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I didn't understand the paper. Since it referenced many worlds multiple times I assume it is false. Or possibly even a prank.
Edit: Looking more at the paper, I don't think it is a prank, but I don't trust it because of the many worlds references.
Here is a link to a more readable account of Frank Dodd (Tony) Smith, Jr's theory: http://www.soebooks.com/11/240-of-25...Theory-of.html
I presented that link as a look-see at what the top dogs are using mathematically. To say they are wrong would be the height of presumption for me, since I understand the math slightly better than a third grader understands algebra.
I actually could not tell you what the author believes, after perusing the article, only that some very sophisticated tools are at work. I have wanted to get a look at the how researchers were approaching unraveling any connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness. I was curious as to what kind of tool the great researchers would feel had some kind of chance at discovering these truths. Now I know. That is all. I do not side with anyone because I do not know enough to side with anyone.
This article summarizes quantum mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Smith's theory seems to be related to the Penrose-Hameroff position which I assume is still being pursued although its original version has encountered some falsification.
My gut feeling suggests that the brain is itself not conscious nor does it allow for consciousness to emerge from it. I don't think this is a quantum mind position, but I don't understand the quantum mind well. Regarding the brain, I suspect I would be closer to Chalmers on the issue. No physical theory, quantum or classical, can reduce consciousness to something objective and unconscious.
I was looking for more information on quantum whatever and found this interview with Amit Goswami which made some sense to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQ63AOrs6s
It is about an hour. Some of the notes I took were:
1) Objects are possibilities.
2) Consciousness chooses without any signals.
3) There was some research done by someone called Greenberg (?) in 1993 that I would like to look up showing that human brains interact non-locally. EDIT: I think I found the paper: http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Grinberg1994.pdf
4) I didn't understand his reference to Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach", but I will have to look further into that regarding "tangled hierarchies" which has to do with perceiving and memory both being necessary for each other to exist.
5) Nothing becomes something.
6) Sheldrake's morphogenic fields allow for something I was unclear about although I have heard about this concept before.
Anyway, just something else that is hopefully related to the topic.
These gentlemen all have a lot of pretty ideas. If consciousness cannot unfold from the brain, then it seems clear you do not believe in a creator. For the creator itself would have had a schematic in mind from which it created us.
What do you mean by a "schematic"? I was just thinking how sexual reproduction is almost anti-machine-like. It is also communal. Machines are individualistic and isolated.
Even quantum particles seem to behave as a group. Push them individually through a double slit and the final result forms the familiar wave pattern on the detection screen. Their choices seem to be based not only on their individual choices but on an overall group choice.
I also found reference to a neuroscientist, Mario Beauregard. His book, "Brain Wars", was in the library and I'm reading about placebos now.
I have only read the paper so far. Tough to emerge from it with any detail. Fortunately, the authors present word pictures to help dummys like me. Pretty impressive. I wish I were doing some of that research. To really understasnd it, I believe that would be necessary for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
The experiments speak volumes in support of swamis and gurus who meditate. It seems the actual effecs are minimal, however. No one has meditated strongly enough to lift a battleship from the water and place it a mile inland. I do not see that as possible with any amount of "mind power."
I do not believe the Global Consciousness Project has any results to brag up. Whatever the effects of meditation and concentration are, it seems they are small and unable to affect the larger scale of the world directly. Not surprising.
Can minds throw objects from a distance without touching like superheros? Not so far. Will it ever happen? I will not say it is impossible. There are no superheros yet.
If materialism were true, there should be no effects at all. Not even small ones. It is probably a good thing they can't lift battleships out of the water.
Beauregard's "Brain Waves" is an interesting summary of placebo/nocebo effects, neurofeedback, neuroplasticity, hypnosis, psi, out-of-body experiences and mystical experiences. If materialism were true, none of these should even be reported.
I also found a copy of Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe". His views in the video I linked to earlier have made me wonder just what he promotes. He seems to be a monistic idealist, that is, someone who maintains that consciousness is the only fundamental reality. That is my position. I am hoping he has a better support for that position than I do.
I just read in Goswami's book (page 21) that Turing himself admitted that psi would be a way for a machine to fail the Turing test. The following quote is from "COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE" http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html where Turing addresses the "Argument from Estrasensory Perception":
I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in.
Turing wrote, "If telepathy is admitted it will be necessary to tighten our test up." He would have to devise some "telepathy-proof room" assuming that were possible. Perhaps the best way would be to not allow any questioning that tested for psi ability.
Since we discussed the Turing test earlier, I think this argument by Turing himself is better than Searle's Chinese room argument I used earlier.
Have not had time to listen to everything yet. Been busy elsewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
Just some passing thoughts.
For something to have no coding implies...
It means it would have that in common with randomness...
If consciousness has no coding, is it possible nevertheless with approximation techniques to get as close as any epsilon one can name to true conscious behavior, the way we get very close to randomness with psuedo random techniques?
I think perhaps so, but I realize in your view there must always remain an impassable gulf.
Psuedo random techniques fool people all the time, in sort of an analogy of the Turing Test. Psuedo randomness is the bread and butter of casinos.
There is also something called a "reverse Turing test" that has more practical importance than the Turing test itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Turing_testQuote:
Originally Posted by desiresjab
This is when you want to be able to tell if you are talking to a human being or some computer or program especially with an internet exchange of information. This is why you have to type in those characters distorted in an image when entering information on some web sites. So the practical problem may be how to tell with a reasonable probability that a human being is on the other side of the communication.
In the future one might be able to use psi as a test as well. This assumes that we all have some psi ability and that a test can be formulated that would be able to detect this with the probability of false positives being low enough to be acceptable.
If there is anything to quantum consciousness, I have to assume that traditional methods of meditation, prayer et al, must have reached the human limit of what is naturally attainable. As in other fields of investigation and endeavor, I would expect science to now take over, determine if there is anything to it, codify it and learn to considerably increase human psi under labratory conditions under the right stimuli. Such "techniques" would not be for the common man, at least not at first. Later they might be installed in a parlor game, some kind of futuristic analogy of the ouija board.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I just found the link below. This is a gateway video. It begins with a simple counting function defined by Ramanujan and clearly explains how this leads to the intricate math of modular equations. Along the way stand by for the uniting of many objects from diverse fields of higher math into a coherent and understandable picture. Such objects as p-adic and l-adic numbers find their applicability in successive scales of the Mandlebrot set. We talked earlier about how mysterious the function of p-adic numbers was. For anyone with enough understanding who gets through this video, the practicality of that metric system will not remain a mystery. I think there is even a reference to Lie or Clifford algebras.
Earlier in the discussion we referenced Kronecker, by noting he belonged to a by now minor school of mathematical philosophy that insists real numbers, and in particular whole numbers, are the basis of reality. As he famously said: God invented the whole numbers, man invented all the rest.
The progress of the problem of counting the additive partitions of a whole number as outlined in the video, definitely moves in a direction Kronecker would have applauded, from approximations to exact numbers as solutions. Of course this is precisely the direction mathematicians always aim to move in the first place.
Many of these tools are the same ones being used by modern physicists and cosmologists in their investigations. Group theory is another field that is brought into focus briefly by the video. It is one of those averarching concepts that unites phenomena as diverse as the numerical and the physical into common systems. Groups are critical in the study of elementary particles. The way many things can behave are explained by permutation groups, which essentially manipulate and map symmetries, putting every symmetry through its paces, so to speak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj4FozCSg8g
It was interesting seeing research on partition numbers in the video you cited.
There is an article in Space.com that suggests that half the identified planets by Kepler are false positives: http://www.space.com/31320-kepler-gi...positives.html.