerves and rays’ of things being connected and / or of G*d. I don’t know that are wrong about what they see. I also don’t think they’re irrational because we often cannot see what they are trying to explain.
Not to put too fine a point on it but for some time things from Scientific American have been neither scientific nor American.
Still, Gagdad Bob, works this one over today with
“The Crazy Must Be Gods
Apropos of our recent musings, Instapundit links to a piece at Scientistic American called Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe and Everything? Pretty silly, but it shows the lengths to which reductionites and neuromaniacs will go to deny the obvious, AKA God. Here’s the bottom line:”
https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-crazy-must-be-gods.html
There was an apocryphal story about a reporter who once said to Albert Einstein that only two people in the world really understood relativity. Einstein was said to have asked “Who is the other one?”
With the passing of Stephen Hawking, I don’t believe that anybody “understands” quantum theory, and I’m not certain that Hawking himself did. I suspect that large numbers of cosmologists are making stuff up – like “string theory” and “dark matter” – as they go along.
And for people who would invoke simulations like the “Matrix” movies….. who’s running the simulation? God? Why not just accept the idea of a creator?
Either the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally, or there was a creator who is for all practical purposes “God”. I’m an agnostic; I don’t pretend to know which it was.
The notion that humans will ever fully understand the universe, what is beyond the universe, or the totality of body-mind-spirit is alien to me. We are mortals, not gods. I find comfort in accepting that; it does not distract from the wonder of a baby in your arms, the beauty of the seasons, and the simple pleasure of tasty food. Instead of pondering what I believe is unknowable, for me, its best to cuddle with Mrs parker, especially on a cold winter’s night.
Ken Mitchell:
This spoof article might amuse you.
I added the word “spoof” because when I first read it I actually thought it was a straight news story.
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” ~ Max Planck
I’ll go with Max on this one.
I don’t pretend to understand consciousness.
Reductionism will definitely not work in explaining consciousness since we can be consciously aware of the input of multiple brain cells all at once. For example, the eye has millions of individual receptors. From experience, I’ve discovered that if just a few adjacent receptors are knocked out we will initially detect a defect in our visual field until the brain learns to fill that area in through extrapolation. With practice one can unlearn this extrapolation and can see the defect again while simultaneously perceiving the input of the millions of surrounding intact receptors. Classic physics and reductionism can not explain how multiple inputs can be perceived simultaneously in this matter. Consciousness has to be a field effect spread over space which can simultaneously perceive the input from multiple parts of the brain.
The function of neurons is probably similar to traditional AI which is often built to mimic neural nets where there are linear sequential inputs and outputs over time to analyze sensory input data. It is interesting that glial cells also communicate with neurons and with each other and can provide the field effect which is necessary to integrate the output of many different groups of neuron processors. Glial cells integrate the activity of their underlying neuron data processors and combine this information to produce the field effect which is necessary for consciousness. Glial cells don’t explain consciousness, but they do provide some of the additional infrastructure in the brain which can support a conscious field. Perhaps the neurons process the data and the glia take that data output and integrate it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1226318/
This offbeat site has an interesting take on the activity of glial cells in consciousness.
http://akashacenter.com/glia-the-cinderella-of-brain-cells/
There is evidence that quantum physics is necessary to explain the efficiency of some biological processes such as the action of enzymes. The brain which is full of enzymes is obviously dependent on quantum physics to function. Although quantum physics can probably not explain consciousness, it would be interesting if the brain has developed a technique for exchanging and maintaining entangled particles which would enable different parts of the brain to integrate their quantum states instantaneously over space. Quantum physics denies that entangled particles which communicate with each other instantaneously can be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light, but perhaps the brain has been designed to harness the synchronous quantum states to derive information at a slower rate. This could provide a level of integration beyond that of glial cells.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/26/youre-powered-by-quantum-mechanics-biology
I like what much of Dennis is saying.
“Fascinating stuff, but to me it doesn’t have much to do with the way the universe functions.” –Neo
Well actually it does. At the material level, the brain functions through electrical and photon interaction between neural cells, which is the basis of all dynamic interactions everywhere in the universe.
