Re: [math-fun] quantum theory foundational issues, my theory of how they should be resolved
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> [...] There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious.
Maybe I'm just being too densely mechanistic, but I find the popular idea that consciousness is somehow closely related to deep physics puzzlingly unmotivated. Other smart folks (eg Roger Penrose) also assert things along these lines, but I can't begin to follow these arguments because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models. Sometimes we just happen to build and manipulate reflective models of ourselves that capture aspects of our own model-processing--but that doesn't seem fundamentally different from many other internal-model driven behaviors--no quantum weirdness required. Perhaps our own consciousness feels mysterious to us because access to our self-models is necessarily vague, murky, incomplete and sketchy--that is, well-adapted to the natural limitations of the jellyware platform we run on. We're self-aware, but through a gloss, darkly. (This is probably a good thing, lest we be vulnerable to pinwheeling recursive nostalgia!) We don't really come with a full introspective debugger that can dump the code that implements our reflexes and instincts for our inspection, analysis, optimization, refactoring or reimplementation. For our augmented and automated descendents it may be a different story. Isn't that outcome of natural evolution wondrous enough, without conjuring ghosts in the machines?
I hope I didn't give the impression that I meant consciousness is related to deep physics, since I really have no idea about that. (I meant only that a) conscious awareness and b) the apparent flow of time must be closely related.) Marc wrote: ----- I wrote: ----- [...] There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious. ----- Maybe I'm just being too densely mechanistic, but I find the popular idea that consciousness is somehow closely related to deep physics puzzlingly unmotivated. . . . -----
People parody Penrose's argument as "there are two things we don't understand: quantum gravity and consciousness. Therefore there must be related." And I think this is entirely fair :-) Cris On Aug 3, 2013, at 3:41 PM, Marc LeBrun <mlb@well.com> wrote:
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> [...] There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious.
Maybe I'm just being too densely mechanistic, but I find the popular idea that consciousness is somehow closely related to deep physics puzzlingly unmotivated.
Other smart folks (eg Roger Penrose) also assert things along these lines, but I can't begin to follow these arguments because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models.
I can't follow those arguments, either. Conscious awareness may well be a natural consequence of evolution. But it certainly is not *just* that!!! It is unlike anything whatsoever that is covered by physics. As far as physics is concerned (and I am not blaming physics for this), the world could just be a totally insensate machine that follows physical laws but feels nothing. And (ditto), physics makes no attempt to explain the apparent flow of time that we feel. I've read that Lee Smolin's new book Time Reborn tries to insert a flow of time, but with almost no reference to consciousness, which I think is a mistake. --Dan Marc wrote: ----- . . . I can't begin to follow these arguments [of Penrose et al.] because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models. -----
On 8/3/2013 3:28 PM, Dan Asimov wrote:
I can't follow those arguments, either.
Conscious awareness may well be a natural consequence of evolution.
But it certainly is not *just* that!!!
It is unlike anything whatsoever that is covered by physics. As far as physics is concerned (and I am not blaming physics for this), the world could just be a totally insensate machine that follows physical laws but feels nothing.
Could it? Is philosopher's zombie possible? It seems to me unlikely that one could construct, grow, or otherwise have something that looks and acts and is physically like a human being but has no subjective experience. Brent
And (ditto), physics makes no attempt to explain the apparent flow of time that we feel.
I've read that Lee Smolin's new book Time Reborn tries to insert a flow of time, but with almost no reference to consciousness, which I think is a mistake.
--Dan
Marc wrote:
----- . . . I can't begin to follow these arguments [of Penrose et al.] because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models. ----- _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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On 8/4/13, meekerdb <meekerdb@verizon.net> wrote:
... Could it? Is philosopher's zombie possible? It seems to me unlikely that one could construct, grow, or otherwise have something that looks and acts and is physically like a human being but has no subjective experience.
Brent
I'm surely not the first to enquire: how could you tell? Shades of Blade Runner ... WFL
If something "feels nothing" then it couldn't possibly evolve - basically it would be a stone, though possibly a stone carrying information it doesn't even know about itself but other evolved, feeling creatures can analyse ;) On 4 Aug 2013, at 07:33, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/3/2013 3:28 PM, Dan Asimov wrote:
I can't follow those arguments, either.
Conscious awareness may well be a natural consequence of evolution.
But it certainly is not *just* that!!!
It is unlike anything whatsoever that is covered by physics. As far as physics is concerned (and I am not blaming physics for this), the world could just be a totally insensate machine that follows physical laws but feels nothing.
Could it? Is philosopher's zombie possible? It seems to me unlikely that one could construct, grow, or otherwise have something that looks and acts and is physically like a human being but has no subjective experience.
Brent
And (ditto), physics makes no attempt to explain the apparent flow of time that we feel.
I've read that Lee Smolin's new book Time Reborn tries to insert a flow of time, but with almost no reference to consciousness, which I think is a mistake.
--Dan
Marc wrote:
----- . . . I can't begin to follow these arguments [of Penrose et al.] because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models. ----- _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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The meaning and purpose of life is to give life purpose and meaning. The instigation of violence indicates a lack of spirituality.
