Does quantum uncertainty deny determinism?

...

Other urls found in this thread:

arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009v2.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_brain_dynamics
twitter.com/AnonBabble

No, it opens the door to 'metadeterminism'. Essentially all determinismic routes are true, until you collapse their wave function and one becomes 'monodeterminismic' and true.

Insofar as it does it isn't at scales / conditions relevant to the human brain, so it's not like you can use it as an argument against determinism for our own behavior.

If by determinism you mean that there is one clear path through space and time and if we rewound it things would turn out exactly the same, then almost certainly yes. If this is about free will... Well it certainly leaves the door ajar, but I don't think we can know either way. Maybe the thing that determines which singular reality the superposition collapses into in the transition from the future to the past is what will itself is.

This notion that quantum superposition doesn't affect the macro world needs to die. Atoms have mass and thus adhere to the laws of classical physics. Radioactive decay determines the mass of the atoms, and radioactive decay abides by the probabilistic nature of quantum theory. In a world where atoms didn't decay, or the decay was predictable, sure, quantum theory wouldn't affect reality at the mass scale, but that's not the world we live in. Every particle that makes up every atom in your brain is being affected at all times by quantum theory. We have no idea how this all plays out, and we can hardly even observe this phenomenon in a single particle in a CONTROLLED environment, let alone in the middle of the most complex known structure in the universe, the brain. And given that consciousness exists despite there being no scientific evidence for it should be evidence enough that there are aspects of reality that cannot be observed by scientific measurement, or predicted by cause and effect.

Why did you not reply to my post: ? :(

Lol. Idk man, the other guy said something I know I disagree with, whereas yours was more a curious way to think of it, but if I had a disagreement it would just be semantic. Expand on your post if you want. What do you think about the nature of reality, and consciousness, and free will, and the virtues and limitations of science?

Well, from a metadeterministic standpoint ANY was possible until the moment at which the event occurred at which point the action of doing forced the metadeterministic mechanism to breakdown into a monodeterministic that fit the forces and rules of the universe that the collapsed occurred within. So, if the same action had occurred in a universe with a different set of rules, or another force, or simply a different variable that wasn't in the other? Then another monodeterministic result could have occurred from the metadeterministic tree of possibilities.

Sure, I think we generally agree, my only concern would be the connotational baggage that using the word deterministic brings. If the future has infinite variable possibilities, simply using the word determinism does not apply. And I get that adding the meta/mono prefixes redefines the word itself, but why not just use a different set of words for these different ideas for clarity's sake? But again, that's just semantics. I pretty much align with your idea, but language can used to make ideas more or less clear, and I think yours might confuse people.

True, but it works for my headspace. Then again, I am an actual autist.

>This notion that quantum superposition doesn't affect the macro world needs to die.
No, that notion is correct, your quantum flapdoodle needs to die.
arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9907009v2.pdf
>We find that the decoherence timescale s ( ∼ 10 −13 − 10 −20 seconds) are typically much shorter than the relevant dynamical timescales ( ∼ 10 − 3 − 10 − 1 seconds), both for regular neuron firing and for kink-like polarization excitations in microtubules. This conclusion disagrees with suggestions by Penrose and others that the brain acts as a quantum computer, and that quantum coherence is related to consciousness in a fundamental way.
You are only allowed to honestly believe in "quantum consciousness" if you also believe consciousness has NOTHING to do with neuronal firing, because Tegmark established they will fire exactly the same way as predicted by classical physics regardless of any quantum effects that happens in proximity to them. The timescales for decoherence aren't anywhere near long enough to let them influence neuronal firing. "Quantum consciousness" is a retarded meme. You don't get to invoke magic by slapping the word "quantum" in front of things you feel are spooky and mysterious and beyond the realm of classical physics.

This is a mere justification. Bad scientists find ways to disregard scientific truths that are inconvenient. By labeling one timescale relevant and one irrelevant they're simply saying, "the phenomenon is only observable on micro scales so it doesn't influence the macro". It's just a deflection. Sure, if you want to observe phenomenon on a less precise scale for pragmatic purposes, that's fine, and will lead to practical observations of macro systems. But it's still merely a convenience.

>if you also believe consciousness has NOTHING to do with neuronal firing

I never claimed consciousness has nothing to do with neuronal firing, I'm stating the fact that particles that comprise the neurons that fire exist in superposition, which determines the neurons that fire. If you think our capabilities of measuring or observing the phenomena of quantum superposition inside the brain is adequate to even begin to determine their implications, you simply don't understand how little we know.

