On 9/4/2012 9:54 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
Hi Jason,
Yes, but think of it as a window where everything in it is
effectively simultaneous.
Perhaps this is the content of a certain computational state?
It cannot be just one. Even dovetailing many of them together does
not achieve simultaneity. We have to keep up with all the other
computations occurring all over the place. We must not think of the
brain as an Isolated entity.
If so, I don't see how instantaneous communication can solve this
problem. If it takes 100 ms to process auditory sensations, and
200 ms to process visual sensations, then even with some form of
instant communication, or synchronization, one element still has
to wait for the processing to complete.
Right, but all are put together so that the audio and the
video are always in synch. Problems with this mechanism are
conjectured to cause schizophrenia. David Eagleman is looking into
this kind of stuff but isn't considering the quantum possibility.
There are lots of things our brain conveniently covers up. We
have a fairly large blind spot near the middle of our vision, but
our brain masks that. Our blinks periodically pull a dark shroud
over our world, but they go unnoticed. Our eyes and orientation
of our heads are constantly changed, but it doesn't feel to us
like the world is spinning when we turn our heads. Our eyes can
only focus on a small (perhaps 3 degree) area, but it doesn't
feel as though we are peering through a straw. So I do not find
it very surprising that the brain might apply yet another trick
on us, making us think different sense data was finished
processing at the same time when it was not.
Exactly. The point is that all sensations are given as
synchronized with each other even though that cannot happen.
Imagine a loom that used many different threads each of which
takes different speed processes to be generated. It is as if they
could be speed up or slowed down such that the overall tapestry is
always flowing at a single steady pace. Think of the lag effect
that we see with our smartphones. Is there something like a
"waiting for sender to respond" in our brains?
Maybe the qualia isn't related to the processing of the sense
information, but in sharing the results with the other parts of the
brain (see modularity of mind
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/ ). Then by
delaying the output by the appropriate amount, or by matching results
at a higher level integration, the synchronization can be made. I
think modularity of mind explains well many aspects of consciousness,
and also how anesthesia works.
Sure, but how does that account for the rest of the world? Think
about how is it that two people can hold a conversation. How does the
brain of one of the converses keep up and even anticipate the response
to the other person's words? If it takes up to 1/2 a sec to hear ->
process -> respond, where is the lag effect that should obviously occur?
The brains of people engaged in a conversation are somehow synchronized
so that the 1/2 sec lag time vanishes. How the hell does this happen?
If what is really going on is happening at the quantum level and
the world around us is just a classical illusion that it is generating,
then the problem vanishes! Why? Because time vanishes in a pure state QM
system! There is no "delay" or lag involved at all! My hunch is that
what we think is reality is just a puppet show of what is really going
on under the binary classical surface.
Quantum entanglement allows for a variable "window of
duration" via the EPR effect. If we look at a QM system,
there is no delay in changes of the state of the system. All
of the "parts" of it operate simultaneously, not matter how
far apart them might be when we think of them as distributed
in space time. This is the "spooky action at a distance" that
has upset the classical scientists for so long. It has even
been shown that one can derive the appearance of classical
type signaling from the quantum pseudo-telepathy effect
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy>.
I don't quite follow how EPR helps in this case. EPR doesn't
communicate any information, and there is no need for FTL spooky
action at a distance unless one assumes there can only be a
single outcome for a measurement (CI). Even if FTL is involved
in creating an illusion of simultaneity, couldn't light speed be
fast enough, or even 200 feet per second of nerve impulses?
No copyable information is involved. The literature of quantum
games (where the pseudo-telepathy effect shows up) explain this.
If one runs an emulation of a mind, it doesn't matter if it takes
500 years to finish the computation, or 500 nanoseconds. The
perceived first person experience of the mind will not differ.
So the difference between delays in processing time and resulting
perceptions may be a red herring in the search for theories of
the brain's operation.
yes, but this argument your making only applies if we are only
considering a single emulation. Try that argument when one has to
consider many emulations of mind communicating with each other.
The computational picture is missing the entire point that I am
trying to make when it ignores the necessities of interactions
between many minds.
That we can perceive an instantaneous moment (despite that the
processing of the information is spread out over time) should be no
more surprising than the fact that the processing of information is
spread out through space. All information processed by the brain does
not come to a single physical point where it is felt, so given the
symmetry of space and time, there is no reason the information has to
be processed at the same instant in time to create an experience that
is singular.
Exactly, space and time in this case are interconvertible. This is
exactly what Relativity tells us! Distribution of resources in terms of
sequential or parallel events are equivalent. But we see that this is
not limited to "locality in space-time" in the EPR effect. A QM system
can be widely distributed, what matters is the flow of classical
information on the 3,1 surface of the manifold made by stitching
together many coordinate systems (via diffeomorphisms which are
NP-Complete computationally). In theoretical physics this is theAdS/CFT
correspondence <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT_correspondence>
with the technical exception that the CFT cannot be have an arbitrarily
large 3,1 Minkowsky manifold as its base space. Why? Because there is
really no single "dimension of time", there are only patterns of
synchrony between many many many QM systems. The fun happens when we
look at these patterns. They are "relations without relata
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=relations%20without%20relata&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CFMQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fusers.ox.ac.uk%2F%7Emert2255%2Fphilosophy%2Ftalks%2Fspacetime_structuralism_talk_12jun08.pdf&ei=R9NGULr8N4Hk9ATN1oGwDw&usg=AFQjCNFv2OuSvRmqP_Zjb0SNtZ3D5CAxbg>".
--
Onward!
Stephen
http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
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