George,

An essay full of wisdom that does justice to the ambiguities and challenges of the topic imposed on us. The many challenges and mysteries we face have the time limit of humankind's existence on this planet, the period of consciousness we have to solve these problems. I also speak of the capabilities of the autonoetic consciousness you speak of regarding the thought experiments of Einstein and how such cognitive abilities, coupled with quantum computing could enable us to solve our problems if there is no limit set by our early demise. I'm surprised so few ratings for a superior essay. Mine is your 4th. Hope you have time to read mine: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3396.

Jim Hoover

Thanks, Jim. I will do so. I appreciate your kind remarks and a new score!

For you -

Come fill the cup, and in the fires of Spring,

The Winter garment of repentance fling,

The bird of time has but a little way

To flutter, and lo, the bird is on the wing.

Cheers - George

    George,

    Someone bombed you with a 5th rating. My 4th rating left you with a 6.8.

    Jim

    Hi Jim - I try not to pay attention to the ratings and simply tell it like it is. The scores I give are consistent with how I read the relative merits of each essay in responding to the FQXi challenge.

    Regards - George

    Dear Mr. Gantz,

    Your essay is clear and interesting. You focus on the role of human consciousness as a self-recognizing agent, using a term "autonoetic" that I was not familiar with.

    In my own essay, "The Uncertain Future of Physics and Computing", I take the novel view that consciousness is due to specific computational architectures in the brain, and that the internal sense of consciousness provides direct clues to the structure of these architectures. The key aspect is that neural networks may be configured to match patterns not only in space, but also in time. Recognition of temporal correlations provides the basis for recognizing agency and the self, which is the core of consciousness.

    I further argue that these can be emulated by artificial neural networks of the not-too-distant future. I might envision an autonomous vehicle with a level of consciousness comparable to a horse, for example.

    Alan Kadin

      Alan - Thanks for the kind words. I agree conscious states are likely to exhibit a sophisticated computational architecture in the brain (both space and time), but I also think this will fail to answer the philosophical questions - including the Penrose mysteries and the tangled conundrums of Turing and Godel - these will remain unanswered until the end of time (so to speak).

      I will read your essay next!

      -George

      What, without asking, hither hurried whence.

      And, without asking, whither hurried hence?

      Ah, contrite heaven endowed us with the vine

      To drug the memory of that insolence!

      Dear George,

      Glad to read your work again.

      I greatly appreciated your work and discussion. I am very glad that you are not thinking in abstract patterns.

      "This essay addresses that challenge by exploring features that the physical world and mathematics share with consciousness. Self-reference, entanglement and purposeful agency are key features of autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness. They are also found in physical and mathematical systems and are manifest at the limits of knowledge that FQXi is exploring. These autonoetic features serve as gatekeepers limiting our understanding of the world we live in, but they also make living in this world so marvelously interesting and beautiful".

      While the discussion lasted, I wrote an article: "Practical guidance on calculating resonant frequencies at four levels of diagnosis and inactivation of COVID-19 coronavirus", due to the high relevance of this topic. The work is based on the practical solution of problems in quantum mechanics, presented in the essay FQXi 2019-2020 "Universal quantum laws of the universe to solve the problems of unsolvability, computability and unpredictability".

      I hope that my modest results of work will provide you with information for thought.

      Warm Regards, `

      Vladimir

        Thank you Vladimir - nice to see you again, as well!

        I will head over to read your essay - yes COVID is certainly a preoccupation for us right now. I believe that an entangled, purposeful and self-referential world argues for greater compassion, empathy and action to alleviate suffering than fear, anger and selfishness.

        Cheers - George

        Dear George,

        Thank you for reading my essay, you really grasped its essence which I tell you is rare and remarkable. But my lesson from it is that I have to expand it greatly to present concepts with utmost clarity.

        Your essay is well written and obviously it touches absolutely fundamental problems. When looking into the relation between consciousness, physics and mathematics I see consciousness as total enigma. We know much more about physics and mathematics which makes that it is very hard to connect all these three areas.

