I can take a shot at a couple of these. For free will, suppose it turns out that neural activity is not fully determined by mechanistic principles, but is in some cases determined by thermal/quantum noise. And yet, it turns out that out of that noise, certain neural activity patterns appear seemingly magically. Neurons A, B and C fire together to make a decision, even though the most detailed investigation shows that whether they would fire or not was purely random. And yet these correlations appear persistently, too often for random statistical correlations to explain, and correspond to our subjective feelings of free will. A likely model is that there is another, otherwise inaccessible, realm which is influencing neural activity and that the brain is a specially-tuned “receiver” designed to amplify quantum chaos into determinate action. The free will comes from this other realm.
For why anything exists at all, one possibility is the Tegmark/Schmidhuber model where the universe is pure information, part of a much larger information world which has Platonic existence. In this concept, all information patterns and “information objects” have a form of existence, and sufficiently complex information objects look like universes such as the one we observe. These models then aim to impose a measure on information patterns, making some more prominent than others. Suppose these theories can be developed to the point that this measure can be computed, and it turns out to predict that there is by far one highest-measure information pattern which includes conscious entities. And further, that that information pattern corresponds in 100% agreement to our universe, even to the point where it computes that we ourselves, we human beings, are by far the most prominent conscious information patterns in the informational multiverse. Then I think this would be a very strong candidate for an explanation of why anything exists, and in particular why the observed universe and we observers exist.
And what if we end up being able to predict what goes on in this “other realm”? This just pushes the problem back behind the curtain, instead of confronting it.
Well, the question is whether our thoughts are deterministic or not. If you reset the universe to the same point multiple times, would everyone necessarily do exactly the same things? Or might there be variation? There being an extra-universal influence on our thoughts that wouldn’t get reset gives the possibility of non-determinism, even if there is some ability to predict what it might do in known circumstances.
Actually running that test though would be… difficult. We only get to see one of the runs, so we have nothing to compare to.
So is our sense of free will an illusion? Or meta-information that’s leaking in from somewhere due to incomplete sandboxing? Really hard to know for sure. But, at the same time, does it actually matter?
You don’t have to assume that the physical universe is deterministic, so that any indeterministic “swerve” can only from another dimension...you can assume that the physical universe isn’t entirely deterministic.
There are indeed multiple ways it could work. And it may be tough to decide how to draw any boundaries. Is it some totally separate realm that only interacts with ours in the one area? Or is it something that’s simply a little outside of the four dimensions we can normally perceive and it’s tied in everywhere in subtle ways and our cognition is merely the only spot where we easily notice it? We might try to model it in a number of different ways depending on exactly what we find. But we’re almost certainly going to have problems trying to fully understand something so different from what our brains are built to work with, especially when getting into things like this where it’s definitely possible that attempting to understand it could have a feedback loop with how we think at a fundamental level.
And I can’t really think of a way that we could know for sure if our universe is deterministic or not. You’d have to be able to see multiple runs of it and observe if they were identical or not… It’s kind of like the theoretically O(1) “randomize data, check if sorted, if not then destroy the universe” sort algorithm...
Is it some totally separate realm that only interacts with ours in the one area? Or is it something that’s simply a little outside of the four dimensions we can normally perceive and it’s tied in everywhere in subtle ways and our cognition is merely the only spot where we easily notice i
Indeed! The question is, “How do you tell?” The “how do neurons work” research has gotten down to the level where the decision-making seems to involve quantum phenomena where we can’t take the lid off and peek inside. Theoretical physicists wonder if there are more than just four dimensions, but haven’t nailed down anything concrete. We can sort of see back to the beginning of our universe, but not into anything that may have been before it or beside it or anything like that.
You can definitely say it’s “not outside our universe,” whatever it is, because containing absolutely all of everything is part of the definition of “universe.” But that doesn’t actually answer the question of how it works in any meaningful way either, merely gives a more optimistic outlook about the odds of us figuring out how to understand it.
Interestingly, there’s at least one experiment I’ve heard of where they were using an FPGA and genetic algorithms to “evolve” circuits, and it turned out to not be practical at the time, but analysis of the resulting circuits found them working in strange and unusual ways. Some of which seemed to be delving into the same kinds of quantum phenomena that we now know neurons use. So, at the very least, if there is some deeper layer it doesn’t seem like it’s a “protein chauvinist.”
What? I sure don’t think so. Last I checked, about 2-3 years ago, there was no reason to think that quantum phenomena play any role in neural function, and certainly not the interlocked phenomena that Penrose talked about.
Neural network theory on the classical physics level is plenty to explain consciousness, let alone decision-making.
You’re reporting a few studies that claim to find weak evidence vaguely suggestive of quantum effects. The huge sum of evidence is that such effects aren’t needed and so would be peripheral to neural function and resulting mental function.
People like the idea of quantum effects because the sound mysterious like consciousness. Look closely and there’s no explanatory power different from neural networks anyway. They naturally have super positional effects like Penrose talks about for interlocked quantum effects.
