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Comment by packetlost | Hacker News Reader

> a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future.

My personal theory is consciousness is a coalescence of weighted distributions that learn via a closed loop feedback and an injection of true randomness via quantum tunneling. That is, the brain is a mechanism by which true randomness gets turned into a weighted distributions that equate to decisions and actions with a feedback loop. As experiences get encoded as complex neuron paths or "memories" (this includes things like muscle memory, not just what we normally think of as memories), they build stronger paths and more connections, effectively increasing their "weight". This holds true down to how neurons function on an individual level.

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I've personally always liked the deterministic approach more. Is there any reason you believe in an indeterministic randomness approach?

Randomness is the basis for all life and seems necessary for there to be any sort of curiosity component to intelligence. At a macro level, it seems to represent breaks in cycles that allow for change. Further, if our own decision making amounts to weighted distributions in neuron paths, how would a brain resolve an equally weighted distribution (no matter how small the chance of that happening is).

Edit: To further explain, I apply the basic principles that govern life to all facets of life, all the way up to the complexities of human society, language, etc.. That is, DNA is a self-replicating system that through randomness was able to build more and more complex organisms over time. It generically represents a way to encode behaviors through time, a necessary subset of which include behaviors for self-replication and resource acquisition (mostly to satisfy the self-replication requirement). On a more complex level, human society is the organism, human language (including speech, writing, visual arts) is the DNA (a means to pass knowledge, behaviors, etc. through time), and humans are the "cells".

Organicism can be a useful and fertile frame but it's not without its perils

Hmm, I don't think what I'm saying is the same thing. I'm saying that the behavior of organisms amount to systems with the same function no matter the complexity or timescale. Though to that end, I do consider human society to be an organism of sorts, but beyond that not so much.

Buridan's ass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

Oh hey, I didn't know there was a thing to explain that!

Deterministic pseudorandom would also solve these cases, and is not true random.

I'm not saying these cases are pseudorandom (the logistics of having a prng with state apply to biology looks hard), but that it doesn't seem to require true random

Correct! I think that's the question though. Is there true randomness in the system or is it really just playing out based on the laws of physics. I'm more inclined to believe the mechanisms at which randomness gets injected into DNA replication is pseudorandom, but for mental constructs I'm more inclined to believe it's sensitive enough to true randomness.

My guess would be free will. Most of us are heavily dependent on this concept being valid.

Edit: I guess I was wrong.

Not entirely wrong. I think it's entirely possible for "free will" in the sense that it's normally talked about to not really be a thing. After all, we're taught about "nature vs nurture" in psychology, that is, learned vs inherent behaviors passed through genetics. I think what we call "free will" is itself curiosity manifest from random decision making. The overwhelming vast majority of our decisions are based on learned behaviors though, and decision making itself is known to be a cognitively taxing process; so we're predisposed to routine, simplification, and working with proxies.

Edit: to your point about needing validation: the desire for acceptance is simply put, the desire for a positive feedback response on a personal or societal level. Remember, our brains are big reinforced learning machines and crave feedback as quickly and unambiguously as possible. The desire for acceptance is both a thing that keeps behaviors "in-line" with societal expectations while allowing for changes in those behaviors to shape societal behaviors (and expectations) over generations (time), and therefor make progress, or at least change.

You only typed that because the laws of physics made you do it.

Underlying physics is non-deterministic, so how could the brain operate deterministically?

This has been my thought process for a while as well - that the brain amplifies quantum effects and uses them to drive larger processes. It's definitely physically possible - for instance, you could construct a double slit splitter that chooses 0 or 1 using the measurement of the direction a photon takes, and decide whether a train goes left or right based on this. You would be making huge macroscopic changes based on minute quantum effects. Perhaps the brain doesn't work this way, but the point is that it is entirely possible, and not ignorant pseudoscience.

Why would it need to do that, if it can extract randomness from classical, macroscopic phenomena (see rolling dices for one example).

That would assume that randomness is the only quantum property that the brain would use. The possiblity of quantum computation demonstrates that there is more that could he possible.

Your earlier comment certainly appeared to be suggesting the brain uses quantum phenomena as an RNG. Are you instead suggesting the brain is a quantum computer?

The purpose of the example in my first comment was to show that quantum phenomena can influence macroscopic phenomena, not as an example of an RNG. It was probably a bad choice as everyone took it to mean an RNG. Quantum phenomena are not needed for this.

But… why? What’s the purpose of this? Just for a RNG?

Does it have to be random? There must be some value besides randomness that can be derived from quantum effects, else why would all these tech companies invest billions into quantum computing?

In my experience, such emphasis on quantum phenomena tends to be the motivated reasoning of free will compatibilists: they hope to preserve the intuitive idea of free will by looking at what corners of non-determinism still remain in modern physics, emphasising any possible connection to the macro-scale mind, however tenuous. It's analogous to the God of the Gaps argument. [0]

Even assuming quantum phenomena are central to the brain's workings, the arguments still fail: you have no control over the quantum phenomena in your brain, so you still don't have free will in the naïve intuitive sense.

I see even less connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness. Consciousness need not depend on free will.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

I agree that some people think this way, but not I. I don't even believe there is a "you" to have free will. Who has control over anything in their brain? They are their brain.

I'm just thinking that perhaps there is a possibility that the brain evolved to take advantage of quantum phenomena to increase capability.

Conciousness is not learning, it is observing and observing the process of observation.

This appears to mirror another comment. [0] My response there applies here just the same.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32403845

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