I agree - plus personally I reject the idea that time is a "dimension", rather it's simply "change of state" -> this doesn't imply that (for instance) wormhole "time-travel" is not possible but it does mean the mechanism involved would be somewhat different i.e, it would at least involve transforming someone's view such that "now" to them actually appears as "then" and if able to interact while viewing "then" you automatically change "now" *but not necessarily in the same way as if the changes made had been there in the first place depending on the transforms involved that allow you to see "then" since in all likelihood not all transforms will be affine. Considering existence as a state-changing dynamic system this way also potentially allows for the multiverse theory in more than one way: 1. Simply - if some state changes described mathematically depend on "roots" and 2. More complex - if higher dimensions are involved then the maths (e.g. quaternions) where multiple results are possible say by changing the order of multiplication (the more dimensions, the greater the options for multiple choices). As far as I'm concerned existence is fractal - probably consisting of variable orbits that have at lreast local affect on each other, some manifesting as attractors that are static in all but location from state to state also such that structure and effect/force are effectively one, i.e. change the structure in a state change and the effects/forces *also* change. On 3 Aug 2013, at 22:41, Marc LeBrun wrote:
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> [...] There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious.
Maybe I'm just being too densely mechanistic, but I find the popular idea that consciousness is somehow closely related to deep physics puzzlingly unmotivated.
Other smart folks (eg Roger Penrose) also assert things along these lines, but I can't begin to follow these arguments because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models.
Sometimes we just happen to build and manipulate reflective models of ourselves that capture aspects of our own model-processing--but that doesn't seem fundamentally different from many other internal-model driven behaviors--no quantum weirdness required.
Perhaps our own consciousness feels mysterious to us because access to our self-models is necessarily vague, murky, incomplete and sketchy--that is, well-adapted to the natural limitations of the jellyware platform we run on.
We're self-aware, but through a gloss, darkly. (This is probably a good thing, lest we be vulnerable to pinwheeling recursive nostalgia!)
We don't really come with a full introspective debugger that can dump the code that implements our reflexes and instincts for our inspection, analysis, optimization, refactoring or reimplementation.
For our augmented and automated descendents it may be a different story.
Isn't that outcome of natural evolution wondrous enough, without conjuring ghosts in the machines?
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
The meaning and purpose of life is to give life purpose and meaning. The instigation of violence indicates a lack of spirituality.
Also I see no reason why locally and/or globally the number of actual dimensions (not time) involved couldn't itself be variable. On 4 Aug 2013, at 00:46, Dave Makin wrote:
I agree - plus personally I reject the idea that time is a "dimension", rather it's simply "change of state" -> this doesn't imply that (for instance) wormhole "time-travel" is not possible but it does mean the mechanism involved would be somewhat different i.e, it would at least involve transforming someone's view such that "now" to them actually appears as "then" and if able to interact while viewing "then" you automatically change "now" *but not necessarily in the same way as if the changes made had been there in the first place depending on the transforms involved that allow you to see "then" since in all likelihood not all transforms will be affine. Considering existence as a state-changing dynamic system this way also potentially allows for the multiverse theory in more than one way: 1. Simply - if some state changes described mathematically depend on "roots" and 2. More complex - if higher dimensions are involved then the maths (e.g. quaternions) where multiple results are possible say by changing the order of multiplication (the more dimensions, the greater the options for multiple choices). As far as I'm concerned existence is fractal - probably consisting of variable orbits that have at lreast local affect on each other, some manifesting as attractors that are static in all but location from state to state also such that structure and effect/force are effectively one, i.e. change the structure in a state change and the effects/forces *also* change.
On 3 Aug 2013, at 22:41, Marc LeBrun wrote:
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net> [...] There are two striking aspects of the universe that are so difficult to address that physics can't touch them (so far): a) the flow of time, and b) conscious awareness. These two things must be very closely related. But very mysterious.
Maybe I'm just being too densely mechanistic, but I find the popular idea that consciousness is somehow closely related to deep physics puzzlingly unmotivated.
Other smart folks (eg Roger Penrose) also assert things along these lines, but I can't begin to follow these arguments because conscious awareness just seems to me a natural consequence of animals evolving the ability to create and manipulate models.
Sometimes we just happen to build and manipulate reflective models of ourselves that capture aspects of our own model-processing--but that doesn't seem fundamentally different from many other internal-model driven behaviors--no quantum weirdness required.
Perhaps our own consciousness feels mysterious to us because access to our self-models is necessarily vague, murky, incomplete and sketchy--that is, well-adapted to the natural limitations of the jellyware platform we run on.
We're self-aware, but through a gloss, darkly. (This is probably a good thing, lest we be vulnerable to pinwheeling recursive nostalgia!)
We don't really come with a full introspective debugger that can dump the code that implements our reflexes and instincts for our inspection, analysis, optimization, refactoring or reimplementation.
For our augmented and automated descendents it may be a different story.
Isn't that outcome of natural evolution wondrous enough, without conjuring ghosts in the machines?
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
The meaning and purpose of life is to give life purpose and meaning. The instigation of violence indicates a lack of spirituality.
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
The meaning and purpose of life is to give life purpose and meaning. The instigation of violence indicates a lack of spirituality.
participants (6)
-
Cris Moore -
Dan Asimov -
Dave Makin -
Fred Lunnon -
Marc LeBrun -
meekerdb