>You don't get to invoke magic by slapping the word "quantum" in front of things you feel are spooky and mysterious

You don't get to disregard real phenomenon by slapping the words "magic" and "spooky" on them. It's ironic that you'd invoke the words "retarded" and "meme" to describe a more comprehensive view of nature, when you're just trying to skate over the implications by merely throwing around memes that you think soundly repudiated knowledge that you aren't comfortable with. But let me restate this idea in a way that is as simple as possible.

Quantum particles exist in superposition. That superposition influences the mass of all atoms, at all times. The mass of atoms determines their physical behavior. Their physical behavior determines the behavior of the brain. The bedrock of the behavior of nature is still determined by quantum phenomena that we can hardly observe when isolated, and in a controlled environment. We simply cannot know the implications of this.

No, I don't think you get it.
Nobody serious I'm aware of has ever made the argument neuronal firing has nothing to do with consciousness. In fact it has everything to do with consciousness from all the evidence that's been collected through to the present.
Tegmark established this neuronal firing happens in exactly the same way classical physics would predict it to happen regardless of any quantum effects happening in proximity to them.
And if neuronal firing happens the same whether there are or aren't quantum effects happening in a given way nearby them, then quantum effects have no ability to influence their firing, and by extension, no ability to influence the consciousness associated with their firing.
So your left with the choice to either claim neuronal firing isn't associated with consciousness, in which case you're taking an extreme fringe position that has no evidence / support going for it, or you can accept neuronal firing is associated with consciousness and quantum effects don't influence it.
>how little we know
Irrelevant. Come back when you have real evidence. Saying "we don't know a lot" isn't an argument because you could use it as an excuse for claiming *anything*. We can only go with what we know, and what we know tells us quantum effects don't have a role in consciousness. Tegmark nailed this down in a pretty straightforward way. It's not an unknowable mystery, it's a real falsifiable question which he looked at and ultimately falsified.

>Nobody serious I'm aware of has ever made the argument neuronal firing has nothing to do with consciousness.
You're already strawmanning me dummy, but I'll read on.

>this neuronal firing happens in exactly the same way classical physics would predict it to happen regardless of any quantum effects happening in proximity to them.

I'm not saying neurons don't abide by the laws of classical physics. I'll say that again. I'm not saying neurons don't abide by the laws of classical physics. What I'm saying that neurons fire based on the composition of the atoms that comprise them. This is exactly what the laws of classical physics state. What I am stating, is that the composition of all atoms are determined by things like radioactive decay. We can't know how long an atom is going to remain the atom that it is. We can have a pretty accurate guess, but it's based on probability, probability that behaves according to the principles of quantum theory. I'm not saying that Tegmark didn't makes some interesting observations, or that he didn't answer the question that he was asking, what I'm saying is that the weren't asking the right questions. Classical physics is perfectly precise, but only given the consistency of the atoms it's observing. And while that's all pretty predictable, it's more predictable on macro scales, and is literally unpredictable on the micro scales.

>So your left with the choice to either claim neuronal firing isn't associated with consciousness
This will remain a strawman for as long as you make the argument. I agree with the statement that consciousness is certainly with consciousness, insofar as just about anything can be certain.

>Irrelevant. Come back when you have real evidence.
It is extremely relevant when you're trying to rule out viable possibilities that we cannot rule out based on insufficient evidence. And real evidence does exist, it just implies something that you don't like, i.e. the nature of reality is not deterministic.

>that consciousness is certainly with consciousness

neuronal firing is certainly associated with consciousness**

>I'm not saying neurons don't abide by the laws of classical physics.
Classical physics are deterministic though. So if you're saying the brain or consciousness is in any way not deterministic, then you're effectively saying it isn't being described by classical physics even though you're explicitly saying it is described by it.
>We can have a pretty accurate guess, but it's based on probability, probability that behaves according to the principles of quantum theory.
At the scale / in the environment of the brain / its neurons, those probabilities don't have influence anymore. You can predict deterministically how neuronal firing will happen. There is no probability calculating involved at that scale. To make this clearer with a different example, nobody would use quantum physics to try to predict the motion of planets in orbit. There is 0 influence from quantum effects on the paths planets will take. It isn't anything that applies at that scale. And it's the same way with the brain. The fact there is probability / lack of determinsim at smaller scales doesn't matter if they don't have any sort of influence on planets or the brain. That's why we still have the two different sorts of physics to model different events with. If quantum effects actually had influence in all situations / at all scales, then we wouldn't use classical physics for anything anymore.
To try to give another analogy for how this works, imagine I told you to call some coin tosses and then I opened an envelope that says "Enclosed is $5 to give to user regardless of the outcome." Would it make sense to try to calculate the probability of those coin tosses to figure out the probability you would get $5? No, you would deterministically receive $5. The fact there were coin tosses in proximity to you receiving $5 wouldn't have any impact since the payout works the same way regardless.

