Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[marduk]

It seems from what I read that a lot of physicists are trying to sort it out and finding something wrong with the numbers in the mathematics they're relying on. Here are two articles, one of which on 'scale' I posted in a new thread earlier this month at

A new theory of scale | The Paracast Community Forums

and another linked within it going to this page:

Complications in Physics Lend Support to Multiverse Hypothesis | Simons Foundation

I'd be interested in your thoughts on both of them.

We talk often about accuracy. No theorem, not even QM, is 100% accurate. We just get better and better descriptions of reality.

I'm confused by the first link; mass and length are not universal properties. Einstein showed that they both vary with velocity.

Regarding Supersymmetry, from CERN's website:

Supersymmetry predicts a partner particle for each particle in the Standard Model, to help explain why particles have mass

The Standard Model has worked beautifully to predict what experiments have shown so far about the basic building blocks of matter, but physicists recognize that it is incomplete. Supersymmetry is an extension of the Standard Model that aims to fill some of the gaps. It predicts a partner particle for each particle in the Standard Model. These new particles would solve a major problem with the Standard Model – fixing the mass of the Higgs boson. If the theory is correct, supersymmetric particles should appear in collisions at the LHC.

At first sight, the Standard Model seems to predict that all particles should be massless, an idea at odds with what we observe around us. Theorists have come up with a mechanism to give particles masses that requires the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson. However, it is a puzzle why the Higgs boson should be light, as interactions between it and Standard-Model particles would tend to make it very heavy. The extra particles predicted by supersymmetry would cancel out the contributions to the Higgs mass from their Standard-Model partners, making a light Higgs boson possible. The new particles would interact through the same forces as Standard-Model particles, but they would have different masses. If supersymmetric particles were included in the Standard Model, the interactions of its three forces – electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces – could have the exact same strength at very high energies, as in the early universe. A theory that unites the forces mathematically is called a grand unified theory, a dream of physicists including Einstein.

Supersymmetry would also link the two different classes of particles known as fermions and bosons. Particles like those in the Standard Model are classified as fermions or bosons based on a property known as spin. Fermions all have half of a unit of spin, while the bosons have 0, 1 or 2 units of spin. Supersymmetry predicts that each of the particles in the Standard Model has a partner with a spin that differs by half of a unit. So bosons are accompanied by fermions and vice versa. Linked to their differences in spin are differences in their collective properties. Fermions are very standoffish; every one must be in a different state. On the other hand, bosons are very clannish; they prefer to be in the same state. Fermions and bosons seem as different as could be, yet supersymmetry brings the two types together.

Finally, in many theories scientists predict the lighest supersymmetric particle to be stable and electrically neutral and to interact weakly with the particles of the Standard Model. These are exactly the characteristics required for dark matter, thought to make up most of the matter in the universe and to hold galaxies together. The Standard Model alone does not provide an explanation for dark matter. Supersymmetry is a framework that builds upon the Standard Model’s strong foundation to create a more comprehensive picture of our world. Perhaps the reason we still have some of these questions about the inner workings of the universe is because we have so far only seen half of the picture.
​

So there's no requirement for the many-worlds hypothesis to be true to account for either supersymmetry nor a heavy higgs.

Although, I very much want the many-worlds hypothesis to be true (because it would be pretty cool), it probably isn't.

And since CERN indeed likely found the Higgs, and it's behaving pretty much as expected, the second link is kinda moot.

"With our on-going analyses, we are really starting to understand the BEH mechanism in depth," says CMS spokesperson Tiziano Camporesi. "So far, it is behaving exactly as predicted by theory."

CERN experiments report new Higgs boson measurements | CERN​

 

[Constance]

A nice quick response. Did you have time to read the two Quanta articles? How do you respond to the problems they point to?

 

[marduk]

A nice quick response. Did you have time to read the two Quanta articles? How do you respond to the problems they point to?

I read the first one at length and stopped on the second one because it was pointing to the Higgs not being what we expected it to be, and was written before CERN showed that it was actually pretty much as theory expected.

No point in debating something that has been shown not to be true.

 

[Constance]

In that case, if that is the case, I don't see why the recent article from Quanta refers back to the prior one and both are inconsistent with how CERN represents the situation.

