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]

    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.

      Post script: your title includes a classic belief, that having it too easy ("smooth seas") keeps people from doing their best. Surely much truth in that, and I think that challenges also stimulate and build up willpower (for one reason, since we have to keep plugging away at something and can't give up - yet must remain flexible if things change. Being able to do both is the essence of power of mind.)

      The planet is in itself like a unit cell in biology,humanity just makes a menial bit of biomass in that we're animals,insects outnumber us,yet their destructive footprint is meagre.why can' t we have ants & bees as models.

      Dear Neil,

      Self-regulation of bio-system is much obvious while universe itself is a Real-time control system. In this aspect, biosphere is a part of the control system of the universe whereas Humanity is external to it and this is causal for the impact on the control system of the universe that effects climate change. Thus Humanity needs predeterminations for its regulations to minimise its impact on the control system of universe, in that I agree that individual self-determination is imperative.

      While the measurement problem in quantum mechanics implies with the restructuring of atomic analogy, in that ascribing matter as eigen-rotational string-matter continuum rather than in Corpuscularianism, seems to be empirical.

      In this scenario the nature of substrate and the substrate dependency of mind are described with the string-length variability on eigen-rotations of string-matter segments, in that continuous random variable to discrete random variable defines quantisation of string-length.

      With best wishes,

      Jayakar

      4 days later

      Hi John,

      I think you do have a great mind. I just disagree with your views. Where does that put me? :) We did agree about the worth of this essay. I saw that, after it was raised up, it declined in rating for a while, but, it has successfully rebounded and is in the vicinity where it belongs. The '1'ners failed. I have had to overcome four '1's and two '2's. My essay is a little lower rated than Neil's, but I think that the ratings now reasonably reflect true values. You are doing well in the contest. Good luck to both you and Neal.

      James Putnam

      7 days later

      Hi Neil,

      It is a pleasure to re-meet you here in FQXi. Congrats, this is a nice and particular Essay. Here are my comments:

      1) Asking "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" it is really a fundamental point.

      2) It was intriguing that encounter of trying flashlights "opened" your mind.

      3) I agree with your statement that people lack an appreciation of paradox and irony".

      4) The nice issue consequently to your question "do plane mirrors reverse left and right?" recalled me the famous issue of the Feynman sprinkler in Feynman's book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", in which a sprinkler-like device is submerged in a tank and made to suck in the surrounding fluid. The question there is how would such a device turn?

      5) I do not know how rational is current clunky tax policy in your country. I assure you that, sadly, it is very crazy here in Italy.

      6) Your statement that "Thinking We Are More Than Machines, And Doing More" recalls me a famous aphorism of the greatest Italian poet Dante Aligheri: "Humans are created to obtain virtue and knowledge rather than living as brutes.

      7) David Lewis' concept of modal realism, asserting that all possible worlds are equivalently existent, is the opposite of the String Theory's concept that the world must adapt itself to String Theory.

      8) I completely agree with your conclusions that "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".

      You wrote a very interesting Essay. I give you an high score.

      I hope you will have some time to read also my Essay.

      I wish you best luck in the Contest.

      Cheers,

      Ch.

        Christian,

        I'm glad you liked my essay. Yes, it is rather jarring to think that a simple manufacturing issue illustrates a big problem in human thought, but such pivot-point insights are in the fine tradition of James Burke's "Connections" and works by Jared Diamond, et al. My position about mind in nature is somewhat like Searle's biological naturalism, in that something about brains and there deep nature is required for genuine consciousness, not just interchangeable AI programming protocols. And yes, modal realism as a purely logical concept is quite different from the string theory idea that there is a fundamental physical reality with its own specific nature. I'm glad that you and several others appreciate that just throwing proposals around is not enough - we need to think we have the will do make them happen, and feel like our minds are more than machines, to consider it a worthwhile enterprise that we can control. The future is not determined, we can make it better.

        My essay deals with the issue of real human minds versus machine-minds. One of the classic attempts to show that AI protocols don't produce real thinking and consciousness is John Searle's "Chinese Room." In it, an operator has a mass of notes describing how to output "reasonable sounding" (pass Turing Test) answers in Chinese, to questions in Chinese. Searle and "mysterians" such as myself say, no the CR does not really understand Chinese. (It's a separate issue, which I tackle in my own essay, whether simulating the neurons directly - rather than the overall process - can actually be done to create real consciousness. I say no to that, as well.) I thought of some further refinements about the Chinese Room which readers should fine interesting. Anyone heard of anything like the "Addition Room" below?

        Searle says, the CR doesn't really "understand" Chinese because of course, he means something more than just producing the output - why else emphasize the alternative way the CR does its job? (Again, it is "the system," the virtual mind, that is claimed not to understand. We knew the human operator doesn't know Chinese - let's put that straw man to rest.) His critics say, yes it does, because they (in simple essence) define "understanding" as performance. Searle's objections have little chance against a near tautology, built for convenience rather than insight. Any challenge involving "it produces X, but ...." will be taken as "understanding," yet the "but" will be ignored. Even Ned Block's similar "blockhead" xxx is absorbed. But being able to do things is ... being able to do them. You can't force coverage or co-option of other intended meanings or phenomena through announcement or circular definitions. Instead, let's reconsider afresh whether such behavior should always be taken as "understanding."

