Slashdot Mirror

Here is just a spattering of interesting reading.

• Kaku on dimensions. N.B. You, good sir, have corrected someone on the Internet. The formulas have not been worked out for m-theory (10+ dimensions).
• Hameroff on the possibility of microtubules being a substrate for consciousness.
• Is everything made of mini black holes?
• Occultists meditating on subatomic particles in the late 19th century

Yeah, here are some more interesting topics:

Bigfoot: the new evidence

Is the Tooth Fairy real?

Angels: harness their power and release your potential

Here is just a spattering of interesting reading.

• Kaku on dimensions. N.B. You, good sir, have corrected someone on the Internet. The formulas have not been worked out for m-theory (10+ dimensions).
• Hameroff on the possibility of microtubules being a substrate for consciousness.
• Is everything made of mini black holes?
• Occultists meditating on subatomic particles in the late 19th century

We've only begun to scratch the surface of consciousness because of the Enlightenment bias. That the frontiers of science are peculiarly reminiscent of ancient wisdom does not mean I would blindly do away with the scientific method. In fact, scientific breakthroughs are often a marriage of inexplicable insight and subsequent deductive analysis.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. -Frank Herbert

Stuart Hameroff is an organizer of this conference, which I'm sure this research was timed for release just before. Stuart has long been an advocate of a theory he developed with Roger Penrose in which the microtubules are the brain's interface with the quantum.

Stuart Hameroff is an organizer of this conference, which I'm sure this research was timed for release just before. Stuart has long been an advocate of a theory he developed with Roger Penrose in which the microtubules are the brain's interface with the quantum.

http://cogprints.org/4581/
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/overview.html

This finding seems to give support to the Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction) theory of quantum consciousness proposed by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. One of the main objections to the theory is that quantum coherence could not be sustained in the warm biological environment for sufficient duration. If quantum entaglement is a normal feature of photosynthesis, it's less of a stretch to believe that quantum coherence could be one of the mechanisms to give rise to consciousness in higher lifeforms.

It is not a plan - it's a bug in the code ... some people just never make it from SR to Orch OR.

However, there is an alternate theory of consciousness, based on quantum physics. It is inherently non-deterministic and cannot be modeled in a computer.

Hence, IBM's big assumption may be wrong. However, at least, the IBM experiment will tell us whether the operation of the brain is strictly Newtonian. If this artifical brain behaves differently from a mouse brain, then we would know that non-Newtonian physics is crucial to the operation of a flesh-and-blood brain.

Yes, this possibility has been considered. quantum consciousness The criticism is that the brain is not a very good place for quantum effects to happen. It's temperature is to high, and there is in general to much noise, all the interesting quantum effect get canceled out. This new research show that quantum effects can be found in biological systems, which may open the possibility for it to happen in the brain as well.

Since I have a degree in Theology, I am very interested in the philosophical and theological implications of quantum effects happening in the brain. Quantum mechanics would allow for the possibility of free will in the human brain, since in the quantum world things can happen without a prior cause. This would not prove the existence of free will. It could be that the brain is just being controlled by random effects. If the brain does turn out to be a quantum computer, this is where the philosophers will be arguing. Are these events with no prior cause really random or are they in a real sense free when combined in the brain. BTW, a lot of people try to make a distinction between the brain and the soul. I don't have a problem with this distinction ( I believe in the soul) but I don't think it helps matters if classical physics can completely describe the brain. There has to be some way for a free soul to connect with a deterministic brain and I don't see any way to do that which is consistent with the modern science of the brain.

As a slashdoter, I am very interested in free will, so that I can continue to use linux and hate microsoft.

You might want to go to Salzburg this summer to attend the Quantum Mind conference. You'll find a number of top physicists, a few philosophers, some famous mathematicians, and at least one anaesthesiologist (hey, you don't know what you've got till it's gone).

Building a hardware version of that sentient computer program is unnecessarily expensive. A software model of the actual hardware should be sufficient to prove the validity of the idea.

However, some scientists believe that consciousness is not newtonian. Rather, human consciousness is derived from quantum processes.

