Do you think Penrose disagrees that the Human mind is bound by physical laws??
No, it is not. It is far from proven that universal physical law can everywhere be simulated by a Turing machine. If you had proof of that you'd be up for a Nobel. So publish your paper or perhaps consider that Roger Penrose is not an idiot and you might not know what you are talking about.
> Do you think Penrose disagrees that the Human mind is bound by physical laws??
Yes. Having read his work in the past, I know that he disagrees the human mind is bound by physical laws. This is the whole reason behind the argument they're putting forth to begin with: they postulate that humans are capable of making an inference that could not possibly be made by a machine intelligence.
However, it has never been shown that we are not a machine intelligence.
Cite one place where he says anything like this or go home.
What I - and I hope most people - mean by the phrase is different though, it's the body of actual physical laws that have been shown scientifically.
> I'm not sure what his position is on computers that incorporate quantum magic though.
Interesting thought experiment. I suspect he would be fine with those in theory, however since he already declared this special connection to the supernatural for humans it'd be interesting what computer components he would consider equivalent. But the beauty of his position is that, in the event of a generally intelligent computer emerging, he could always claim that any given nanoscale computing component is the silicon analogue of "quantum microtubules" (which was his woo-related organelle of choice in neurons). It's not like he ever has to prove his claims in order to be taken seriously.
Few people have made more contributions in the twentieth century to actual physics than Penrose. He is one of the world's leading experts on general relativity and his objective collapse theory is nothing more that when quantum gravity is understood that gravity will play a role in the collapse of the wavefunction.
To describe Penrose as engaging in 'quantum woo' or 'quantum magic' is grossly inappropriate. It just gives evidence that you don't understand what he is proposing. See Scott Aaronson for what an rebuttal to Penrose looks like not the ham fisted straw man takedowns from the likes of people in this comment section.
Penrose does not argue for "something computationally more powerful than objective collapse" rather, he argues that the physical Church-Turing thesis is false due to quantum gravity. Something he is an expert on, btw.
Says who? Penrose is blacklisted, cite someone else.
That falls far below the standard of discussion we ask users to abide by here. Please make your points directly and without such cheap insinuations.
If you think my comments in their entirety detracted from the discussion, I'd like you to tell me. Otherwise I'm asking you to consider this statement in the context of both manyoso's and my comments as a whole.
This is a discussion about quantum quackery, and you're stepping in on behalf of the pro-quackery side that has no problem telling me personally that I "have no idea what" I'm "talking about", and other dismissive discourse.
I am sorry to have said "go home" and will refrain in the future. Still, you have lodged what I consider factually incorrect assertions about Penrose's argument. When asked for evidence you have provided none.
> "We proposed [...] that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal synaptic and membrane activity [...] This orchestrated OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments of conscious awareness and/or choice. [...] We conclude that consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe." ( Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose; Consciousness in the universe; Physics of Life Reviews, Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2014, Pages 39-78 )
and
> "If gravity plays a role in wave function collapse that will pose serious questions for the Church-Turing hypothesis. It might very well make it impossible for non-Quantum computers to accurately model quantum gravity. Penrose does not argue for "something computationally more powerful than objective collapse" rather, he argues that the physical Church-Turing thesis is false due to quantum gravity. Something he is an expert on, btw." ( manyoso, Hacker News, discussion id 14444443 )
None of these statements, while they are using the language of science, bears any discernable relationship to physical reality in a scientific sense. The postulate that any consciousness-related activity of neurons happens in structural elements like microtubules is a collection of unproven hypotheses divorced from both empirical and theoretical experience. The same goes for this preposterous claim about quantum gravity: there is currently no workable theoretical framework for quantum gravity, but this doesn't stop Penrose from confabulating properties onto the term so it can become a new go-to locus for his ideas on quantum consciousness.
An observer will notice a pattern here: mystical truth claims about a hypothesis with no basis in either experimentation nor theory are being "supported" by hiding their supposed mechanisms of action inside yet-unexplored regions of the map. It's a god of the gaps argument.
