You don’t need to invoke anything more exotic than normal cellular protein and electrochemistry to get very interesting behavior.
True, but not consciousness. While I agree that Penrose’s model is a wild unsubstantiated speculation, until we have a demonstration of algorithmic consciousness without any quantum effects, his approach deserves a thoughtful critique, not a hearty laugh.
Thing is, it’s no more clear how quantum fluctuations give rise to subjective experience than how chemistry gives rise to subjective experience. So why claim that it’s in the quantum instead of in the chemicals?
Because he thinks that human’s are capable of some form of hypercomputation (He bases this on some Goedelian stuff mainly), and that quantum gravitational effects are what allows it.
Quantum gravity doesn’t help with hypercomputation, which doesn’t help with Goedel, which doesn’t help with consciousness. The most plausible part is that quantum gravity allows hypercomputation, but no one but Penrose believes that.
I still don’t understand the assertion that humans actaully think with logic that is vulnerable to Godelian stuff. Why should we blow up at the Godel incompleteness theorem at all?
If we are a TM computation (which is the standard reductionist explanation), we are vulnerable to the halting problem (which he also argue we can solve), and if we are a formal system of some kind (also standard, although maybe not quite so commonly said), Godel etc applies.
(I was using Godelian in the broader sense, which includes Halting-esque problems.).
I would argue strenuously against the idea that we resemble a formal system at all. Our cells act like a network of noisy differential equations that with enough training can approximate some of its outputs to resemble those of mathematically defined systems—AKA, what you do once you have learned math.
We also aren’t turing machines. Not in the sense that we aren’t turing complete or capable of running the steps that a turing machine would do, but in the sense that we, again, are an electrochemical system that does a lot of things natively without resorting to much in the way of turing-style computation. A network grows that becomes able to do some task.
We are not stuck in the formal system or the computation, we are approximating it via learned behavior and when we hit a wall in the formal system or the computation we stop it and say ‘well that doesn’t work’. That deosn’t mean we transcend the issues, it means that we go do something else.
Because we are more confused, collectively, about quantum fluctuations than we are about chemistry. And we’re also confused about the causes of subjective experience. So “quantum explains consciousness” feels more compelling than “chemistry explains consciousness”. See also: god of the gaps.
I agree, and I would bet a priori 10:1 that chemistry is enough, no quantum required, but until and unless it’s experimentally confirmed/simulated, other ideas are worth considering.
True, but not consciousness. While I agree that Penrose’s model is a wild unsubstantiated speculation, until we have a demonstration of algorithmic consciousness without any quantum effects, his approach deserves a thoughtful critique, not a hearty laugh.
Thing is, it’s no more clear how quantum fluctuations give rise to subjective experience than how chemistry gives rise to subjective experience. So why claim that it’s in the quantum instead of in the chemicals?
Because he thinks that human’s are capable of some form of hypercomputation (He bases this on some Goedelian stuff mainly), and that quantum gravitational effects are what allows it.
Quantum gravity doesn’t help with hypercomputation, which doesn’t help with Goedel, which doesn’t help with consciousness. The most plausible part is that quantum gravity allows hypercomputation, but no one but Penrose believes that.
I still don’t understand the assertion that humans actaully think with logic that is vulnerable to Godelian stuff. Why should we blow up at the Godel incompleteness theorem at all?
If we are a TM computation (which is the standard reductionist explanation), we are vulnerable to the halting problem (which he also argue we can solve), and if we are a formal system of some kind (also standard, although maybe not quite so commonly said), Godel etc applies.
(I was using Godelian in the broader sense, which includes Halting-esque problems.).
I would argue strenuously against the idea that we resemble a formal system at all. Our cells act like a network of noisy differential equations that with enough training can approximate some of its outputs to resemble those of mathematically defined systems—AKA, what you do once you have learned math.
We also aren’t turing machines. Not in the sense that we aren’t turing complete or capable of running the steps that a turing machine would do, but in the sense that we, again, are an electrochemical system that does a lot of things natively without resorting to much in the way of turing-style computation. A network grows that becomes able to do some task.
We are not stuck in the formal system or the computation, we are approximating it via learned behavior and when we hit a wall in the formal system or the computation we stop it and say ‘well that doesn’t work’. That deosn’t mean we transcend the issues, it means that we go do something else.
Because we are more confused, collectively, about quantum fluctuations than we are about chemistry. And we’re also confused about the causes of subjective experience. So “quantum explains consciousness” feels more compelling than “chemistry explains consciousness”. See also: god of the gaps.
I agree, and I would bet a priori 10:1 that chemistry is enough, no quantum required, but until and unless it’s experimentally confirmed/simulated, other ideas are worth considering.
That sounds like privileging the hypothesis to me.