Regarding Supersymmetry, from CERN's website:

Supersymmetry predicts a partner particle for each particle in the Standard Model, to help explain why particles have mass

The Standard Model has worked beautifully to predict what experiments have shown so far about the basic building blocks of matter, but physicists recognize that it is incomplete. Supersymmetry is an extension of the Standard Model that aims to fill some of the gaps. It predicts a partner particle for each particle in the Standard Model. These new particles would solve a major problem with the Standard Model – fixing the mass of the Higgs boson. If the theory is correct, supersymmetric particles should appear in collisions at the LHC.

According to the prior article I linked, the particles the CERN people were expecting to show up with the Higgs did not show up, and they kinda, sorta found a portion of the Higgs. (unless I'm reading that wrong?) And the recent article states the same thing:

Like the physical equivalent of x + (–x) ≈ 0, supersymmetry would protect the small but non-zero mass of the Higgs boson. The theory seemed like the perfect missing ingredient to explain the masses of the Standard Model — so perfect that without it, some theorists say the universe simply doesn’t make sense.

Yet decades after their prediction, none of the supersymmetric particles have been found.

I don't pretend to understand the physics [or is it the maths?] of the standard model and the attempts to verify it, but it seems we're hearing one thing from CERN and quite another from the physicists cited in the Quanta articles. I can certainly understand that certainty is hard to come by for our species at present, but I can't see why physicists (no matter who employs them) can't face the music together and state unambiguously that they haven't got a reliable model of the universe at present -- and are not sure how to arrive at one..

 

[smcder]

Sorry, I'm a math geek.

Godel stated, simply, that there are provably true statements in math that cannot be derived mathematically... i.e. that the domain will always be incomplete.

We can poke our finger in an incomplete domain, postulate a truth, prove it, but we can't "get" there from basic axioms.

Since the domain is by definition infinite, our ability to map it therefore will always be incomplete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems

My father was a math professor and Gödel was a topic of dinner conversation growing up. There are two incompleteness theorems. The SEP has a good article on the theorems:

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

And attempts by Penrose, Searle, Nagle to apply them to philosophy of mind:

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[marduk]

My father was a math professor and Gödel was a topic of dinner conversation growing up. There are two incompleteness theorems. The SEP has a good article on the theorems:

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

And attempts by Penrose, Searle, Nagle to apply them to philosophy of mind:

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Yup, I was referencing the first as a metaphor for what I was talking about, then realized that it was probably adding confusion rather than clarity, so I left it at the first theorem (it was I was referencing in my metaphor).

Apologies, I sometimes think that everyone is into math, logic, etc, just like I am and I go all meta on my metaphors.

 

[marduk]

In that case, if that is the case, I don't see why the recent article from Quanta refers back to the prior one and both are inconsistent with how CERN represents the situation.



According to the prior article I linked, the particles the CERN people were expecting to show up with the Higgs did not show up, and they kinda, sorta found a portion of the Higgs. (unless I'm reading that wrong?) And the recent article states the same thing:



I don't pretend to understand the physics [or is it the maths?] of the standard model and the attempts to verify it, but it seems we're hearing one thing from CERN and quite another from the physicists cited in the Quanta articles. I can certainly understand that certainty is hard to come by for our species at present, but I can't see why physicists (no matter who employs them) can't face the music together and state unambiguously that they haven't got a reliable model of the universe at present -- and are not sure how to arrive at one..

Yup, since CERN is where they're actually doing the work, I tend to believe them.

I don't think they're saying definitively that it's the Higgs, just that it looks a lot like they expected the Higgs to look like, and in fact there might be multiple types of Higgs.

Despite being present everywhere, the existence of the Higgs field has been very hard to confirm, because it is extremely hard to create excitations (i.e. Higgs particles). The search for this elusive particle has taken more than 40 years and led to the construction of one of the world's most expensive and complex experimental facilities to date, the Large Hadron Collider,[8] able to create Higgs bosons and other particles for observation and study. On 4 July 2012, the discovery of a new particle with a mass between 125 and 127 GeV/c2 was announced; physicists suspected that it was the Higgs boson.[9][10][11] By March 2013, the particle had been proven to behave, interact and decay in many of the ways predicted by the Standard Model, and was also tentatively confirmed to have positive parity and zero spin,[1] two fundamental attributes of a Higgs boson. This appears to be the first elementary scalar particle discovered in nature.[12] More data is needed to know if the discovered particle exactly matches the predictions of the Standard Model, or whether, as predicted by some theories, multiple Higgs bosons exist.