        First, it is too easy to let the CR give only generic answers. Ask the CR personal questions about itself, and seek elaboration, such as (in translation): "what is your favorite color? Are your feelings easily hurt? Do you approve of GMOs? Do you have a religious faith? What were your unspoken thoughts a minute ago? Imagine an animal, what does it look like?" Ah, now what? Answers would be lies in effect, or at least empty falsehoods. The process designer needs to construct a plausible but imaginary subjective "self," with a history, to go with "understanding Chinese." Isn't that more to do, with deeper implications? Who decides what is credible - the educated public, or canny psychologists? Then, what about describing noises, external things - that can't be programmed into the CR. Understanding Chinese means being able to talk about what you're looking at, or a theorem you just thought of.

        The functionalist critique is wearing thin. What if we defenders of the CR say: really understanding Chinese means capability to give honest answers to all questions? (To keep the "game" game, we can exclude direct distinctions etc.) Yes, "how can we tell," but it's also game to pose this conceptual distinction and to show where one is coming from. Perhaps the following is the ultimate refinement: can we teach French to the CR? It seems the programmer would have to include all possible languages, since the CR cannot pick them up "naturally." That final task looks truly undoable, at last. And a real mind that can understand Chinese, can learn French or a newly invented language. This gets sticker and stickier for functionalists once we try harder to make their job harder.

        Now consider something simpler and perhaps decisive: the "Addition Room." The AR stores all answers to integer addition questions like, 7 5 = ? (within some range.) It does not do any computation. So, someone inputs A B. The AR operator (a Chinese peasant who never learned Arabic numerals) just looks up the question on a table, finds the answer stored by it, and sends that out. "Look, I put in 7 plus 5 and got 12. This thing can add." Really? Sure it gives you the answer, we stipulated that - but should we accept "addition" being literally defined as just coming up with the answers? How about defining "doing addition" as truly calculating the answer, by computational summing of the inputs. The system does not know how to add. It provides the answer without "doing addition." It comes down to: if either A or B can produce C, I get to pick which of the first I mean by "doing X." (For overall meaning, priority wins.) Now the irony: the AR isn't even a true computational intelligence. How can you agree, "the Addition Room doesn't really do addition"; but say "the Chinese Room really does understand Chinese" - ? Delving deeper, what if we imagined that real computation produced some kind of "experience", that just looking up answers did not?

        Neil,

        Another great essay extending your important insights yet further in exposing our flawed thinking methods and poor use, even abuse, of the great potential of our grey matter. You'll recall we closely agreed last year and I find we do so again.

        I love your idea that "...we need to teach mistake avoidance. Our educational institutions are not tackling this, but continue to act as if imparting knowledge and positive specific competencies is enough." and; "...we need to train minds to think in intrinsically less fallacious ways, to be more creative, to be less intimidated by practical custom".

        I think your essay's certainly worth a high score and have such pencilled in on my modulation sheet. That's not just because we 'mirror' each other views (no, not reversed!!) but it was also well written and argued, and importantly right on topic (as well as plain 'right'!).

        I do hope you get to read and score mine. I take our shared views and apply them to find how it's possible to resolve the 'measurement paradox' nonsense of QM with a classical mechanism. Read with my last 3 essays the way to logical unification of SR and QM is cleared (see also reproduced end note experiment). I think you'll like Bob's subtle(ish) thoughts about thinking, and results.

        Unfortunately the way we train scientists means most turn away or run away screaming from such unfamiliar thinking and solutions. Are we bashing our heads against a stone wall?

        Should we keep going anyway in case it crumbles one day to show the way ahead?

        Peter

          Peter,

          Thank you for liking my essay and finding it worthwhile and interesting. Yes, we do need to teach "mistake avoidance" - this is not just abstract critical thinking, but specifically geared to uncover the sorts of things that actually go wrong due to institutional inertia, psychological hangups like inappropriate idealization, etc.

          As for your own essay, yes I am interested in the measurement problem in QM (indeed, type "quantum measurement paradox" into Google and see my posts in top several hits.) I already scanned your paper, think it's charming to have a sort of story involving Alice and Bob, the famous entangled couple, in space flight and testing strong correlations as also a tribute to the twin paradox (not the very same physical issue, but the idea of comparing such travelers. Yet relative simultaneity does play a role in these QM arguments.) Your argument is rather deep and complex so it will take a bit of time to hash it out, but I admire your careful attention to detail and the creativity I already see.

          Dear Neil,

          Thanks for your kind reply. I appreciate that you agree with my criticism on string theory.

          I hope you will take a change to read and comment my Essay.

          All the best,

          Ch.

          Neil,

          Thanks. I hope you get into it before the deadline. It's only really 'deep' because QM is a bit deep in detritus! The solution is simple;

          1) Electron spin flips with detector field direction so the 'finding' also flips, and

          2) When bodies interact (measurement) the OAM transfer varies with the latitude of the tangent point (varying with EM field/setting angle) and the rotational speed varies by the COS^2 of the angle with the (common) emitted particle equatorial axis - that's all the 'entanglement' then needed.

          Shocking I know, and won't be countenanced by mainstream however true as it's not 'familiar'. That's why understanding can't advance any more!

          C'est la vie (for a little while anyway). We both seem to have slipped a lot Your score gong on now. Well done. I hope it gets you back into the final cut.

          Best wishes.

          Peter

          Peter, thanks for commenting again. I'm working out your argument and will have more specific things to say later, and I will assess and do that before the deadline. I will rate according to effort, creativity, and strength of argument, even if not sure I am yet convinced. (These wrangles about QM often go on and on, with no clear resolution - note the back and forth bickering over whether and how Born probabilities can be derived out of continued evolution of superpositions in MWI. Personally, I don't think that will work, and am as appalled by many worlds as I suspect you are ...) Let me ask a preliminary question: does your argument work as easily for photon polarization as for "genuine vector spin" of say, electrons? Yes, both have two degrees of freedom in principle (Bloch sphere compared to literal expectation value of spin direction, at least when v