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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

Your mind does not conceive of the universe in any meaningful way, though. It's not as if a mind can simulate all the particles, light, and physics. What you have is closer to an encyclopedia page: a collection of facts and descriptions which are broadly true, but don't offer much in the way of specific understanding or predictive power.

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I mean if dreaming is any indication, the mind is actually pretty good at “simulating all the particles, light, and physics”, with of course some “rendering issues”

Interestingly, the same is true of waking life. Our perception is only loosely representative model of the world we operate in. We see, hear, and feel a tiny fraction of our local environment, and most of what we perceive is filled in by our imagination, and/or highly post processed.

>> Interestingly, the same is true of waking life.

The notion that most of our experience is projection is really fascinating to me. Or rather it's projection combined with inputs at various levels of abstraction, and our attention is diverted to where these two differ. A lot of empirical evidence suggests this is the case. A deep dive in psychotherapy can help one to see this up close. The notion that it applies to visual input seems crazy, but you can also do fun experiments with the "blind spot" in your vision that are pretty convincing.

I love to explore the concept of color as an example. Color represents regions of a continuous EM spectrum. "Green" represents a photon between 495-570nm, but the concept of only exists within the human mind. The color I call green might be the what someone else calls red if we ever had a brain to brain interface.

You know what else lets you explore it in detail? LSD. You'll see exactly how abstraction and pattern extrapolation is superimposed over reality. It likely isn't a coincidence that what you see is like a JPEG artifact but crystals instead of squares.

Indeed it is. Even temporally

I think about dreaming more like a movie stage where there is a limited space but within that limited space one can be tricked into seeing an entire Star Trek Universe.

So I think the mind is pretty good at making us think it simulates all the particles and light and physics.

It simulates the sensations not the universe. It's a mock not a simulation.

I mean, from the perspective of the internal experience, that’s kind of moot anyway. Reality is only as real as it feels to us inside

The definition of reality in Wikipedia is exactly opposite, and specifically distinguishes reality from one's imagination.

And some serious consistency issues.

Meaning no solid base physic model.

>in any meaningful way

Whooohaaa! Where do you think that the mechanisms that allow us to build atomic clocks and telescopes and quantum computer come from if not from the human mind?! Are angels doing it for us?

The linked publication https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf speculates that the universe and our brain are "quantum Turing machines".

Given the assumptions, we need to count in the fundamental limits on computation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_computation

It's safe to deduce our brain can't simulate the universe, but only a "less powerful" description/representation of it. Otherwise the assumptions are inconsistent, and a paradox arises.

Obviously, since we don't know how the brain nor the universe work... It's all speculation

Yeah, but the naming of the objects is a pretty important thing. There is no 'galaxy' or 'star' or even 'atom' without a mind to put a name on them.

I can throw a ball up in the air and catch it 99 times out of 100. Seems to me that my mind has strong predictive power.

On the scale of the Universe that's nothing.

Where would one derive the authority though to proclaim that the mind does not conceive in any meaningful way?

Sounds like we may have differing definitions of “meaningful”.

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