Essay Abstract

The challenges facing humanity require not just action, but better understanding and transformation of the human mind. It is more important to find out why so many have trouble with lifestyle and cooperative issues (obesity, lack of sleep, employment and economic problems, increasing controversies and tensions between groups, etc.) than it is to design ever more clever cell phones and "pads" and so forth. We examine the problem of flawed thinking as both a factor reducing current well-being and advancement, as well as being a hindrance to human improvement and the forming of better minds and responses. It is argued that mechanistic models of consciousness and choice are inadequate. Appreciating that we are more than computing machines will lead to improved modes of thinking and behaving suitable for preparing and sustaining a better future, as well as inspiring us to make the vital effort.

Author Bio

My background is too complex to summarize simply. I consider myself a "Renaissance man" because of the variety of my studies and work. That includes social and physical sciences, consulting at Jefferson Lab using G4Beamline to model muon interactions, teaching at various levels, museum guide, and independently working on policy, philosophy and physical theory in my spare time. I am proud that Google search for "quantum measurement paradox" usually brings up blog posts of mine in top hits. I've published some articles about the relativistic dynamics of extended bodies, a sadly neglected topic.

Download Essay PDF File

Hi Neil,

Someone else wrote: "the explosive growth of human population requires us to one day leave the planet".

May I ask you to comment on this?

Best,

Eckard

    Eckard, that's a good question. I think it's impractical to send significant numbers of people into space, and planning it would distract and give false sense of security about problems on Earth. It still costs over $1000/kg under optimistic count to send mass into LEO (low Earth orbit.) The human population grows at about 80,000,000/year. We can't send the infants up so let's say 50 kg/person. So to compensate for the growth rate, optimistically but barring radical advances, we need to spend about $40 T/year just to get them up there, not even counting what to do with them once in LEO. And other methods like space elevator require huge investment, and still aren't cheap and then there are the facilities and so on, and to provide food and artificial gravity etc. This money is better spent making things better here, and better to tell ourselves that is what we need to do.

    - NB

    • [deleted]

    • Post #4

    Hi Neil,

    your essay introduces several stimulating points for discussion, but one that I like in particular is the topic of free will, and will power. You attribute special importance to the awareness that we are not computers, a sort of beneficial psychological effect that should help us behaving more effectively in our endeavours . You write:

    I also suggest that believing our minds are more than just computers can inspire us, as well as encourage more effective behavior such as the application of "will power."

    For the sake of discussion, allow me to express some doubts on this point. Let us consider the sentence: our brain is not just a computer or artificial neural network, it is *more*.

    On one hand we have a concept that we understand - the computer, the artificial neural network, or their future, increasingly powerful variants, expected to become so complex that we might even lose control on what they will do. On the other hand we have the totally obscure *more* of `it is more`. The suspect here is that we are trying to please our ego, as humans, by attributing ourselves some unknowable, metaphysical feature that should buy us a higher status, thus more optimistic perspectives for our future.

    In some sense, this reminds me of another misuse of the unknown: I refer to the fallacious idea that believing in life after death (with the hope of eternal heaven, or the fear of eternal punishment) should induce humans to behave more correctly.

    In the work of Teilhard de Chardin, who was not a computationalist, and was much respectful to transcendence and divinity, the notion of consciousness (with the associated concepts of thought, agency, spontaneity, creativeness, free will) all emerge purely from the growing complexity of matter - an idea that can be formalized, to some extent, by the work of G. Tononi on Integrated Information Theory.

    But I am not necessarily opening a discussion on the nature of consciousness here (did you read Hofstadter's "I am A Strange Loop", beside Tegmark's "Our Mathematica Universe"?); I just wanted to confute that the attribution of some metaphysical (or metamagical) status to our consciousness (or our immortality) should make us act more effectively for steering our future on Earth.

    Best regards

    Tommaso

      Tommaso, thanks for your questions. In answering them, I provide a good summary and defense for any reader curious about the point I'm trying to make. First, a background clarification: my proposal is basically a two-stage concept. It starts with a diagnosis that human thinking is flawed, using the example of the misplaced perfectionism behind flashlight design. I note other issues, and write that we need to teach "mistakeology" and better critical thinking. That much has wide support, albeit not a consensus, from various quarters. It would suffice by itself as a diagnosis and proposal about improving the functioning of the human mind, something I say is needed before we just start thinking about what to do, with these often misguided thought processes. Better to improve the process first, then apply our thinking. So far, nothing "mystical" involved - and if you want to, you could just take that much at face value and not query further.

