PixyMisa said:
If the human brain relies on properties of QM*, which is quite possible as QM has been found integral in some functions of various other biological entities, I don't think this can be assumed. As Penrose supposes, the CNS of humans may have functions that are non-computable. BTW Penrose never suggested anything magical about the brain or consiousness that would violate the laws of physics.
Quantum mechanics does play a direct role in certain biological processes, most notably in photosynthesis. But it cannot do that in the case of consciousness, for a couple of key reasons. First, consciousness does not show any properties of a quantum-mechanical process; rather, it shows all the properties of a large-scale switch network.
What are the properties of a quantum-mechanical process shown by photosynthesis? I don’t think this a reasonable argument against the idea. My understanding is that such properties would not necessarily be observable unless you were looking very closely at the right thing.
Second, and perhaps even worse, the time scale is
hopelessly wrong - it's out by between 10 and 17 orders of magnitude. Penrose's model of consciousness
is a violation of the laws of physics, and a particularly horrible one. We had a thread a while back where I gave a list of examples of ideas that were off by that degree, things like trying to take the Atlantic Ocean home with you in a bucket, or eating an omelette made of every egg laid by every chicken that has ever lived.
Maybe. Given that propagation of signals backwards in time is a possibility with QM, I don’t see this objection as convincing.
* not necessarily randomness as QM has a number of strange and seemingly spooky properties.
Yeah, but randomness is the one that is explicitly non-computable and needs to be addressed by a computational approach.
Since a computational approach can simulate pseudorandom numbers, I don’t see that as an obstacle to a simulation of consciousness.
Perhaps the synchronization of different types of brain waves (study that Piggy linked to earlier) relies on a property of QM?
No, even Penrose would point out that this would be physically impossible. I call it the Magic Fairy Field Theory of Quantum Consciousnes, just to let you know where I stand.
Call it what you like. We have no idea how such synchronization might occur given that we only recently discovered that it does occur. Most likely it will be a result of more mundane processes.
But I recall that a few years ago there were people far more knowledgable than I that were similarly scoffing at the idea that living systems could make use of the properties of QM at all. Now it’s an established fact. My point is that such declarations of “it’s impossible” don’t hold much water at this point.
PixyMisa said:
This seems even more biased. The fact of the matter is that we simply don’t know at this point. It’s a reasonable supposition that the answer is yes based on our current knowledge, but it requires extrapolation to a much larger and more complex system that we are capable of creating at this point.
That's exactly the magical thinking that's the problem here.
Why should that be considered magical thinking? Your reasoning below does not hold and bias seems to me the more likely explanation.
We know we can computationally model physical systems. We have had ever-inreasing success over the years modeling ever-increasingly complex systems.
Yes.
There is no basis in physics or mathematics for supposing there is any fixed limit to how far this process can go. Certainly it becomes very computationally expensive for large systems modeled at small scales, but we can calculate exactly how expensive.
Yes.
Saying that we can go this far and no farther is the same sort of thinking that creationists use when they claim that evolution only happens within a "kind".
No one has said that we can only go this far and no farther. What's been said is that we have only gone this far and we do not know how far we can go with this approach. While there is no basis for supposing that a fixed limit exists, there is also no basis for supposing that the theoretical limit is infinite rather than finite.
It also requires an assumption of the emergent behavior that will spontaneously arise from that larger and more complex system.
No assumption; observation.
You can't observe what emergent behavior will occur when we are currently unable to create the larger and more complex system. We can only observe such behavior in animals. It’s an assumption until we can actually make such observations.
I don’t see why the declaration of ‘I don’t know’ in answer to that question should be indicative of anything other than an acknowledgement of that.
If we establish that 1+1 is 2, and 2+1 is 3, and I ask what is 1+1+1, and the response is that we can't know the answer to that, then we have a problem.
That’s not what is happening here. It’s more like moving from 1+1 is 2 and 2+1 is 3 to Fermat’s last theorem. Except in this case, no one has yet established what the correct answer is in a definitive way. So I ask again, why should the declaration of ‘I don’t know’ in answer to that question be indicative of anything other than an acknowledgement of the fact that it the answer isn’t established yet. OTOH claiming we have observations about the behavior of large complex systems that don't yet exist seems far more deserving of a description of 'magical thinking'.
