The treatment of Penrose’s theory of consciousness by rationality(-adjacent) people is quite disgraceful. I’ve only heard mockery (e.g. on the Eleuther AI discord server or here in a talk by Joscha Bach), no attempts to even weak-man the theory (let alone understand or refute it!). Nothing like Aaronson’s IIT post – just pure absurdity heuristic (which, if I have to remind, works rather poorly). Sure, there’s Tegmark’s paper – but for some reason I highly doubt that anyone who mocks it has ever even looked at any of the books or papers written in response.
And there isn’t even an argument from lack of authority – the mockery is directed at someone whose Wikipedia entry lists ~25 “known for” concepts and who got a Nobel prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” (!).
Given how little we know about consciousness, it seems quite overconfident to openly mock a testable (I think?) theory by a Nobel price laureate without having tried to understand the theory.
(I personally don’t think that Orch-OR is close to the true theory of consciousness)
What predictions does the theory make? Most discussion of consciousness around here seeks to dissolve the question, not to debate the mechanics of an un-measured subjective phenomenon.
Penrose’s theory (quantum sources of consciousness) does get mentioned occasionally, but not really engaged with, as it’s not really relevant to the aspects that get debated often.
Penrose’s theory (quantum sources of consciousness) does get mentioned occasionally, but not really engaged with, as it’s not really relevant to the aspects that get debated often.
I’m completely fine with ignoring/not talking about the theory (and stuff you don’t know in general). It’s the occasional mockery I have a problem with (I would have less of a problem with it if it were very clearly & obviously false, e.g. like four humors theory in medicine).
What predictions does the theory make? Most discussion of consciousness around here seeks to dissolve the question, not to debate the mechanics of an un-measured subjective phenomenon.
The treatment of Penrose’s theory of consciousness by rationality(-adjacent) people is quite disgraceful. I’ve only heard mockery (e.g. on the Eleuther AI discord server or here in a talk by Joscha Bach), no attempts to even weak-man the theory (let alone understand or refute it!). Nothing like Aaronson’s IIT post – just pure absurdity heuristic (which, if I have to remind, works rather poorly). Sure, there’s Tegmark’s paper – but for some reason I highly doubt that anyone who mocks it has ever even looked at any of the books or papers written in response.
And there isn’t even an argument from lack of authority – the mockery is directed at someone whose Wikipedia entry lists ~25 “known for” concepts and who got a Nobel prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity” (!).
Given how little we know about consciousness, it seems quite overconfident to openly mock a testable (I think?) theory by a Nobel price laureate without having tried to understand the theory.
(I personally don’t think that Orch-OR is close to the true theory of consciousness)
What predictions does the theory make? Most discussion of consciousness around here seeks to dissolve the question, not to debate the mechanics of an un-measured subjective phenomenon.
Penrose’s theory (quantum sources of consciousness) does get mentioned occasionally, but not really engaged with, as it’s not really relevant to the aspects that get debated often.
I’m completely fine with ignoring/not talking about the theory (and stuff you don’t know in general). It’s the occasional mockery I have a problem with (I would have less of a problem with it if it were very clearly & obviously false, e.g. like four humors theory in medicine).
Here is a table collecting some of the predictions from Hameroff 1998 makes (Appendix B). Some of these have apparently been falsified, so I was perhaps mistaken about the theory not being clearly false (although I would be willing to bet that most mockers didn’t know about Hameroff 1998 or any response – or at best Tegmark 1999.
I also think deconfusion here is a better approach.