      However, I think we need more than just a program of better training. I go on to suggest that we can *better* accomplish such a goal by appreciating our being more than computational intelligences, the more specifically useful feature being a matter of global willfulness. This is a rational argument, albeit supported hypothesis and not proof, not something revered as a matter of tradition. As for your specific concerns:

      1. "The alternative is vague." Sure, yet it is possible to argue that something is "not X" because X wouldn't be able to perform that way. It is sadly in the nature of logical entailment, that negations don't provide a specific alternative etc. Compare to around 1900, we knew that classical physics had to be wrong (no ether result, atoms don't collapse, quantized levels etc.) before we could work out the nature of the difference.

      I offer two specific arguments, and humbly note that I can't prove either one for certain - they are "arguments" at this point. One is that as a matter of principle, a computational system cannot detect or represent trans-mathematical realness (i.e, cannot "sense" or conceptualize that mathematical monism or extended "ultimate ensemble" Platonism is wrong.) It is rather rigorous in the sense of identifying a fundamental impotency. The tools to break out beyond abstract formalism just wouldn't be there as a matter of principle. Sure, I don't know what alternative process would be able to do that, but I suggest it is an intimate connection to material existence, beyond any "substrate independent" formal set of rules. (The latter concept is of course the whole problem with breaking out of "abstraction" to feel "I really exist.")

      2. Chauvinism/pride etc: Sure, this is something only intelligent beings could conceptually appreciate, but it has no chauvinism for humans compared to any intelligent species. Furthermore, I correlate the process itself to basic awareness of existence, "the feeling of being alive" that we could imagine animals having as well, although the ability of non-rational beings to appreciate this point in any way is not highly relevant.

      3. My next major argument is that we have some kind of "free will." Again, this is not for the sake of vanity, I have a specific counter argument to claims of bottom-up sourcing of behavior (consistent, of course it would happen too in any case). I note how unlikely it at least seems to be, that a bottom-up sourcing of behavior would be able to deftly manage sudden stops and resumptions of patterns of behavior. Again, it follows the model "X can't cause such and such since it wouldn't be able to," which again leaves us not sure what the alternative is. That is again, in the nature of negation. I do however find reasons to think that correlative phenomena could be key, due to recent findings about the persistence of quantum coherence in microtubules, and about myelin being less consistently distributed than previously thought (which would allow more correlative, "global" interaction due to leakage of information about impulses beyond the specific circuit of synapse-to-synapse etc.

      4. Furthermore, neither of these arguments claim that something non-material is at work; rather that the material world, and brains in particular, are more subtle than we have been giving credit. However I do deny that we should trust this is just more complexity in the same vein as before (ie, even more complex "programs" that are still of the same formal type as simpler ones, etc.) The point is not to stoke our egos about "we aren't just animals" etc (and again, distinguishing from other mammals etc. is not the point), but to inspire that we really are probably capable of more than we thought: perhaps more ability to insight, to empathy and caring about the world (if our awareness of "existing" means we are tied into a kind of panpsychic basis of consciousness and "soul" etc), and especially to the exertion of better "willpower" for better living and accomplishment, versus feeling and being trapped in habits etc. Note references to studies in which people who believe in willpower exhibit better self-control, and practice of it seems to strengthen it. It is not comparable to belief in an afterlife since we should be able to show the results of willpower training, possible new insights about correlative behavior in the brain, more appreciation of how people with very little cortex can be capable (like John Lorber's select hydrocephaly patients with IQs up to about 120, unlike most such sufferers) etc.

      5. Note that it is risky to compare and transfer attitudes based on some sense of a previous "mistake", maybe they aren't really alike. If this sort of investigation gave us reasons to believe in "will" and actual techniques to improve it, that would be a direct benefit and not just a "side-effect" argument such as belief in later punishment makes people behave better (but BTW, what if it did?)

      As for Strange Loops etc, yes I've browsed in that and Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid etc; and nothing in the picture they present gives reason to doubt either 1. a computational intelligence could not appreciate substantive existence or anything other than the abstractions it works directly with, or 2. a bottom-up behavioral process probably would not be able to globally manage sudden stops and resumptions.

      Willpower training? You must mean diverse factors involving willpower. Because a crying baby can cry for hours for the purpose of getting what they want.

      What factors of willpower are you considering exercising?