Higgs boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​

 

[Constance]

Yup, since CERN is where they're actually doing the work, I tend to believe them.

I don't think they're saying definitively that it's the Higgs, just that it looks a lot like they expected the Higgs to look like, and in fact there might be multiple types of Higgs.

Despite being present everywhere, the existence of the Higgs field has been very hard to confirm, because it is extremely hard to create excitations (i.e. Higgs particles). The search for this elusive particle has taken more than 40 years and led to the construction of one of the world's most expensive and complex experimental facilities to date, the Large Hadron Collider,[8] able to create Higgs bosons and other particles for observation and study. On 4 July 2012, the discovery of a new particle with a mass between 125 and 127 GeV/c2 was announced; physicists suspected that it was the Higgs boson.[9][10][11] By March 2013, the particle had been proven to behave, interact and decay in many of the ways predicted by the Standard Model, and was also tentatively confirmed to have positive parity and zero spin,[1] two fundamental attributes of a Higgs boson. This appears to be the first elementary scalar particle discovered in nature.[12] More data is needed to know if the discovered particle exactly matches the predictions of the Standard Model, or whether, as predicted by some theories, multiple Higgs bosons exist.

Higgs boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​

"Despite being present everywhere, the existence of the Higgs field has been very hard to confirm.." If I'm not mistaken, the claim that "the Higgs field is present everywhere" has only a theoretical mathematical 'foundation'. Keeping the faith is almost your only option.

 

[marduk]

"Despite being present everywhere, the existence of the Higgs field has been very hard to confirm.." If I'm not mistaken, the claim that "the Higgs field is present everywhere" has only a theoretical mathematical 'foundation'. Keeping the faith is almost your only option.

Not really, given that they probably found it.

 

[Constance]

If so, that's good. And even if the other particles expected to show up as a result of the Higgs boson haven't appeared at CERN yet, they might during the next round of experiments. I just finished reading another article describing the ups and downs of the standard model that I think you will like:

David J. Gross: Waiting for the Next Revolution in Physics | Simons Foundation

 

[Constance]

At the same time, it's good for all of us, scientists and philosophers and artists alike, to be reminded of the ambiguity of world we attempt to understand, as Gross says in response to this last question in that interview:

Is there an objective reality independent of human consciousness?

I believe that there is a real world, out there, and that we see shadows of it: our models, our theories. I believe that mathematics exists. It may be entirely real in a physical sense; it may also contain “things” that are ideal. But, to be clear, the human mind is a physical object. It’s put together by real molecules and quarks.

Except that he gives way to unsustainable presuppositions in that last sentence, without indicating a trace of awareness that he is doing so..

 

[marduk]

At the same time, it's good for all of us, scientists and philosophers and artists alike, to be reminded of the ambiguity of world we attempt to understand, as Gross says in response to this last question in that interview:



Except that he gives way to unsustainable presuppositions in that last sentence, without indicating a trace of awareness that he is doing so..

A ball rolling down a hill is made of molecules and quarks, too, but you don't need QM to very accurately describe what it's doing.

 

[Constance]

A ball rolling down a hill is made of molecules and quarks, too, but you don't need QM to very accurately describe what it's doing.

Gross's last sentence again: "But, to be clear, the human mind is a physical object. It’s put together by real molecules and quarks."

? The problem was his referring to the 'mind' as an object. The brain might well have lots of quarks moving around inside it.

 

[marduk]

Gross's last sentence again: "But, to be clear, the human mind is a physical object. It’s put together by real molecules and quarks."

? The problem was his referring to the 'mind' as an object. The brain might well have lots of quarks moving around inside it.

Sorry, maybe I'm not making my point well. The brain by definition will have lots of quarks in it.

To use computers as a metaphor...

Semiconductors work because of quantum mechanics. We couldn't build the transistor in the '40s until we understood how QM allows variable "holes" to pass electrons through in a semi conducting fashion. So computers rely on QM.

However, we don't generally use QM to describe computers. When I've done VLSI design for a chip, say, we work at the gate level, describing the logic gates that signals pass to do whatever you're trying to achieve. This gate-level design is then compiled, optimized, and shipped off to a plant to imprint the design into silicon with impurities.

