• Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    It’s almost like we can’t make a machine conscious until we know what makes a human conscious, and it’s obvious Emergentism is bullshit because making machines smarter doesn’t make them conscious

    Time to start listening to Roger Penrose’s Orch-OR theory as the evidence piles up - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      Orch-OR

      Never heard of this thing but just reading through the wiki

      An essential feature of Penrose’s theory is that the choice of states when objective reduction occurs is selected neither randomly (as are choices following wave function collapse) nor algorithmically. Rather, states are selected by a “non-computable” influence embedded in the Planck scale of spacetime geometry.

      Neither randomly nor alorithmically, rather magically. Like really, what the fuck else could you mean by “non-computable” in there that would be distinguishable from magic?

      Penrose claimed that such information is Platonic, representing pure mathematical truths, which relates to Penrose’s ideas concerning the three worlds: the physical, the mental, and the Platonic mathematical world. In Shadows of the Mind (1994), Penrose briefly indicates that this Platonic world could also include aesthetic and ethical values, but he does not commit to this further hypothesis.

      And this is just crankery with absolutely no mathematical meaning. Also pure mathematical truths are not outside of the physical world, what the fuck would that even mean bro.

      I thought Penrose was a smart physicist, the hell is he doing peddling this.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      and it’s obvious Emergentism is bullshit because making machines smarter doesn’t make them conscious

      This is like 101 of bad logic, “this sentence is false because I failed to prove it just now”.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      You’re right that consciousness and intelligence are not the same. Our language tends to conflate the two.

      However, evolution created consciousness over billions of years by emergent factors and no source of specific direction besides being more successful at reproduction. We can likely get there orders of magnitude faster than evolution could. The big problem would be recognizing it for what it is when it’s here.

    • decivex@yiffit.net
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      6 months ago

      Throwing out emergentism because some linear algebra failed to replicate it is a pretty bad take.

    • blakestacey@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      The given link contains exactly zero evidence in favor of Orchestrated Objective Reduction — “something interesting observed in vitro using UV spectroscopy” is a far cry from anything having biological relevance, let alone significance for understanding consciousness. And it’s not like Orch-OR deserves the lofty label of theory, anyway; it’s an ill-defined, under-specified, ad hoc proposal to throw out quantum mechanics and replace it with something else.

      The fact that programs built to do spicy autocomplete turn out to do spicy autocomplete has, as far as I can tell, zero implications for any theory of consciousness one way or the other.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Bro the main objection to Orch-OR is that the brain is too warm for Quatnum stuff to happen there, and then they found Quantum stuff in the brain… So… not sure how it’s not suggestive of the reality of Orch-OR

        Edit: Btw, I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that Orch-OR is “Trying to throw out Quantum Mechanics and replace it with something else”, considering that it’s dependent upon Quantum Mechanics, and we have demonstrated that “Quantum Biology” is a thing in plants - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-it-comes-to-photosynthesis-plants-perform-quantum-computation/ and in birds - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01725-1

        So why not the brain?

        • self@awful.systems
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          6 months ago

          it’s very important to me that you don’t type the words “Blake Stacey” into a search engine while explaining quote unquote Quatnum stuff to them

        • blakestacey@awful.systems
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          6 months ago

          Kludging an “objective reduction” process into the dynamics is throwing out quantum mechanics and replacing it with something else. And because Orch-OR is not quantum mechanics, every observation that a quantum effect might be biologically important somewhere is irrelevant. Orch-OR isn’t “quantum biology”, it’s pixie-dust biology.