>Classical physics are deterministic though.
Only deterministic when you know the relevant variables, mass being one of them, which is in flux. When you have an atom, and you observe it in its atomic state for a period of time, you will observe it behaving according to the laws of classical physics. But you don't know how long it's going to remain in its state. This could not be more simple, you are contorting yourself trying to escape this incredibly simple truth.

>To try to give another analogy for how this works, imagine I told you to call some coin tosses and then I opened an envelope that says "Enclosed is $5 to give to user regardless of the outcome." Would it make sense to try to calculate the probability of those coin tosses to figure out the probability you would get $5? No, you would deterministically receive $5. The fact there were coin tosses in proximity to you receiving $5 wouldn't have any impact since the payout works the same way regardless.
This is a sound example of logic. Unfortunately it doesn't apply here. I don't even need a poorly constructed analogy to make my point, the actual fact of the matter is good enough.

Imagine you had a ball of iron orbiting a planet like object. And imagine this is a controlled environment; they're in a vacuum, and the only things that exist are the planet and the ball. The ball of iron weighs 10 grams. As long as it remains 10 grams you can predict its orbit precisely for eternity, assuming you have the computational power. The trouble is that the iron will not remain 10 grams forever. It will decay. That process of decay is only predictable in probabilistic terms. The time at which any given atom will decay is a mystery to you. So let's say I told you to predict precisely where the ball will be at one second intervals for a billion years. You won't be able to. At some point the iron will decay, and it will set it on a new parabolic path. Now imagine that the planet is made up of calcium, and it's decaying as well. You'll be even less precise as time goes on. Not imagine that instead of a ball of iron and a planet of calcium, it's a human brain, and there are dozens of chemicals, consisting of interlocking atoms by the I-don't-even-know-how-many. Billions? Trillions? All of these have interactions like these, at every moment. How dense you'd have to be to think that this can be disregarded is unfathomable.

Quantitty. Hah.

>How dense you'd have to be to think that this can be disregarded is unfathomable.
Not him, and I also think that consciousness is somehow emerging from the micro level of the brain. If I got that correctly Tegmark said the timing of neuronal firing doesn't support the quantum emergence theory. I get your mass argument, but that can't be all there is to conscience. I can't help thinking that something's missing. Something crucial we still don't know, that would help us understand. Maybe it's not possible to explain emergent effects, but I rather accept that we don't know the connection than imagining an immaterial soul or thinking that free will is just an illusion. It seems that everything in the world is ordered to no end, everything abides math, there is no room for miracles, spookiness or mysticism.

>there is no room for miracles, spookiness or mysticism.
I hate when people say this because most spooks are perfectly logical events that we simply can’t explain yet, unless you’re Hollywood and make it ridiculous to entertain normies and make money.

I wouldn't want what I said to imply that I'm a materialist in some way. To put it another way, the hard problem exists. And I do happen to believe that there is a category of questions that science fundamentally cannot answer, do to its very nature. Pure science can only observe the material.

The most basic example of this is one I point out all the time; there is no proof that consciousness exists outside of our experience of it. That will always remain true. At this moment, it's not remotely possible for you to provide scientific proof that anybody outside of yourself has a subjective experience. Even if consciousness, at bottom, were a mere fluke of the mechanisms of the brain, consciousness remains fundamentally metaphysical, and pure science fundamentally cannot observe it. At best it can correlate the measurable components of the brain with subjective phenomena, which is not to say that that pursuit is fruitless or arbitrary, but again, observation of the material will never directly observe consciousness, only its corollaries. You can associate a brain state with anger, but the only evidence you have that the observed brain state is experiencing an angry mind is the subjective claim of the person whose brain your observing that they're angry.

cont.