Unfortunately we won't know until we give it a try. There has been alot of research into that subject for a while now with no definitive conclusion. This guy http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/overview.html/ certainly thinks it is, while a (hopefully) less biased article on wikipedia is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_brain/

I'd say the best chance we have to get true AI is to build quantum computers. Constant creation of wavestates and the spontaneus collapse due to gravity will generate a flurry of "thoughts" - and by learning the successful ones will eventuelly be "stored" using neural networks.

That's one of the theories behind how the human brain works, and it's the "randomness" in it that I feel is sorely lacking from current static neural network thinking.

More info: link

If the Swedes can integrate the microtubes into the neural network controlling this robot, then the Swedes will achieve a sentient cybernetic device. Such an achievement would qualify for a Nobel Prize in physics.

"Impressive. Most Impressive." utters a human-machine hybrid in Star War V.

We are as of yet not sure they are the biggest part of it , it is assumed and with dammed good grounds that they are . Though we are not yet even able to assert assuredness .
Don't get me wrong , I am a rather Hefty cynic . I do however always keep an open mind till conclusive proof is available either way.

If the quantum nature of consciousness could be established as factual then a new era of neuroscience and medical treatment could be reached, which would be truly amazing(of course any establishment of the nature of consciousness would be amazing) .
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-21-glob us.html
If your into that type of thing it can make interesting reading. Many more examples to be found on google

some folks believe conscious is the bridge between classical and quantum models.

• this penrose interview as well as
  
• the Quantum Consciousness website and
  
• The Center of Consciousness Studies/
  

• this penrose interview as well as
  
• the Quantum Consciousness website and
  
• The Center of Consciousness Studies/
  

I spent twenty years studying how computer-like structures called microtubules inside neurons and other cells could process information related to consciousness. But when I read The emperor's new mind by Sir Roger Penrose in 1991 I realized that consciousness may be a specific process on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds. Roger and I teamed up to develop a theory of consciousness based on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons. Roger's mechanism for an objective threshold for quantum state reduction connects us to the most basic, "funda-mental" level of the universe at the Planck scale, and is called objective reduction (OR). Our suggestion for biological feedback to microtubule quantum states is orchestration (Orch), hence our model is called orchestrated objective reduction, Orch OR.

I spent twenty years studying how computer-like structures called microtubules inside neurons and other cells could process information related to consciousness. But when I read The emperor's new mind by Sir Roger Penrose in 1991 I realized that consciousness may be a specific process on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds. Roger and I teamed up to develop a theory of consciousness based on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons. Roger's mechanism for an objective threshold for quantum state reduction connects us to the most basic, "funda-mental" level of the universe at the Planck scale, and is called objective reduction (OR). Our suggestion for biological feedback to microtubule quantum states is orchestration (Orch), hence our model is called orchestrated objective reduction, Orch OR.

Quantum effects of the sort proposed by Hameroff and Penrose are based the folding configuration of tubulin dimers, protein components within the microtubule. Simulations of microtubule excitations suggest topological error correction of global states which may be resistant to local decoherence, independent of any nuclear spin 'tickling' induced by an externally-applied electromagnetic field.

Note also that MRI induced quantum coherence of a different sort has been experimentally observed in the brain.

Nevertheless, you are correct in positing that the burden of experimental proof remains upon those who would advocate any revision of prevailing theory.

Quantum effects of the sort proposed by Hameroff and Penrose are based the folding configuration of tubulin dimers, protein components within the microtubule. Simulations of microtubule excitations suggest topological error correction of global states which may be resistant to local decoherence, independent of any nuclear spin 'tickling' induced by an externally-applied electromagnetic field.

Note also that MRI induced quantum coherence of a different sort has been experimentally observed in the brain.

Nevertheless, you are correct in positing that the burden of experimental proof remains upon those who would advocate any revision of prevailing theory.

A very interesting theory, IMHO. Recommended reading for people who, like me, can't accept the idea that our minds are basically just very advanced computers with consciousness being an illusion resulting from sufficiently complex computations, but want to stay far from the spiritual/religious mumbo-jumbo as well.