Theories of consciousness

[Admin]

Our brain is mostly a classical computer but it's still not deterministic since quantum indeterminism will affect the outcome, it is this indeterminism that allow for a subjective experience.

Indeterminism does not mean total unpredictability, we can still calculate probabilities such as

Decision A: 90%
Decision B: 7%
Decision C: 2.99%
Decision D: 0.01%

This allows for a more general interpretation of quantum mechanics where |ψ|² gives the probability of a particular decision.

A lot of aspects of human intelligence has already been replicated with classical neural network and thus there doesn't seem to be any real need for quantum computations, Roger Penrose was simply wrong.

 

[Melenarpl]

The infinite chain proof of reincarnation
You having a conscious experience now in your current body can be causally explained by you having an earlier conscious experience and this being a continuation of that, if there is no earlier conscious experience then you having a conscious experience now in your current body begs explanation.

Why should your consciousness end next if it already go back an infinite amount of time?

The probability of your individual incarnation being the last is at most 1/∞ = 0

If it is possible for a consciousness without beginning to end the number of souls of the universe would have to decrease over time with no new ever being created.

Having the number of souls strictly decrease over time results in at least one of the following 2 things

0. The probability of you having a conscious experience at a given moment decreasing with time meaning you would have been infinite times more likely to have a conscious experience in the past rather than now.

1. The time between each incarnation increasing as you wind time back tending to infinity.

Making the causation chain infinite both backwards and forwards in time resolves these issues, thus we can conclude that consciousness has no first beginning or final end.

 

[Admin]

Continuation of your consciousness
If your consciousness is tied to brain-structure said structure (sufficiently similar) will eventually emerge again.

But what if your old brain is destroyed and 2 new sufficiently similar brains are created at the same time?

In that case your conscious experience will have a condinuation in both brains and this will remain to be the case for some time until they diverge and then your conscious experience will continue in one of the brains.

 

[Admin]

Boltzmann brains
Brains can emerge in 'empty' space spontaneously and exist long enough to allow for a conscious experience and this is one of the mechanism in which your consciousness can have a continuation after death.

From this we can conclude that our universe cannot just keep expanding forever since otherwise you would be infinite times more likely to experience life in a Boltzmann brain.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.0233.pdf

We can also conclude that the average matter density of the universe cannot be zero or very close to zero since then you would be far more likely to experience life via a Boltzmann brain rather than some biological brain.

Our universe can be finite via spacetime curvature (closed universe) or by having an edge that expand so fast it's impossible to reach the edge.

 

[Admin]

Cyclic cosmological models
Current research suggests that dark energy is getting stronger and if true our universe will end via the big rip allowing for a new universe to emerge with different constants of nature 147 148 149 156

The “hubble tension” could also be due to astronomers failing to properly measure the expansion of our universe opening up the door for the (big bang, big crunch) cyclic model 150

We can also conclude that our universe must be finite in size, recent observations points to our universe being closed but it's still vastly bigger than the observable universe 151 152

The apparent fine-tuning of ‘fundamental’ constants of nature suggests that our current universe hasn't been the only universe.

In conformal cyclic cosmology it is assumed that the universe will become totally massless resulting in the universe forgetting how big it is and a new big bang will follow 153 154 155

 

[Admin]

Quantum soul?
Quantum information cannot be copied or destroyed, only transferred, thus you cannot copy or destroy a quantum soul, it can only be transferred.

You cannot measure a quantum soul since a quantum state will collapse when you try to measure it.

One quantum theory of consciousness is “orch or” 156 157 it was developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, there are many issues with orch or and similar approaches 158

Roger Penrose has suggested that the collapse of the wave function(quantum mechanics) occurs by itself after a time depending on how large the separation in space-time is. There are many issues with the “orch or” theory. "orch or" builds on the "penrose interpretation" of quantum mechanics which hasn't been confirmed yet experimentally, it is very likely that the “orch or” interpretation in particular is wrong.

Generally the problem with orch or is that it might not be possible to have quantum computations of that scale at that temperature, Hameroff mentioned that spin has properties required to work on large scale. Even if quantum computations on large scale(brain) aren't possible in normal temperatures it does not mean that quantum computations don't happen in the brain.

Recent advancement in AI has shown that artificial (classical) neural network can outperform all humans on earth at specific tasks, we may not actually need quantum computations for general intelligence either.

159 160 161 162 163

A molecule capable of creating quantum entanglement in the brain was found 2015

http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05929

If your consciousness is due to a quantum soul then consciousness should be everywhere in the universe and why then do you experience life now via a biological body rather than on mars?

One potential resolution for this is that you do not experience much if any passage of time unless your quantum soul is captured by a biological brain where the passage of time you experience will depend on the size of said brain explaining why you experience life now as a human rather than some insect.

 

[Creamer]

have you read kiln people by david brin ?

 

[Admin]

I think this guy presents an interesting mechanism to solve all of this:

The radio analogy doesn't really solve anything. Its unclear what the specific proposal even is.

A better analygy is a picture of the letter H, that is a real physical thing that represent something abstract. This is an analogy to the brain being a physical manifestation of abstract mathematics, this however may not actually be how consciousness works.