        James, I referred to obesity in the Abstract. This is an example where people are giving in to immediate impulses that are overriding their own desired overarching game plan. One important aspect of willpower training would be to develop effectiveness in using a game plan to control episodic stimuli and urges to do otherwise. In a nutshell, successful dieting etc. Improving health will make people happier, save them money on individual basis and overall cost reductions such as health care, more effectiveness and so on. In general, young people could learn to concentrate more on studies and get more done in a shorter time, people could continue working on complicated long-term projects that are easy to give up, etc.

        Actually we already have a type of willpower medication: methylphenidate (e.g. Ritalin ®), which increases dopamine in the frontal cortex. But I was thinking more in terms of exercises and practice, a safer way to do things overall.

        Dear Mr. Bates,

        You certainly made use of your varied occupational history to write one of the best languid meandering essays I think I have ever read. I hope you will not mind my leaving a comment about it.

        Reality is unique, once. Quantum Physics is not unique.

        With my best regards,

        Joe Fisher

          Dear Mr. Fisher,

          Thanks. No, I don't mind getting some "style" based critique from time to time. Yes, I do have a sort of ripe and bountiful style when writing "literary" type thoughtful pieces, rather than more technical papers. I am trying to be narratively interesting, with some personal "human interest," and not just a technical report. Indeed, I think it's probably a lot easier to read than my previous essays, which were also too predictably heavy about QM. I think the structural organization of the piece was nevertheless orderly enough. I started with an overview, about how people aren't ready "as is" to make the necessary planning and steps to steer a good future. Then I provided an anecdote from manufacturing custom to illustrate the prevalence of inadequate thinking. The section about mirror symmetry could have been left out, but I thought it would be insightful and fun to let the reader see how hard it can be to hash out "obvious" logical questions. Next I offered a possible solution to unemployment, as food for thought. They are separate examples to illustrate a theme.

          As for "so what do we do", I briefly outline a plan to teach more critical thinking and also willpower/choice training, which should have been clear enough. But I wanted to argue that such plans aren't enough by themselves, and to provide a theoretical support for our being able to do "more" in some sense than we think we're capable of. I hope to get some credit for creativity in that regard, since AFAIK both arguments (about consciousness and free will) are essentially original. To me, providing theoretical support for "free will" or at least, more global executive function than bottom-up models suggest, will help inspire as well as implement more willpower training: the major proposal in my view for how to help people do what needs doing. Like some other writers (e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder), I am more concerned with methodological assistance than specifying a menu of stated "correct" particular steps to improve our future.

          I will read your essay soon and comment in turn.

          BTW, I'm not sure what you last assertion really means. Can you clarify? (Sometimes brevity creates its own challenges ;-)

          Regards,

          Dear Mr. Bates,

          My essay REALITY, ONCE, will best clarify my brief comment. I do hope you get a chance to read it.

          Joe Fisher

          Dear Neil Bates,

          I find your essay to be more thoughtful than some others, high up, dealing with similar subjects. Lets see what happens when I undo that ridiculous '1' rating.

          James Putnam

            Neil,

            I rather liked your essay because it does ask necessary questions, even if admitting not having the answers. So I'm sorry to see it not well received.

            Best,

            John Merryman

              James,

              What's the old saying, "Great minds think alike." I'm afraid we have opened Neil up to the trolls though.

              John, James: thank you both. I seem to be doing rather well right now, at least. I've been rather busy but will be reading more of these myself soon. Questions: yeah, I thought it was important to delve into "what we are" and challenge some rather lazy presumptions, and not just make suggestions about what to do. I admit to being kind of wordy so readers might consider reading the sections about conscious awareness and willpower (even though IMHO the mirror symmetry passage is fun.)

              Hi Neil,

              your essay is very pleasant and effortless to read. You have asked the really big question 'what are we?'(not just a computer) and you have made the mundane interesting, I have never given thought to why my torch beams are as they are, or how they might be improved. I like the idea that we should all be looking at things and asking how they might be improved, and the suggestion that the answers may be surprising. There is also the saying if it ain't broke don't fix it. Which is probably why I have been living with an irrigation tap fixed with a champagne cord held on with cable ties!

              Obesity is linked to both stress, and distress, and lack of sleep, and blue light at night. To try to fight obesity with willpower is fighting against biology.It is something I feel quite strongly about. "The biggest looser" TV show is bullying for public entertainment.Loose weight while you sleep, / Stress linked to obesity, / Blue light has a dark side What is needed for good health is lifestyle changes.

