On 2/28/2012 7:43 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Dear Bruno,
Let me see if my thoughts are correct as I can best write them. COMP is the
conjunction of "Yes Doctor", the Church Thesis and Arithmetic Realism, correct? I am now
not sure of the definition of "Digital physics" given this thread so far... From what I
can tell, Yes Doctor is built on the idea of functional substitutability at some level
or scale for physical systems, such that a given algorithm will run on any functionally
equivalent physical system; it is basically a restatement of computational universality.
This idea shows us that our consciousness is not dependent on a particular form of
physical system if and only if our consciousness is algorithmic or computable in the
Turing sense. I am agnostic on this because I do not see any evidence (pace Tegmark)
that our brain's implementation of consciousness does not involve quantum entanglement.
This is ambiguous. Tegmark showed that quantum decoherence of ion locations in neural
processes is much faster than neural signaling, therefore brain processing is almost all
classical. It is classical *because* there is quantum entanglement between the ions and
the environment. It is quantum entanglement with an environment (something with many
degrees of freedom) that produces decoherence and classical behavior. If you substitute
for some neurons a silicon chip that is designed to be functionally identical, that
"functionally identical" means it acts as a classical device to implement a certain
computational algorithm. Of course it will be quantum entangled with its environment
because that's what makes it classical.
Maybe you meant you that you think brain processes may involve quantum coherent
superpositions - but that's what Tegmark refuted.
Brent
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