But, this again leads us directly to the “quantum measurement problem”; or how does the wavefunction “collapse” and yield an eigenvalue? If consciousness is the mechanism for the collapse, how does consciousness collapse the infinite number of QM interactions happening in a brain which then yields an individual consciousness?…a true gordian knot.
As I’ve stated before, I believe a partial solution will be when someone finally understands how to bring General Relativity inline with QM. Each dynamic system generates a unique space (Hilbert space) where the wavefunctions are the basis vectors (the equivalent of the x,y, z axes of regular 3d space) of that Hilbert space; but can be of any dimension, and is usually infinite dimension. However each Hilbert space, being a dynamic system also contain x,y,z, t coordinates of 4D spacetime….and therein lies the problem. The Dirac equation shows that QM is completely compatible with 4D spacetime as long as it remains Euclidean. But, let the spacetime assume its actual geometry of Riemannian, and the compatibility falls apart.
I don’t know what consciousness is, but my guess is that we may inch closer to a better understanding if the above problem can be solved. Or, in my flights of fancy, maybe consciousness is the solution to the problem.
Artfldgr thx for all the thoughts and links. So far I have gotten through the penrose and was stopped, as we are always stopped, at the juncture of Penrose and Hameroff and the passage: “In some ways, Penrose and Hameroff are the odd couple of science. Hameroff is upfront about his spiritual views, talking openly about the possibility of the soul existing after death. Penrose is an atheist who calls himself “a very materialistic and physicalist kind of person,” and he’s bothered by New Agers who’ve latched onto quantum theories about non-locality and entanglement to prop up their paranormal beliefs.”
Well, yeah.
To that I say: Hameroff lifts the hammer off material reality and allows the human mind to wander into God’s garden. Penrose on the other hand allows what the pen can write (logos) to seem to rise above all and to be God’s garden.
Better hurry up… dinosaurs past event horizon remain unheard to today… i wonder why?
Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-population.html
i guess those people crying they are the future..
arent…
It depends on what consciousness is. Also whether it originates or is expressed by a neural network or similar. We can and do speculate. The answer is either an article of faith or unknowable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-population.html
Female chauvinism and Planned Parenthood are first-order forcings of dodo dynasties, child endangerment and death, and progressive maternal risk.
How does one collapse and rotate down this subject for common consumption… not an easy project to tackle.
Quantum physics is basically a form of magic that people read in sci fi fantasy novels.
People used to think it was merely micro universe, parallel unobservable verses, or atomic particle scale phenomenon. Einstein didn’t like thinking about it in cosmological terms either.
Here’s a light background. Classical physics was Newton’s gravity theory which was upgraded and patched with Einstein’s space-time relativity theories. Quantum mechanics, however, is not an upgrade of these theories, it is a complete nullification and contradiction of them. Dark matter is the upgrade to Einstein, with super string being something of an odd hybrid duck.
In classical physics, matter and phenomenon was locked in numerically and state wise. It could not be affected by observers or Willpower. In magic systems like quantum physics, Willpower and observers do affect the result.
In order to do something in the classical universe, you needed energy and often times it would be lost. In order to lift something against the pull of what theories call gravity, one must prop up an enormously wasteful EM field to lift several hundreds of pounds, with electrical forces and fields being wasted on heat and inefficiencies.
In quantum physics, locking and levitation effects ignore gravity and friction entirely. It merely cools things down and now we have a “rock” based technology system, similar to what people find in the ancient ruins. The technology is made out of rock, because the sapphire is used as a substrate to support a super conductor material. We wouldn’t recognize this as technology, we would recognize it as a building like the Pyramid of Giza. Except it’s not a building, it’s a construct or artifact. There’s no power reactor supplying the force needed to fight against the forces in physics, because fighting loses energy. Where is the quantum reactor in a quantum superconducting locking device? There’s no power source. It’s just a rock, a sapphire, with some weird metals layered over it, and cooled down with liquid nitrogen. It’s not some kind of fusion reactor needed to supply the ENORMOUS power required in classical physics to fight the Gravitational Pull of the Earth, the multiverse, and the sun and the moon all put together.
Well in other words, we need to rotate this down to a physics that people weren’t taught in school.
It’s similar to what happens when a higher technological civilization meets some primitive natives.
