Electrons May Well Be Conscious(nautil.us)
nautil.us
Electrons May Well Be Conscious
http://nautil.us//blog/electrons-may-very-well-be-conscious
383 comments
Out of all the crazy theories about electron my favorite is single electron universe. That all the electrons and positrons are actually single particle that that goes back and forth in time, and positron are exactly the same as electrons just going in the opposite direction in time.
It neatly explains what and why is antimatter and why all particles of given kind are exactly the same. Although it's a hard sell because it predicts that all of the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking is not intrinsic or even spontaneous.
Also it make hard to wrap your head around how antimatter could form any macroscopic objects while going back in time. Or how it can behave exactly like matter while going back in time.
It neatly explains what and why is antimatter and why all particles of given kind are exactly the same. Although it's a hard sell because it predicts that all of the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking is not intrinsic or even spontaneous.
Also it make hard to wrap your head around how antimatter could form any macroscopic objects while going back in time. Or how it can behave exactly like matter while going back in time.
A while back I read 'Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41571759-conscious )
which attempts to promote panpsychism. It does a pretty good job at exploring the curious nature of consciousness, but panpsychism I think is just at the level of 'woo'. It makes the case that because we are having trouble with fully understanding what consciousness is, we must fully engage in exploring ideas like panpsychism. While I generally support coming up with all kinds of ideas and exploring them, the proponents of this idea seem a little too convinced it's a real thing based on zero evidence, they promote quite a bit through seemingly scientific "speak" but use words like "may" "might" "possible" etc to exploit the basic fact that we simply don't know yet and want to present it as a credible possibility.
Two things that don't fit:
1) Even if electrons have consciousness, why should it be linked to our consciousness?
2) Why is decision making the essence of consciousness?
The Schroedinger equation is just a model, not reality. There doesn't even have to be an undecided state in reality. But even if the universe is conscious and decides in every moment, that doesn't explain our consciousness. If everything is conscious, in an ever increasing density why don't we have several consciousnesses in our head? Why is our stomach not conscious?
And even if we are not free to make decisions, we could still be conscious in the same way that we watch sporting events without intervening. Actually I would argue that we never decide. We always 'choose' the most preferred option that deterministically depends on our state of mind. And yet, we are conscious.
1) Even if electrons have consciousness, why should it be linked to our consciousness?
2) Why is decision making the essence of consciousness?
The Schroedinger equation is just a model, not reality. There doesn't even have to be an undecided state in reality. But even if the universe is conscious and decides in every moment, that doesn't explain our consciousness. If everything is conscious, in an ever increasing density why don't we have several consciousnesses in our head? Why is our stomach not conscious?
And even if we are not free to make decisions, we could still be conscious in the same way that we watch sporting events without intervening. Actually I would argue that we never decide. We always 'choose' the most preferred option that deterministically depends on our state of mind. And yet, we are conscious.
I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in evolution of the quantum state of a system the collapse of wave function IS a form of proto-consciousness. Essentially the he is saying that WF collapse is how a system becomes 'aware' of the choice and consciousness emerges from there onwards. A Brain of sufficient/right complexity is a connectionist structure that is responsible for perceiving and/or translating it.
What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.
What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.
Spoiler: if you redefine "conscious" to whatever an electron is.
I've been trying to formulate thoughts I have on consciousness that make sense in my head, but I haven't been able to communicate it effectively.
Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc).
The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules.
So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements.
For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same "you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering device to make you act that way.
Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than "one consciosness".
Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my" consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through sleep or injury, etc).
The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me. There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules.
So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements.
For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same "you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering device to make you act that way.
Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than "one consciosness".
Intuitively we would think if an animal can move, meaning it has locomotion, it is NOT because it is intrinsic to all matter (i.e rocks), rather it is because there is some bio-mechanical reason for it. Scientist could figure out how things moved and the underlying cellular processes to obtain energy in order to do it. A proponent of this article then might say that all matter is in constant motion. Then we are not talking about the same things. We are talking about directed motion to obtain food or some goal for survival. Atoms are not alive so they don't need to survive and do not have goal-oriented motion. But then those same proponents would list off how electrons move according to laws that behave similar to living creatures etc. so its some intrinsic thing. You can't win with those people. They will always have a response framed in some narrow definition that does not have any basis for what we are thinking of what locomotion means. That's a long metaphor.
The mind-body problem is an interesting philosophical debate. It would be funny if our ancestors had been on to something the whole time with the various forms of panpsychism that have occurred throughout history. We tend to overestimate our own ingenuity and heavily discount the intelligence and natural intuition of the past. Not saying this is a credible theory, just an interesting reoccurring idea throughout human history.
No they may not well be.
IIT is pure sophistry - some years ago Scott Aaronson showed that using their definition of potential for consciousness electronic devices employing certain kinds of algebraic error-correction codes have it - meant as a reductio-ad-absurdum of IIT, apparently its promoters have decided to try and own the absurdity.