See the sequence post “my wild youth” for Yudkowsky disclaiming quantum consciousness on these grounds.
I can take a shot at a couple of these. For free will, suppose it turns out that neural activity is not fully determined by mechanistic principles, but is in some cases determined by thermal/quantum noise. And yet, it turns out that out of that noise, certain neural activity patterns appear seemingly magically. Neurons A, B and C fire together to make a decision, even though the most detailed investigation shows that whether they would fire or not was purely random. And yet these correlations appear persistently, too often for random statistical correlations to explain, and correspond to our subjective feelings of free will. A likely model is that there is another, otherwise inaccessible, realm which is influencing neural activity and that the brain is a specially-tuned “receiver” designed to amplify quantum chaos into determinate action. The free will comes from this other realm.
For why anything exists at all, one possibility is the Tegmark/Schmidhuber model where the universe is pure information, part of a much larger information world which has Platonic existence. In this concept, all information patterns and “information objects” have a form of existence, and sufficiently complex information objects look like universes such as the one we observe. These models then aim to impose a measure on information patterns, making some more prominent than others. Suppose these theories can be developed to the point that this measure can be computed, and it turns out to predict that there is by far one highest-measure information pattern which includes conscious entities. And further, that that information pattern corresponds in 100% agreement to our universe, even to the point where it computes that we ourselves, we human beings, are by far the most prominent conscious information patterns in the informational multiverse. Then I think this would be a very strong candidate for an explanation of why anything exists, and in particular why the observed universe and we observers exist.
And what if we end up being able to predict what goes on in this “other realm”? This just pushes the problem back behind the curtain, instead of confronting it.
Well, the question is whether our thoughts are deterministic or not. If you reset the universe to the same point multiple times, would everyone necessarily do exactly the same things? Or might there be variation? There being an extra-universal influence on our thoughts that wouldn’t get reset gives the possibility of non-determinism, even if there is some ability to predict what it might do in known circumstances.
Actually running that test though would be… difficult. We only get to see one of the runs, so we have nothing to compare to.
So is our sense of free will an illusion? Or meta-information that’s leaking in from somewhere due to incomplete sandboxing? Really hard to know for sure. But, at the same time, does it actually matter?
You don’t have to assume that the physical universe is deterministic, so that any indeterministic “swerve” can only from another dimension...you can assume that the physical universe isn’t entirely deterministic.
There are indeed multiple ways it could work. And it may be tough to decide how to draw any boundaries. Is it some totally separate realm that only interacts with ours in the one area? Or is it something that’s simply a little outside of the four dimensions we can normally perceive and it’s tied in everywhere in subtle ways and our cognition is merely the only spot where we easily notice it? We might try to model it in a number of different ways depending on exactly what we find. But we’re almost certainly going to have problems trying to fully understand something so different from what our brains are built to work with, especially when getting into things like this where it’s definitely possible that attempting to understand it could have a feedback loop with how we think at a fundamental level.
And I can’t really think of a way that we could know for sure if our universe is deterministic or not. You’d have to be able to see multiple runs of it and observe if they were identical or not… It’s kind of like the theoretically O(1) “randomize data, check if sorted, if not then destroy the universe” sort algorithm...
Or not even a little bit ouside.
Indeed! The question is, “How do you tell?” The “how do neurons work” research has gotten down to the level where the decision-making seems to involve quantum phenomena where we can’t take the lid off and peek inside. Theoretical physicists wonder if there are more than just four dimensions, but haven’t nailed down anything concrete. We can sort of see back to the beginning of our universe, but not into anything that may have been before it or beside it or anything like that.
You can definitely say it’s “not outside our universe,” whatever it is, because containing absolutely all of everything is part of the definition of “universe.” But that doesn’t actually answer the question of how it works in any meaningful way either, merely gives a more optimistic outlook about the odds of us figuring out how to understand it.
Interestingly, there’s at least one experiment I’ve heard of where they were using an FPGA and genetic algorithms to “evolve” circuits, and it turned out to not be practical at the time, but analysis of the resulting circuits found them working in strange and unusual ways. Some of which seemed to be delving into the same kinds of quantum phenomena that we now know neurons use. So, at the very least, if there is some deeper layer it doesn’t seem like it’s a “protein chauvinist.”
What? I sure don’t think so. Last I checked, about 2-3 years ago, there was no reason to think that quantum phenomena play any role in neural function, and certainly not the interlocked phenomena that Penrose talked about.
Neural network theory on the classical physics level is plenty to explain consciousness, let alone decision-making.
You’re reporting a few studies that claim to find weak evidence vaguely suggestive of quantum effects. The huge sum of evidence is that such effects aren’t needed and so would be peripheral to neural function and resulting mental function.
People like the idea of quantum effects because the sound mysterious like consciousness. Look closely and there’s no explanatory power different from neural networks anyway. They naturally have super positional effects like Penrose talks about for interlocked quantum effects.
See the sequence post “my wild youth” for Yudkowsky disclaiming quantum consciousness on these grounds.