People and humans don’t really like the ramifications of these fields. People used to believe that parallel universes and superposition was mostly just an odd ball theoretical math thing. That was before they were able to engineer a quantum computer. Where’s our Newtonian anti grav and Einstein wormhole and time travel tech? They don’t exist.
Quantum applications exist because quantum theory is a lot more accurate than classical theories. Scientific “peers” used to think electricity was some kind of invisible voodoo witch craft power too. Humans need some time to “adapt” to the new paradigm.
Multiple personalities would be interpreted as channeling inter dimensional entities and forces into your body as a gateway.
It’s the biological equivalent of CERN opening up gateways to other verses or dimensions using the Hadron collider.
Multiple personalities can also be provoked by psychiatrists using mind control and hypnosis techniques.
Quantum physics denies that entangled particles which communicate with each other instantaneously can be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light,
It’s Einstein physics that need to cap things at the c, speed of light.
However, the speed of light is degrading, so it is not a C or constant.
Some physicists prefer to keep it as they work with quantum physics, but QP does not need a constant for speed of light to work.
As I’ve stated before, I believe a partial solution will be when someone finally understands how to bring General Relativity inline with QM.
That would require many of the Old Guard to admit that General Relativity is obsolete and wrong, which they won’t do, so it won’t happen any time soon. Like most theories that become obsolete, people just forget about it in time, such as Bohr’s atomic model.
Classical physics almost requires people to see the brain as the source of consciousness. I see it as consciousness being outside of the brain. The brain merely functions a a radio or wi fi relay. Smash the radio or wi fi and your signal cuts off and the body goes comatose or flat line dead.
However, that didn’t affect the consciousness at the source.
Thus the body and the consciousness are linked via the brain, which makes the brain very close to a quantum computer. It is connecting two different realities, dimensions, or universes, together, in a superposition.
Some theories propose that the existence or dimension of where people’s consciousness came from, does not have time or permanent matter. It would be close to a Dirac Sea where quantum will produces change in the energy and later matter. Just flip the field polarities. Thus the usefulness of the superposition is that it allows the conscious source to experience this reality in linear time.
This produces growth and trials. It also produces an enormous amount of amnesia. If you are going to volunteer to take a test, you can’t take your cheat sheet with you, and for the consciousness, that would be all your memories.
https://youtu.be/LY00mRfo1fM?t=14m22s
Since gravity doesn’t obey the inverse square law and thus cannot be Unified mathematically with the other forces in physics, there’s no way to actually have an experiment where you bring two masses together and then detect the ever increasing force of attraction. To our senses and perceptions, masses don’t attract each other. They can’t measure it the way we measure magnetic force. They can calculate it, but even calculations run into the Three Body Problem: which Newton failed to solve in his life time, Einstein wasn’t any smarter about it.
Quantum experiments, however, are much easier to do and review. Like that one in the link.
Wave fronts only need to collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation. Due to the engineering of quantum computers, people are beginning to replace or discard the Copenhagen interpretation. After all, the interpretation was used and only useful because we could not interfere or observe other parallel dimensions. Now that computers actually can use other dimensions or superpositions, to gain usable data, we don’t need the theories as much since it is easier to create new theories based on experimental data.
I think identical human clones would have identical consciousness, but tiny biological differences occur in brain growth and that accounts for differences.
In other words, I believe identical consciousness is possible, but non-identical brain growth makes it impossible.
There’s no evidence I’m right, but also no evidence I’m wrong. If anything most twins represent the closest thing we usually have to identical consciousness. There are around 100 billion brain cells, and the arrangement has to be exact through the entire brain growth. But it never is.
So, I’m raining on the parade of individual consciousness. Short of instant cloning an adult individual there is no way to know.
Not to mention all the influences of environment. There’s just no chance we will be alike, but it has nothing to do with individual consciousness which makes us individuals.
We would all be alike if our brain cells were exactly like. At least until environment influenced us.
This makes perfect sense to me, compared to the mumbo jumbo I read about consciousness.
Ken Mitchell: “Either the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally, or there was a creator who is for all practical purposes “God”. I’m an agnostic; I don’t pretend to know which it was.”
Well, this is your lucky day: you can know which it is and cease to try to hide from God behind the silly label ‘agnostic’, as though labels can fool him.