In other news - nautil.us is an utter garbage chute of an outlet, the new-science-journalism equivalent of British tabloids and I fully expect them to publish a psuedoscientific apologia for astrology or an evolutionary theory supporting the existence of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster - post-Darwinnian cryptozoology anyone ?
IIT is pure sophistry - some years ago Scott Aaronson showed that using their definition of potential for consciousness electronic devices employing certain kinds of algebraic error-correction codes have it - meant as a reductio-ad-absurdum of IIT, apparently its promoters have decided to try and own the absurdity.
In other news - nautil.us is an utter garbage chute of an outlet, the new-science-journalism equivalent of British tabloids and I fully expect them to publish a psuedoscientific apologia for astrology or an evolutionary theory supporting the existence of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster - post-Darwinnian cryptozoology anyone ?
Electrons may as well be <insert anything> as long as we cannot observe it. This is not interesting because the Occam's razor shaves it off instantly.
A much more tantalizing hypothesis (also unverifiable by construction) would be to assume presence of a metaphysical being which alters the probabilities of quantum processes ever so slightly as to have a macroscopic effect, but is careful enough to never do it for processes under direct experimental observation.
One can invent a number of such undetectable constructs, it's a good entertainment, and does show the limits of the scientific method. Practical applications of these are nil, though.
A much more tantalizing hypothesis (also unverifiable by construction) would be to assume presence of a metaphysical being which alters the probabilities of quantum processes ever so slightly as to have a macroscopic effect, but is careful enough to never do it for processes under direct experimental observation.
One can invent a number of such undetectable constructs, it's a good entertainment, and does show the limits of the scientific method. Practical applications of these are nil, though.
Worth looking at - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
Discussions of consciousness tend to frustrate me a bit. So many otherwise smart people, for some reason, simply do not understand the hard problem of consciousness. They'll say things like "well, consciousness is just a given pattern of physical stuff" but they do not realize what to me is an obvious objection - to say that consciousness is equivalent to a given pattern of physical stuff does not explain why that pattern of physical stuff is not simply present without any consciousness associated with it. I can imagine a being that is physically identical to a human in every way, but is not conscious - there is no reason to think that intelligent behavior requires consciousness. So what is the difference between such a being and a conscious human, if the two are physically identical?
From a logical standpoint, questioning whether Consciousness "exists" is ludicrous. Consciousness is the foundation of our capability to observe the world around us and make conclusions about it. Protons, electrons, atoms, molecules and other phenomena do not exist outside of our Consciousness and we cannot prove absolutely anything about the world that is not a part of our Consciousness. Therefore, if something is to be questioned, it is our strange desire to prove the existence of the only thing we are directly experiencing all the time - Consciousness. It's like a computer program becoming aware of itself and trying to find that awareness in the source code. It's not there.
When I used to commute via mass transit, my train load of people would all rush down the platform, into a plaza, and down only one escalator. You had people who would rush forward, people who would take a steady pace, and people who would hang back. I often times looked at the flow of people and it seemed to me it was extremely similar to a flow of particles.
There are a lot of different philosophical positions with regard to the mind-body problem, but very few attempts at a testable scientific theory about how consciousness works. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is such an attempt.
Nature Opinion article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory
Nature Opinion article: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory
We can not yet measure consciousness. We can not say for certain, as an example, whether a brain or AI that we design experiences it’s own consciousness or not. And yet, they are made as all the same particles as you and I.
We can say that consciousness is something to do with the links in our brain, but how many times can I slice a brain before it is not conscious? Does a brain sliced down into single neurons not experience the world as a billion separate individuals? If I were to reconstruct the brain from its individual parts, would those individuals feel as though they had died as their consciousnesses merged?
I’m willing to still accept the traditional view that consciousness is a special sauce. That when we reproduce, it’s something that we can fork, but it is not common in the universe.
And I think that the true litmus test to the nature of consciousness is to effectively kill someone by freezing them (so that they are actually dead in the sense there is zero electrical activity) and then successfully bring them back to a conscious state. Then you will have paused a consciousness, and yet it did not leave. I do not think it’s possible. I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious life.
We can say that consciousness is something to do with the links in our brain, but how many times can I slice a brain before it is not conscious? Does a brain sliced down into single neurons not experience the world as a billion separate individuals? If I were to reconstruct the brain from its individual parts, would those individuals feel as though they had died as their consciousnesses merged?
I’m willing to still accept the traditional view that consciousness is a special sauce. That when we reproduce, it’s something that we can fork, but it is not common in the universe.
And I think that the true litmus test to the nature of consciousness is to effectively kill someone by freezing them (so that they are actually dead in the sense there is zero electrical activity) and then successfully bring them back to a conscious state. Then you will have paused a consciousness, and yet it did not leave. I do not think it’s possible. I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious life.