Then you write an Operating System to use the hardware. It talks directly to the hardware and allows the use of hooks to interpret higher level calls back and forth between the hardware and whatever is running on the OS. This includes things like accepting keyboard input, moving the mouse, and painting pixels on a screen for example. This code runs directly in the hardware, is typically written in a specialized language (like assembly) and must be compiled down further into instruction sets for the hardware.

Then you write software for the OS. You write down some symbolic logic which gets compiled to OS-readible code. This is typically what you interact with when you interact with a computer.

My point of this is to say that generally using or understanding what happens in a computer happens at this highest level. When fiddling with my iTunes library, for example, I don't need to take into account the OS for the most part, never the logic gates, and never ever think about the silicon/germanium doping that occurs at the very base physical level.

So I don't need QM to describe how iTunes works, or what it's doing.

I suspect the same is true of the mind. In my way of thinking, it's a series of software processes being executed by the brain, with some kind of operating system informing the neurons 'n such what to do. In this model, consciousness occurs in the process of the software being executed, and doesn't need QM to describe what it's doing.

 

[smcder]

Sorry, maybe I'm not making my point well. The brain by definition will have lots of quarks in it.

To use computers as a metaphor...

Semiconductors work because of quantum mechanics. We couldn't build the transistor in the '40s until we understood how QM allows variable "holes" to pass electrons through in a semi conducting fashion. So computers rely on QM.

However, we don't generally use QM to describe computers. When I've done VLSI design for a chip, say, we work at the gate level, describing the logic gates that signals pass to do whatever you're trying to achieve. This gate-level design is then compiled, optimized, and shipped off to a plant to imprint the design into silicon with impurities.

Then you write an Operating System to use the hardware. It talks directly to the hardware and allows the use of hooks to interpret higher level calls back and forth between the hardware and whatever is running on the OS. This includes things like accepting keyboard input, moving the mouse, and painting pixels on a screen for example. This code runs directly in the hardware, is typically written in a specialized language (like assembly) and must be compiled down further into instruction sets for the hardware.

Then you write software for the OS. You write down some symbolic logic which gets compiled to OS-readible code. This is typically what you interact with when you interact with a computer.

My point of this is to say that generally using or understanding what happens in a computer happens at this highest level. When fiddling with my iTunes library, for example, I don't need to take into account the OS for the most part, never the logic gates, and never ever think about the silicon/germanium doping that occurs at the very base physical level.

So I don't need QM to describe how iTunes works, or what it's doing.

I suspect the same is true of the mind. In my way of thinking, it's a series of software processes being executed by the brain, with some kind of operating system informing the neurons 'n such what to do. In this model, consciousness occurs in the process of the software being executed, and doesn't need QM to describe what it's doing.

In this model, consciousness occurs in the process of the software being executed, and doesn't need QM to describe what it's doing.

Sorry if I missed this - how does consciousness occur in this process?

 

[marduk]

In this model, consciousness occurs in the process of the software being executed, and doesn't need QM to describe what it's doing.

Sorry if I missed this - how does consciousness occur in this process?

What I'm supposing is that consciousness is a process being executed by the brain that uses a series of sub processes to talk to your meat.

If you can imagine a state where your computer is fully up and running and describe that, that's what I mean.

Again it's my sense of things given that it seems natural, and doesn't require dualism or new forces, etc to occur.

It would also allow for it to emerge due to natural selection, just like genetic algorithms do.

 

[Constance]

What I'm supposing is that consciousness is a process being executed by the brain that uses a series of sub processes to talk to your meat.

If you can imagine a state where your computer is fully up and running and describe that, that's what I mean.

I think you're talking about the basic physical enablement of consciousness in terms of basic arousal [the waking state] and awareness of the environment, both in the individual human child and at a significant stage in the biological evolution of consciousness in the evolution of living species. [see Panksepp and Mitchell]. Yes, neuroscience has identified the portions of the brain required to be neurally connected to reach the core states of both arousal and awareness of that which appears to lie beyond the organism's 'self'. But we've been talking over these last 140 pages about consciousness in the larger terms of what conscious humans do, i.e. enact with their consciousnesses.

