Yes, I see connection with your section about digital people, and it is true that what I propose would make AI more compatible for merging with humans. But from my understanding I don’t think “digital” people or consciousness can exist. I strongly disbelieve computational functionalism, and believe that consciousness is inherently linked to quantum particle wavefunction collapse. Therefore, I think that if we can recreate consciousness in machines it will always be bound to specialized non-deterministic hardware. I will be explaining my positions in more detail in my Substack.
consciousness is inherently linked to quantum particle wavefunction collapse
As someone with quite a bit of professional experience working with QM, that sounds a bit of a god of the gaps. We don’t even know what collapse means, in practice. All we know about consciousness is that it seems like a classical enough phenomenon to experience only one branch of the wavefunction. No particular reason why there can’t be more “you” out there in the Hilbert space equally convinced that their branch is the only one into which everything mysteriously collapsed.
Hmm, seems like someone beat me to it. Federico Faggin describes the idea I had in mind with his Quantum Information Panpsychism theory. Check it out here if interested—and I’ll appreciate your opinion on plausiblity of the theory.
That sounds interesting! I’ll give the paper a read and try to suss out what it means—it seems at least a serious enough effort. Here’s the reference for anyone else who doesn’t want to go through the intermediate news site:
I guess! I remember he was always into theoretical QM and “Quantum Foundations” so this is not a surprise. It’s not a particularly big field either, most researchers prefer focusing on less philosophical aspects of the theory.
I know this might not be a very satisfying response, but as extraordinary claims require extraordinary arguments, I’m going to need a series of posts to explain—hence the Substack.
Yes, I see connection with your section about digital people, and it is true that what I propose would make AI more compatible for merging with humans. But from my understanding I don’t think “digital” people or consciousness can exist. I strongly disbelieve computational functionalism, and believe that consciousness is inherently linked to quantum particle wavefunction collapse. Therefore, I think that if we can recreate consciousness in machines it will always be bound to specialized non-deterministic hardware. I will be explaining my positions in more detail in my Substack.
As someone with quite a bit of professional experience working with QM, that sounds a bit of a god of the gaps. We don’t even know what collapse means, in practice. All we know about consciousness is that it seems like a classical enough phenomenon to experience only one branch of the wavefunction. No particular reason why there can’t be more “you” out there in the Hilbert space equally convinced that their branch is the only one into which everything mysteriously collapsed.
Hmm, seems like someone beat me to it. Federico Faggin describes the idea I had in mind with his Quantum Information Panpsychism theory. Check it out here if interested—and I’ll appreciate your opinion on plausiblity of the theory.
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/quantum-fields-are-conscious-says-the-inventor-of-the-microprocessor/seeing/
That sounds interesting! I’ll give the paper a read and try to suss out what it means—it seems at least a serious enough effort. Here’s the reference for anyone else who doesn’t want to go through the intermediate news site:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.06580
(also: professor D’Ariano authored this? I used to work in the same department!)
Thank you. What a coincidence, huh?
I guess! I remember he was always into theoretical QM and “Quantum Foundations” so this is not a surprise. It’s not a particularly big field either, most researchers prefer focusing on less philosophical aspects of the theory.
I know this might not be a very satisfying response, but as extraordinary claims require extraordinary arguments, I’m going to need a series of posts to explain—hence the Substack.