I have taken multiple university courses in theoretical physics, in artificial intelligence and in neuroscience, including on the topic of consciousness.
I can directly observe my own consciousness and I can tell that without a doubt it can not be explained by current physics and "complexity". It is completely different in kind.
If you believe that consciousness could arise just from complexity and information processing, then you are frankly mistaken. Whether you lack a consciousness or just the introspective ability to perceive it... or I suppose a knowledge of physics.
Now beyond saying "there is something going on", things quickly become much more difficult. Pan-psychism is a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If there is some phenomenon going on at a macrolevel, then we do expect it to be made up things going on at a microlevel. Some kind of consciousness or proto-consciousness. But am somewhat pessimistic. We don't really know what we are even looking for, so how can we expect to find it?
The attempts to connect wave-function collapse with consciousness are unconvincing to me. It seems basically like tying together two things we don't understand with each other based on... not a lot.
I can directly observe my own consciousness and I can tell that without a doubt it can not be explained by current physics and "complexity". It is completely different in kind.
If you believe that consciousness could arise just from complexity and information processing, then you are frankly mistaken. Whether you lack a consciousness or just the introspective ability to perceive it... or I suppose a knowledge of physics.
Now beyond saying "there is something going on", things quickly become much more difficult. Pan-psychism is a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If there is some phenomenon going on at a macrolevel, then we do expect it to be made up things going on at a microlevel. Some kind of consciousness or proto-consciousness. But am somewhat pessimistic. We don't really know what we are even looking for, so how can we expect to find it?
The attempts to connect wave-function collapse with consciousness are unconvincing to me. It seems basically like tying together two things we don't understand with each other based on... not a lot.
Once you take this path, you can make up anything that you like. There's no way to test it. Except, I suppose, based on how you feel about it, how well societies work whose members believe it, and so on.
I read once of the NDE of a person that is very well documented. I think it was Pam Reynolds. http://www.neardth.com/pam-reynolds-near-death-experience.ph...
It is hard to explain if you do not want to consider that our counsciuness may trascend our mortal existence.
It is hard to explain if you do not want to consider that our counsciuness may trascend our mortal existence.
Since identical particles[0] are inherent in QM, I don't think you could even define what one "electron" is or what it might mean for it to be conscious. But conciousness (or rather, proto-qualia, which are the part of "conciousness" that really seems to demand some physical explanation) could subsist in more complex systems, probably involving a high-dimensional internal description as a result of some sort of stable quantum entanglement.
(Indeed, the fact that the sort of basic subjective experience we're familiar with seems to empirically exist as part of intelligent life is a rather compelling argument for non-trivial quantum computation of some sort being quite feasible in the real world.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles
(Indeed, the fact that the sort of basic subjective experience we're familiar with seems to empirically exist as part of intelligent life is a rather compelling argument for non-trivial quantum computation of some sort being quite feasible in the real world.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles
Back in the 1980s, I had an exam question in Michael Genesereth's AI class at Stanford, "Does a rock have intensions". I answered "no". I forget whether that was considered correct.
This was back when AI had more philosophy and less number-crunching. And didn't do much. "Common sense" and "intension" came up a lot back then, but "consciousness", not so much. There hasn't been enough progress on common sense and intension since then. Common sense is being able to predict the consequences of actions, actual or potential, with enough accuracy to get something done without damage. That's a concrete problem, and one that current AI systems do not do well.
We don't know enough yet to address the "consciousness" issue.
This was back when AI had more philosophy and less number-crunching. And didn't do much. "Common sense" and "intension" came up a lot back then, but "consciousness", not so much. There hasn't been enough progress on common sense and intension since then. Common sense is being able to predict the consequences of actions, actual or potential, with enough accuracy to get something done without damage. That's a concrete problem, and one that current AI systems do not do well.
We don't know enough yet to address the "consciousness" issue.
I would be very amused if modern science discovered souls (your "operating system") and the spiritual realm exist. Much like dragons/monsters were discovered (but renamed Dinosaurs). I already believe this so I am biased, but I do firmly believe that modern humans overestimate not only what they know but what they are capable of knowing and undetstanding. I think the realm of reality you interact with originated from elsewhere.
This and some of the topics I am learning about in quantum mechanics (like virtual particles) remind me of this:
"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." -- Hebrews 11:3 NIV
Just sharing an opinion and an observation.
This and some of the topics I am learning about in quantum mechanics (like virtual particles) remind me of this:
"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." -- Hebrews 11:3 NIV
Just sharing an opinion and an observation.
That sounds a lot like Deepak Chopra's pseudoscientific woo.
Scott Aaronson wrote about this before https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799
The title 'Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist (or, The Unconscious Expander)' tell you what he thinks of the theory.