              I love your final sentence which hits the nail on its head, Quote"We can only steer the future if we can better steer our own selves, and we will only passionately care if we think we are truly alive." Very well said. Good luck, Georgina

                • [deleted]

                • Post #17

                Dear Neil,

                Your contribution intrigues me and it is a pleasure to come with some remarks.

                I fully agree with you that our "morality" has to change deeply from egoistic short time economic thinking to a "sharing" all the goods and energy that we have (sunlight = energy).

                Understanding the technique of our material body is in my opinion (like yours) not an end-goal and will not contribute to a change of mentality, only to a more materialistic understanding leading to more "physical laws" that will lead to a thousand more questions, so that we are more and more busy with "matter". It is my view that "matter does not matter" because it is only a layer of reality, that emerges from what I perceive as Total Simultaneity, where our non-causal consciousness is part of. As Sean Carroll already said "Everything is made of Fields" The Consciousness Field is the catalyst for the "Matter Field" so that the excitation that we remember as matter is created.

                I fully agree also with your answer to Tomaso, the growing of humanity has to be controlled, it is as I also mention in my essay that in 50 years we will need another four or five "earth's" to nourish all these individuals, and politics will not be able to solve this problem.

                People are not really "stupid" indeed, it is only that because of the great numbers the most stupid as well as the most "wise" are both increasing and it is the first class that when put together have the greatest influence, because the wise man is a silent one...

                About your mirror image : each three-dimensional object for instance a cube has three sides you cannot see, however hold it in front of a mirror and you are able to become aware of the whole cube (all six sides) so the mirror image can be a help to have a full perception of three dimensional objects outside yourself. Indeed the left and right are interchanged, it is not a film that you are looking at, to have a good image you need to look into your camera on the computer...and look at the screen...first you are astonished because you are used to look in the mirror.

                About your problem with "work", Any "labor" takes time of your life, this time is only once , every minute is a "once in a lifetime" so in principle there is no reference for anybody else to give it a value. They say that people are happy when they work , but I have my doubts, the real problem is that people don't know how to fill their lifetime if they don't have to hunt for deer or labor on their land for vegetables...If mankind changes its mentality perhaps then....

                About machines that would be able to think : It is my perception that any computer even how big it might be will never be able to create because the system is binair, it is only BLACK OR WHITE it can choose from, not the infinity number of grey-tones that are in-between, it is our quantum based brain that is able to realize "thinking" because very Planck time there are choices to be made, leading to catalyzing the matter Field, so Descartes could also have said "I think so I create" . I wrote an article that maybe published in COSMOLOGY (depending on review) where I wrote how a "quantum computer could help us to enlarge consciousness I quote it here:

                QUOTE

                Time-Travel Becomes "ETERNAL -NOW- MOMENT HOPPING"

                The splitting in the original Many Worlds I interpretation goes only forward in time, not backwards. In our conception it IS possible that our consciousness "activates" Eternal Now Moments from other time/life-lines (or from parallel available universes) . Should this mean that time travel is possible ? Yes but...should we call this phenomenon time-travel ?

                What we are understanding as time-travel in this causal time/life line always leads to the well-known paradoxes like killing your grand-father. (What a mentality !!!) These paradoxes however are no longer problematic when we apply the perception of Total Simultaneity. Then time-travel in the past and/or the future would become ENM-Hopping, and the so called "physical" time/life-line (in our memory) continues normally. Our consciousness is able not only to hop from one ENM to another but also line up these ENM's and in this way creating for itself the best possible past and future, Real Free Will resides in TS.

                The extension of our Free Will lies in the extension of our consciousness and so in a closer contact with our NCC in order to realize more choices in the ENM availabilities. We think that the a future coupling of the quantum-computer and our brain will be an opening.

                In the article "Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules..." 16 Prof. Nick E. Mavromatos, proposed that :

                "For the first time there is concrete evidence for quantum entanglement over relatively large distances in living matter at ambient temperature, which suggests a rather non-trivial role of quantum physics in path optimization for energy and information transport" :

                (http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/329/1/012026) (14) ,

                It becomes clear that quantum entanglement and decoherence time, which are for the construction and the operational qualities of quantum computers the main issues, these qualities are are already available in our own brains inside the Cell Microtubules (MT).

                (decoherence = The particles that make up a computer interact with surroundings, so that information is spreading out, which means: this effect is spoiling quantum computations, (to decohere = lose their quantum properties)).

