On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 01:56:51PM -0700, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote: > > I would add this; even assuming that consciousness is ultimately based on > quantum processes, where's the argument that consciousness is responsible > for the collapse?. As I've told Clark 43 times, Feynman showed that a > device can record the output on the screen (interference, collapse, not the > which-way situation) without any intervention by a conscious being. AG
The key process, I think is digitisation of a continuum. Think measuring a particle spin, which is indeterminate both in magnitude and direction. After measurement, it has a particular half integral or integral value in a particular direction. When performing a computation, ultimately a voltage is converted (or interpreted) as a either a 0 or 1 according to which side of a threshold it lies on. The closer to the threshold you are, the more error prone this is, which is why there is an inverse relationship between clock speeds and voltage (and hence the amount of heat that the computation generates). The thing is that the threshold value is a subjective thing - there's nothing in the physics to say that a given voltage is a 1 or a 0. The same can be said of the gradation marks on a d'Arsenval meter that are interpreted as the result of a more classical experiment. The nice thing about all of this is that the tension between the discrete and continua can be studied as a theoretical computer science or pure maths problem, there's nothing woo about it. However, it is a field still in its infancy IMHO - traditionally mathematicians study continuous things (call analysis), and those that study discrete things call themselves computer scientists, and ne'er the twain shall meet. Cheer -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