Now, you know this, as does Penrose. Both of you are trying to preempt this criticism by professing quantum consciousness is a fundamental part of the laws of nature, and hence it should not be categorized as woo. You are essentially rejecting the accusation of mysticism by asserting that magic is not metaphysical. Which was the observation dang chided (and apparently penalized) me for.
For what it's worth: you decisively won the argument, both by popular opinion and the support of the site's admin. Accept a victory when it presents itself.
Commenting here requires being scrupulously civil, even when others are not. Any lower standard would lead to an unstable system.
When someone asserts in an authoritative tone that quantum gravity is the key to unlocking consciousness at the heart of the universe, that is utter hogwash and deserves to be called out as such. You may personally not like my pointing this out, but the entire "field" of quantum consciousness is a religious movement that makes unsubstantiated claims about the nature of reality.
It actually is quackery. Redefining the term 'physical laws' to include magic in order to shield an opinion from criticism is actually sophistry. Insisting that spiritual convictions are factual statements about the universe is actual fundamentalism. These aren't bad words wielded to hurt someone, they are supposed to convey meaning.
I never meant to denigrate anyone personally. I strongly feel that opinions must be fair game though when it comes to criticism. In doing so suppose I must come across more harshly than I intended or maybe I'm just exceptionally bad at articulating myself. Whatever my intent, it's clearly not working out all that well. It's probably a good idea for me to take a break from HN for a while.
Last I heard, Penrose appeals to quantum woo to claim that the human mind isn't strictly algorithmic. But sources of quantum randomness isn't enough to push you into dualism, quantum shit is part of our physical universe and while there is no proof that the human mind critically exploits quantum phenomena for it's computation, we can certainly build machines that have RNGs exploiting quantum randomness.
Penrose doesn't appeal to quantum woo, he has a quite well articulated set of assumptions and arguments , related to loop quantum gravity [1], about how objective collapse of the wave function may occur at bio-physically feasible decoherence times.
Now, whether you think his biophysical theories of consciousness are valid, or even required (whether you buy the microtubules argument/hypothesis), is one thing. But stating that Penrose- arguably the 20th century's foremost mathematical physicist- is a practicioner and/or a spreader of 'quantum woo'-- that belies a level of mis-informantion so catastrophically high that it renders your quoted statement indistinguishable from a pure ad-hominem.
It's worth noting that Penrose's field of expertise is General Relativity, not quantum physics, and definitely not Computer Science / philosophy of computation. I see the situation with Penrose as equivalent to Linus Pauling's unfortunate foray into Vitamin C pseudoscience late in his life.
Say what you will about Penrose, but can you seriously deny that he is one of the world's foremost experts on gravity?? You might not like his conclusion, but to say that he is out of his element here is ridiculous. Are you in your element when discussing gravity causing wave function collapse? Who do you think would be more in their element on this subject than Penrose??
Its true that LQG is not known a natural schema to implement hyper-computation. However, since we don't well understand the time-dynamics of twistors ( how these operators may interact non-linearly through time), i don't see any a-priori reason why it is not a possible scheme for super-computation (you could make a good counter- response based on occam's razor, which I'd grant).
Look, lots of thereotical CS folks get disturbed by the idea of hyper-computation/super-turing machines, but in truth Turing machines are a toy model in comparison to true physics; as such, it doesn't take a whole lot more to get something more powerful; Siegelmann and colleagues have shown that real weighted, analog recurrent nets have super-turing abilities [1] [2]. While Aaronson and other raise good questions about physical realizability of such systems, a good thing to keep in mind is that these discussions often take place at computational 'limit' cases, eg solving intractable PSPACE problems, which may not be as relevant to more pedestrian problems solvable by biological systems. Central point: dynamically evolving systems iteratively exploring through (from) in-consistent systems towards more and more consistent ones have many of the same compelling qualities we would call 'super-turing'. Also see the lit on evolving turning machines.
Finally, while I don't agree with the magnitude your Pauling analogy, I certainly agree with you statement that Penrose is out of his depth here. While I do not , presently, buy his argument that quantum effects are necessary to realize consciousness, I remain open to the idea until we know more about BOTH physics and computation.
[1] http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/NECO_a_00263 [2] http://www.kurzweilai.net/super-turing-machine-learns-and-ev...