Hi Brent, Does your reasoning allow for the chance that Tegmark's paper is rubbish? Does your reality allow for these sorts of realities?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/quantum-birds/ ? http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/quantum-photosynthesis/ ? Birds eye’s are a tad bit hotter than our brains... If the entanglement that I am considering is nothing more than randomness, then we should have any random noise source added to a computation would be fine for supervenience. Is that your claim? I do not see how it change Maudlin’s construction and not preserve the assumption of the principle of locality and the non-relativity of simultaneity. It may just double down on an already bad bet! Why do we want our brain to be classical so badly? I am somehow not grasping the evolutionary viewpoint on this issue. Onward! Stephen -----Original Message----- From: Brent Meeker Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 11:20 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness” Note that the kind of entanglement you're talking about is the same as randomness. Bohm's version of QM makes this explicit. There's a deterministic wave function of the universe so that everything effects everything else instantaneously (which is why there's no good Bohmian version of QFT) and quantum randomness is just a consequence of our ignorance of the complete wave function. But Tegmark's paper shows that quantum effects must be very small and the brain is essentially classical - which makes sense from an evolutionary viewpoint. You want your brain to be classical, except for a very rare randomness to avoid the problem of Buridan's ass - and you don't even need brain randomness for that, there's plenty of randomness in the environment. Brent On 1/31/2011 6:27 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote: > Hi David, > > You just happened to mention the 800kg Gorilla in the room! While > we can rattle off a sophisticated narrative about decoherence effects > and quote from some Tegmark paper, the fact remains that entanglement > is real and while we can argue that its effects could be minimized, we > cannot prove that it is irrelevant to supervenience. This is a > game-changer for physical supervenience arguments. But the problem is > much worse! It is becoming harder to how up Tegmark's prohibition on > quantum effects. Just recently an article appeared in some > peer-reviewed journal discussing how entangled states are present for > macroscopically significant periods of time in the eyes of birds. > Don't they have a higher average body temperature than humans? > > > > > -----Original Message----- From: David Shipman > Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 7:41 PM > To: Everything List > Subject: Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness” > > > On Jan 30, 4:13 pm, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> On Jan 25, 9:04 am, "Stephen Paul King" <stephe...@charter.net> wrote: >>> >> > Dear Bruno and Friends, >>> >>> While we are considering the idea of “causal efficacy” >>> here and not hidden variable theories, the fact that it >>> has been experimentally verified that Nature violates >>> the principle Locality. Therefore the assumption of >>> local efficacy that Mauldin is using for the supervenience >>> thesis is not realistic and thus presents a flaw in his >>> argument. >> >> Local supervenience doesn't have to be argued from >> fundamental physics. It can be argued from neurology. >> >> Mental states arent affected by what goes on outside >> the head unless information is conveyed by the sense > > This isn't true, is it? > > So we have two particles (A and B) that are entangled. > > Entanglement is never destroyed, it is only obscured by subsequent > interactions with the environment. > > Particle A goes zooming off into outer space. > > 10 years later, Particle B becomes incorporated into my brain. > > The next day, an alien scientist measures the entangled property on > Particle A. > > This will have an immediate non-local effect on Particle B won't it? > > And since B's state has been altered, and it is part of my brain, then > my brain state has been altered as well, hasn't it? > > Maybe only a tiny amount, obscured by the many environmental > interactions that the two particles have been subjected to since the > initial entanglement, but in a way that is real and at least > conceivably significant. > > And if that is true, then to the extent that mental states supervene > on brain states, my mental state would also have been altered by non- > local effects. > > Or is that wrong? > > Regards, > > David > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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