Some more discussion also at https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7avunr/inte...
The title 'Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist (or, The Unconscious Expander)' tell you what he thinks of the theory.
Some more discussion also at https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7avunr/inte...
I theorize nothing is truly conscious. Everything reacts from a cause & effect "chain of forces" exerted upon everything in the Universe. I'm curious what we will learn when we can modify the human brain to be exactly the same as it was a year ago for an individual that volunteers to be such a test subject. Would all his/her memories be reverted back to that very day? Or would the experiment result in a failure because our concept of how we react to everything compared to other things in the universe is flawed.
I agree that conciousness of people is not "special", but why the need to add in an extra meta physical quantity of "conciousness". I agree it is probably a spectrum, but I think it is more just an emergent quantity.
People are just relatively high up on the scale so its different to imagine what other types of conciousness would be. Yes it is difficult to say what exactly is going on in a human brain, but I believe when you think it is entirely just a physical process, some very complicated electro-chemical interactions.
People are just relatively high up on the scale so its different to imagine what other types of conciousness would be. Yes it is difficult to say what exactly is going on in a human brain, but I believe when you think it is entirely just a physical process, some very complicated electro-chemical interactions.
If we consider a large group of people as a whole, can we say that this group has its own consciousness? For example Congress is a bunch of old dudes with their own consciousnesses, but as a whole it makes decisions by voting and other complex internal interactions between these individual consciousnesses. For an outsider, this organization behaves like a conscious being.
Another way to look at this idea is that consciousness is when we impose a boundary condition on a "medium" made of conscious "particles". I'd even compare humans with a liquid. When it flows freely, it obeys some general fluid laws and its behavior is rather uninteresting. It's when you confine a part of this liquid into some boundaries, the captured liquid starts to demonstrate some interesting effects. Same with humans. When they act freely and barely interact with each other, they form a uniform mess, but once we impose various boundaries, such as countries, companies or various forms of organizations, humans captured in those boundaries are forced to interact with each other more often and those interactions are governed by various laws, and at that moment these fictional entities start to look like conscious beings.
Another way to look at this idea is that consciousness is when we impose a boundary condition on a "medium" made of conscious "particles". I'd even compare humans with a liquid. When it flows freely, it obeys some general fluid laws and its behavior is rather uninteresting. It's when you confine a part of this liquid into some boundaries, the captured liquid starts to demonstrate some interesting effects. Same with humans. When they act freely and barely interact with each other, they form a uniform mess, but once we impose various boundaries, such as countries, companies or various forms of organizations, humans captured in those boundaries are forced to interact with each other more often and those interactions are governed by various laws, and at that moment these fictional entities start to look like conscious beings.
At the very least, this seems to me to be a way to avoid the difficult and interesting issues of, and relating to, consciousness. I am not interested in debating whether it is possible to come up with some definition of the word "consciousness" such that one can say that even electrons have it; I am interested in how conscious, self-aware, theory-of-mind-holding minds work.
I came up with a similar theory a few years ago. It's based on the idea of a Gaussian surface for information. The surface could be drawn around a rock or a person. In both cases, information passes into the surface from the environment (photons, vibrations, forces, motion, etc), is "processed" by the matter inside the surface, and emitted by the object after processing.
Things start to get weird when you play around with different time scales, and where to draw the surfaces. You might see a tree differently when you see it shifting and changing over longer time scales. It's also strange to think about drawing this type of a surface over different regions such as a classroom, non-contiguous regions such as every member of a family, or even conceptual regions such as mathematical functions, a scientific theory, or program source code.
Things start to get weird when you play around with different time scales, and where to draw the surfaces. You might see a tree differently when you see it shifting and changing over longer time scales. It's also strange to think about drawing this type of a surface over different regions such as a classroom, non-contiguous regions such as every member of a family, or even conceptual regions such as mathematical functions, a scientific theory, or program source code.
Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. I'm definitely comfortable saying that consciousness is correlated with complexity and information processing, but claiming that it is fully explainable in some mechanistic way sounds suspect to me.
It would sort of be like saying that since large electric charges have only been observed in nuclei with proportionally large mass, then somehow charge is just a manifestation of mass. When we go further it turns out that charge is fundamentally distinct from mass, in fact so distinct that we have to add an entirely new attribute to fundamental particles. The same story goes with spin. Once you have spin and electric charge you get magnetic moments. Ultimately the reason why a magnet is magnetic is because all of these subatomic particles conspire in just the right way to have a macroscopic effect. Of course, not all materials have the property of being magnetic even though they all are made from protons and electrons, but some materials are.
To me, trying to say that consciousness is just something emergent is like saying that electric charge is emergent from mass. I would not be surprised if some type of proto consciousness would be needed in order to understand how macroscopic objects like human brains are self aware, have sensations, etc.