                Regarding the "macroscopic" aspect : Recent experiments on atoms in salt crystals have shown that an amount of 1020 atoms formed a hugely entangled state. Vlatko Vedral in "Living in a Quantum World" (Scientific American , June 2011) and "Progress Article Quantifying entanglement in Macroscopic Systems" (June 2008 Nature 453, 1004-1007 : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/full/nature07124.html .(21). Quantum Bit Storage is advancing not only in the macroscopic way but now also scientists have succeeded to retrieve coherent information for extended times (39 minutes) at room-temperature. See Kamyar Saeedi et al in "Room-Temperature Quantum Bit Storage Exceeding 39 Minutes Using Ionized Donors in Silicon-28" http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/830 (22)

                Our brains are RWA (Ready Willing and Able) to perform quantum states that when brought in coherence with a quantum computer. This will enable us to realize "ENM-Hopping".

                UNQUOTE

                So you see this one of the possibilities (I hope)

                I also hope that you will find some time to read my essay : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS ?", because as you are also a broad interested man we sure have perceptions in common, so I wonder what your comment on my thread will be and maybe you will be able to rate my contribution in accordance to your appreciation.

                (full article for Cosmology is attached I hope it works..)

                  P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

                  10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

                  9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

                  8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

                  7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

                  6 - slightly favorable indifference

                  5 - unfavorable indifference

                  4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

                  3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

                  2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

                  1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

                  After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

                  The following is a general observation:

                  Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

                  Dear Mr. de Wilde,

                  Thank you for your thoughtful, bountiful, and compatible comments. I could see just from your abstract that you have hit on a very similar idea to mine: that consciousness is neither a mere epiphenomenon, nor something reducible to operational capabilities. It is fundamentally connected to the ultimate constituents of which the brain is made, rather than "substrate-independent" logical operations. You also appreciate the role of quantum mechanics in mind (now supported by recent discoveries such as we both referenced, that renew the viability of models based on coherence in microtubules) as well as the basis of mind being connected to the physical sourcing of "realness" itself, rather than being a detachable alien addition to a mechanical universe. Furthermore, you appreciate that the binary and deterministic operations of computational systems can neither be truly conscious, nor have anything resembling "choice" - this is surely enabled by the quantum nature of the material world.

                  Yet the matter/mind nexus is itself ultimately a field as you note: and the correlative nature of fields, allows the brain to act holistically to be a "self." Then, it can exert the sort of self control needed to suddenly stop and resume complex behavior as if "turning on a dime." Yet we still need to draw out this potential (deliberate double entendre) so that we will have more willpower to do the things that need doing. Just "giving advice" won't be good enough (altho it is still welcome.) We need to literally teach willpower training. Your more far-reaching speculations are interesting but I don't know what to make of them. Personally I don't believe in MWI, so I don't speculate much about how that system would affect mental functioning, but we just don't know ...

                  Sadly I can't open your essay, perhaps the Adobe version is too recent for my old machine. Consider emailing me a version saved as earlier (like 7.0), thanks.

                  Georgina, thanks for your encouraging comments. Yes, most people don't think about the basics of why things are made like they are. I think much of the time, it's "custom" rather than "best design", and we need to change that. My essay is of course not just a laundry list of proposals, but a head-on attempt to get at the basis of human mentality (both regarding "awareness" and "will"), and try to use that to better enable more optimal, less hide-bound thinking. I want to be more optimistic than you and most people, about our potential ability to fight nature's urges and habits. We already know that people who believe in and practice willpower (whatever it ultimately is) can exert more self control and eat fewer snacks etc. (altho as we know, relapse is a problem.)

                  Reducing stress and bad environmental influences however, does help - we aren't just plugging away with our wills in a vacuum. I have installed orange lights to turn on at night for awhile before retiring, to reduce the influence of the bluish rays that you mention (they reduce melatonin and increase stress chemicals, and are found even in unfiltered incandescent light - fluorescent is even worse.)

                  I like the regard for and attention to nature that you express in your own essay, (as did many other writers - this is to me a good sign.) We are indeed learning better ways of doing things from studying nature - for example, seashells have shown how to make tough armor. Applying such techniques to humans is of course controversial and will require the highest ethical standards and collaboration and consensus. But the world faces such great challenges, so we will probably have to try exotic and possibly radical techniques at some point. Cheers, good luck to you.