Did you read the paper? He reduces information processing down to quantum states and operators, thereby fully reducing the theory to a physical model. I’d call that physics.
When is the reduction—or rather the translation of a problem—to QM, possible and productive?
Sometimes, it is impossible. The planet’s orbit stability problem isn’t even translatable to QM, at all. Because QM doesn’t do gravity.
I doubt it is always productive, even when possible. One could translate the game of tic-tact-toe to QM. But what’s the point? A simple look-up table would do. Can we translate the look-up table optimization to QM? Maybe, but it would hardly give us any new insight in tic-tact-toe game.
It has implications for morality if the existing definitions of consciousness turn out incorrect or incomplete. It has implications for singularity technologies of mind uploading and cryonics revival if a theory of consciousness can be extended to predict end-of-identity. It’s also simply interensting in its own sake.
We had a bad mix or two, of consciousness and QM in the past, already.
Some people demanded a conscious observer to collapse the wave function!
And some people talked about the “quantum nature of consciousness” quite a lot.
Both were quite unnecessary.
I am not saying, that it is therefore forbidden to think about the consciousness and QM at the same time, but that it should be done cautiously, very cautiously, to avoid old mistakes.
Honestly I don’t understand the point you’re making. It sounds a lot like “we should have a semantic stop sign!” If the people before us have done a piss-poor job of reducing consciousness to physicality, then that should encourage us to do better, not stop work entirely.
Did you read the paper? He reduces information processing down to quantum states and operators, thereby fully reducing the theory to a physical model. I’d call that physics.
When is the reduction—or rather the translation of a problem—to QM, possible and productive?
Sometimes, it is impossible. The planet’s orbit stability problem isn’t even translatable to QM, at all. Because QM doesn’t do gravity.
I doubt it is always productive, even when possible. One could translate the game of tic-tact-toe to QM. But what’s the point? A simple look-up table would do. Can we translate the look-up table optimization to QM? Maybe, but it would hardly give us any new insight in tic-tact-toe game.
It has implications for morality if the existing definitions of consciousness turn out incorrect or incomplete. It has implications for singularity technologies of mind uploading and cryonics revival if a theory of consciousness can be extended to predict end-of-identity. It’s also simply interensting in its own sake.
We had a bad mix or two, of consciousness and QM in the past, already.
Some people demanded a conscious observer to collapse the wave function!
And some people talked about the “quantum nature of consciousness” quite a lot.
Both were quite unnecessary.
I am not saying, that it is therefore forbidden to think about the consciousness and QM at the same time, but that it should be done cautiously, very cautiously, to avoid old mistakes.
Honestly I don’t understand the point you’re making. It sounds a lot like “we should have a semantic stop sign!” If the people before us have done a piss-poor job of reducing consciousness to physicality, then that should encourage us to do better, not stop work entirely.