“Either …, or …”
Exactly. There are two, and only two, possibilities here; there is no excluded middle. Necessarily, one view of reality is correct and the other is false. Thus, if *reason* can tell us that one view is true, it has simultaneously told us that the other is false. And, of course, the converse if true: if *reason* can tell us that one view is false, it has simultaneously told us that the other is true.
It is this converse approach that I think most fruitful.
“Either the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally, …”
Let us assume that this is the truth about the nature of reality. What, then, logically follows from that truth? Absurdities follow, which means that the initial premise (“the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally“) is itself absurd. And, as that premise is a claim/statement about the very nature of reality, it is seen to be false … and, thus, its denial to be the truth.
One of the absurdities which logically follows from the premise that “the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally” is that there exist no beings *capable* of engaging in reasoning. But, we are reasoning right now; thus, the premise which logically entails the false and absurd conclusion is seen to be itself false and absurd.
*IF* “the universe happened and has evolved entirely naturally“, *THEN* all events or state-changes are mechanistically determined by prior states. Thus, when I say “thus: XYZ”, I am not saying it because I have reasoned that XYZ logically follows from ABC, but rather because the prior state of “the universe” mechanistically determines that I say it … right now. Tomorrow, it may well be that prior state of “the universe” will mechanistically determine that I say “thus, I am a boiled egg” as the conclusion to presenting the same argument.
*IF* God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality, *THEN*:
* it is impossible for us ever to reason;
* it is impossible for us ever to know any truths;
* it is impossible for us ever freely will ‘this’ as opposed to ‘that’;
* it is impossible for us ever to be responsible for anything we do;
* (and so on, as the absurdities multiply)
* and, finally, it is impossible for us even to be a ‘self’, a ‘person’.
When some prominent God-deniers say such things as, “There is no such thing as ‘consciousness’” or “There is no ‘you’ or ‘self;” or “There is no such thing as ‘moral responsibility’”, they are doing nothing more than asserting as truth some of the absurdities which are logically entailed by God-denial.
ymarsakar, your complete, total misunderstanding of QM is beyond anything I can even begin to repute. Please, go through at least an undergrad 4 years of physics, so at best you have an inkling of understanding of what you are talking about.
physicguy Says:
June 21st, 2018 at 8:31 am
Your response sounds almost irrational. As if someone pushed your buttons or in this context, a Leftist needed a safe space because they were triggered.
If academics and teachers like you can’t talk about a subject without everyone being in a consensus of agreement on it, I have to wonder how any of you get any work on technological progress done.
This academic or orthodox idea that anyone who disagrees with your status quo consensus is “misunderstanding” it or “lacking years of physics” is not proof that you have an inkling of understanding on the questions in this issue.
I agree that this is beyond anything you can refute or argue. Although what I think are the reasons for that is not what you think it is. You didn’t try to refute anything in my sources or thesis descriptions. You think this is because the problem is on my end. I think the problem is that you don’t understand what the issues are. Both would logically result in the conundrum you find yourself in, but it doesn’t determine that your interpretation of the causes are on target.
The conscious universe is indeed interesting to think about, but beyond my current comprehension.
At the time of the Big Bang, when all the matter was together (??), was that also all the cosmos? Is there a boundary between a space-time continuum with matter, and an “outside” without matter? without boundary?
It seems that the universe is expanding (the outside genuine vacuum really really sucks?), and might well never coalesce. Infinity is (almost? or literally?) incomprehensible.
Hope the new blog comes on-line soon.
The edit does work well; not testing preview.
This is just a test to see whether my comment will be blocked.
The part about multiple universes is that we consider “universe” to be “everything there is” (matter and energy). Other universes imply that there’s more than everything.
It’s clear to me that consciousness is not something we can attribute to the universe as a whole. Maybe if we can say that rocks and water are conscious, there might be a case for universe-consciousness – but I doubt that.
It’s pointless to bring up quantum physics to explain anything except quantum physics. Even physicists in the field find it difficult. Feynman: “On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” QM will explain how the universe works at the physical level, but things like consciousness, intelligence, and emotion are products of mind and brain (and DNA, and proteins, and minds – another little-understood, partly material thing).