This involves the movement from prereflective consciousness to reflective consciousness and then to acts of the mind in all the varieties of human creativity, including: scientific interrogations of nature from alchemy to quantum physics; artistic expressions of what is seen and felt in existence, from rock carvings and cave paintins to abstract expressionism and modern cinema, from megalithic temples to the architectures that successively dominate our constructed environment; and philosophy of all kinds including social and political theory, ontology, ethics, and the investigations of consciousness and mind itself. I think it's impossible to account for all that has taken place in the history of human thinking and action -- from which meaning itself arises in human experience -- in terms of neural processes in the brain that enable memory storage and computation.

Again it's my sense of things given that it seems natural, and doesn't require dualism or new forces, etc to occur

The physical description of the neurological enablement of consciousness's arousal and awareness is natural enough. Life and consciousness do emerge from nature, but consciousness, as many consciousness researchers including scientists recogize, is a difference that makes a difference, and it is that making of a difference which consciousness studies and philosophy of mind explore.

It would also allow for it to emerge due to natural selection, just like genetic algorithms do.

The belief that genetic algorithms can be shown to account for all the conscious works and indeed all the conscious experiences of our species is a promissory note awaiting payment/fulfillment.

 

[marduk]

I think it's impossible to account for all that has taken place in the history of human thinking and action -- from which meaning itself arises in human experience -- in terms of neural processes in the brain that enable memory storage and computation.

And that's where we part ways.

I find it equally impossible to postulate some magical quantum mechanical stipulation for consciousness when none has been necessary, there's no structure in the brain to account for it, and there's no QM mechanism to account for it.

Except that QM is weird, therefore it's somehow magically the answer for everything we don't know about.

There's simply no need to account for it, at least yet, and occam's razor and all that.

The physical description of the neurological enablement of consciousness's arousal and awareness is natural enough. Life and consciousness do emerge from nature, but consciousness, as many consciousness researchers including scientists recogize, is a difference that makes a difference, and it is that making of a difference which consciousness studies and philosophy of mind explore.

That's just philosophical hand waiving.

"Look at me, I'm a human being, I'm somehow completely different than every other object in the universe!"

The belief that genetic algorithms can be shown to account for all the conscious works and indeed all the conscious experiences of our species is a promissory note awaiting payment/fulfillment.

Sure.

The difference between your path and mine tho, is that mine can (and is) being tested. If it doesn't work, then science will go elsewhere.

 

[Constance]

You're missing a lot, Marduk, in ignoring the pathways in consciousness and mind research -- including philosophy of mind, phenomenology, psi, parapsychology, anomalous experiences, and quantum brain and mind experimentation -- in favor of reading only the physics and neuroscience research that confirms your established point of view. That's evidently been your choice, but it doesn't have to be an exclusionary one. The reading I've been recommending is a whole lot more interesting too.

ps: no one on my side of this issue is saying that we humans are unique in the universe, but we are, to our knowledge, unique in biological evolution on earth in what we can learn about nature and about consciousness and mind -- unique and responsible for what we do with our aegis over the health and well being of life (animal and human) on this planet.

 

[marduk]

You're missing a lot, Marduk, in ignoring the pathways in consciousness and mind research -- including philosophy of mind, phenomenology, psi, parapsychology, anomalous experiences, and quantum brain and mind experimentation -- in favor of reading only the physics and neuroscience research that confirms your established point of view. That's evidently been your choice, but it doesn't have to be an exclusionary one. The reading I've been recommending is a whole lot more interesting too.

Given that within 5 feet of my desk are dozens of books by Dennet, Sartre, Hoefstader, and a few dozen others, I concede there may be points I'm missing but I still find your arguments based on passion and wishing rather than reason.

I had a flair for epistemology enough that I had a couple relatively well known profs try to convince me to do my postgraduate work with them in the area. However where we diverge is that I am firmly in the monist camp and you seem to be a staunch dualist.

I'm also interested enough in AI to have specialized in it for some years (years ago), and in fact I've been tinkering again with a combined neural net with genetic algorithm traits. Just for fun of course.

Just like I've ran my own dual slit experiment, etc. Have you? Have you any formal training at all in QM or philosophy or AI? I have, and I don't claim to be an expert but I do claim to grasp the underlying concepts enough to form a grounded opinion.

I've also experienced psi, had my share of strange experiences, and am conscious, so I disregard your assertion.

There's nothing, at least yet, that requires consciousness to be not part of the material universe as we understand it.