        I also looked into your 2015 essay, I see now what you mean by hole in the center of creation. About paradoxes I suggest reading brilliant essay by Hippolyte Dourdent here.

        Personally my taste is not to refer to any religion since this is very subjective topic as there are so many of them, some claim Asian religions grasp aspects of consciousness better than others and that would mean cultural bias is entering our thinking which does not sound good.

        I wish you to continue you fruitful investigations.

        Br,

        Irek

          Thanks Irek -

          Yes, consciousness is an enigma - and so is the relationship between math and physics and the foundations of each.

          Yes, my 2015 essay took a step too far in highlighting a particular religious tradition. At the same time, the theological roots of all religious traditions provide context for humans to fathom the unfathomable. These FQXi questions take us to core beliefs and suppositions that have been addressed poetically or mythologically in the various traditions. Science may have helped free us from empirically unfounded and irrational dogmas inherited from religious traditions - but on the frontiers it has come face-to-face with its own. That was the subject of my 2017 FQXi essay - Faith is Fundamental.... https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3045

          Cheers - George

          • [deleted]

          • Post #23

          The door that has no key, as well as walls without any doors of predigital linguistic perceptions have effectively been transformed to the frame work of mathematical, self noetic and physical as you have outlined. All three of those as well have been further condensed to Minkowski spacetime, ad Sitter and Ad Sitter. In my view the self and the non-self effectively permeate the realities for the foreseeable future.

            Bela - Thanks for the comment. Yes,. One could say that the self and the non-self are staring at each other - and both are blind. Omar Kayyam has a verse that reaches to that:

            Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind

            The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find

            A lamp amid the Darkness; and I heard,

            As from Without--"THE ME WITHIN THEE BLIND!" XXXIV

            Cheers - George

            Hello George,

            I greatly enjoyed how you applied the poem of Omar Khayyam to the problem of the limits of knowledge.

            This line in particular:

            "Self-reference leads inevitably to the limit of incompleteness. Entanglement implies that the whole cannot be understood solely through an understanding of its parts. Additionally, since we are ourselves entangled in the world, we can never truly observe the whole."

            I believe with all of my heart.

            Best of luck in the contest!

            Rick Searle

              Dear George,

              What a beautiful essay. I love the analysis of the poem also.

              My favorite line: "I recommend that we embrace the idea that these limits are not flaws in the system -they are features. The limits of incompleteness, entanglement and agency enable complexity, evolution and free will. They make the world and life interesting."

              Beautiful!

              Thank you!

              Noson

                Dear George,

                Using twelfth century poem as the framework for your essay is a bold move, but it worked well. You humanized as well as explained concepts. Placing intelligence on a high mysterious pillar is opposite to the direction I took, but it does fit with your theme. Overall one of the best essays I have read.

                I would like to know what you think of my essay. The rating of my essay puts me out of contention, so you can look at it after voting has closed.

                Sincerely,

                Jeff Schmitz

                Noson - Thank you. I am humbled by your kind remarks. BTW this is my favorite "matheamtical" quatrain from the Rubaiyat - not very good advice but just fun:

                "LVI. For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line

                And "UP-AND-DOWN" by Logic I define,

                Of all that one should care to fathom, I

                was never deep in anything but--Wine."

                Best - George

                Good to read your work again George...

                As always, you have made me think. But in fact; your essay weaves together a number of things I've been thinking a lot about - both on and off the contest forum. In some sense the Mandelbrot Set is a 'door that has no key' because the only way to see it is to try one spot after another to find out where it converges.

                One can actually calculate precise locations for a handful of spots by hand. But the Galois method tops out before you get very far, and won't even give you an outline. On the other hand; the Mandelbrot Set is like a key or index to a large family of Julia Sets.

                I enjoyed the way you wove in the three levels from Penrose connected to the three levels of metacognition from Metcalfe and Son, and then concluded with 'entangled, purposeful, and self-referential.' I could say a lot more, but I'm hoping to read more essays before the bell. You get high marks from me.

                Best of Luck,

                Jonathan