Only acceptance of the fundamental limitations of science will answer the deepest questions of consciousness and reality, and the true answer to these questions will always remain "it's unknowable". Which, I get that it offends people to hear that, but it is The Truth, capital T. The words miracle, and spooky, and mystic, are pejorative phrases. Understandably so, by a wide margin most claims made by most religions are wrong, and are coming from a different kind of ignorance. We still have to recognize and grant validity to the virtues of science, and I think it's a sort of allergic response on the part of the scientific community at large to disregard any recognition of the things it cannot observe, sometimes to the point that it will claim that these things don't exist BECAUSE science cannot observe them, which is very stupid, but again it's understandable. If we don't take a hard stance on the real virtues of science, it puts all of the things that we know because of the things it CAN observe at jeopardy, and leaves us vulnerable to truth claims that are based on nothing at all.

But still, things like consciousness, and the nature of reality, and free will, will always be out of it's reach (I can expand on this claim if you'd like). And if you label all things that are unobservable by science as spooky or mystical, pejoratively, you'll have sequestered your mind from ideas that are worth understanding, and maybe worse, you'll delude yourself into thinking you have an answer when you're really just sidestepping the question altogether, like Lawrence Krauss's "The Universe from Nothing", or even that article on neurons and quantum physics. What's really stupid about this is that there are things we've observed scientifically that in any other context would be written off as spooky or mystic. The reality that the particles upon which all of the matter in the universe exist in superposition, that is, in multiple places simultaneously, defies logic, defies the principles of classical physics, defies the notion of complete knowability of the universe, and defies the concept of cause and effect. And it pisses scientists off because it forces them to either confront the limitations of scientific knowledge, or to be delusionally in the face of facts.

due**

I'm going to go ahead and take that peer reviewed paper disproving the possibility of quantum effects impacting neuronal firing as more plausible than your insistence quantum effects matter for the brain based on nothing.

The science is probably sound in the paper, but the conclusion isn't. This is the exact sort of delusion that comes when you're too dogmatic about science. Another, much easier representation of this idea is Lawrence Krauss's book The Universe from Nothing. He doesn't even approach the question of why there is something rather than nothing. He merely semantically redefines nothing to mean a quantum field wherein there are no physical particles. Which, sure, with that definition, particles are popping in and out of existence in a vacuum, which is really interesting, and furthers our knowledge of the nature of reality, and it's good to know. But it still doesn't actually answer the question. It sidesteps it.


>your insistence quantum effects matter for the brain based on nothing
I'm not really even saying that. What I'm saying is that the principles of quantum theory apply to ALL matter, which is a fact, no matter how much you plug your ears about it. I know you don't accept this, but the reason you think what you think is because of an intellectual error on your part. You are the one too stupid and stubborn to accept something that is proven, and you are the one failing to extrapolate the implications of those facts to a broader context. Instead of engaging with the thought experiment I gave you, you just ran from it.

>What I'm saying is that the principles of quantum theory apply to ALL matter
To be clear, the paper explicitly concludes that quantum effects do not influence neuronal firing. Insofar as they "apply," they apply in a way that doesn't change the outcome.

I'll admit, it's tough to argue with ideas that are so vague. Having read up about quantum coherence/decoherence and how it applies to neurons, it doesn't even sound to me like you've read the paper. Essentially the idea, as I understand it, is that quantum coherence is the observation of quantum waveforms and their behavior, and decoherence is the observation of the collapse of the waveform, eliminating the quantum effect. So this is where the refutation of macroquantum events occurring in the brain.

Now, macroquantum events are real. It explains this in the paper, but some relevant examples are superconductivity, superfluidity, electromagnetic fields, Bose condensation, superflourescence, and the list goes on. What the paper is addressing is whether or not the timescale at which the firing of neurons through microtubules leaves time enough for a quantum superposition to effect the communication of the neurons from one to another. The idea that in these microtubules is the place at which any quantum superposition might occur, thus determining whether or not a neuron fires, or whether that fired neuron communicates its information by way of synapsis from one to the next. I might have some of the jargon a little out of place.

But this paper merely repudiates a single hypothesis, one potential spot, at which quantum waves might occur in the brain. In no way does it disqualify all potential quantum effects throughout the brain, not even close.

And this is what I mean about dogmatism in science. You accept one view of the nature of reality, and you'll only consider positions that support it, and when I say "consider" I'm not even confident that you read the paper, or attempted to understand the language, or understood the scope, or even the question it's asking in order to test a hypothesis, or even what the hypothesis was in the first place. I'm saying I don't know, and given the very real "turtles all the way down" explanation scientific inquiry inevitably leads to, I'm confident (not certain though) that there are aspects of the function of reality, and subsequently the brain, that we won't be able to answer. But you're so dogmatic in your view that you won't even consider the literally infinite possibilities that are still open ended. You've already decided the book is closed, which to me is both fundamentally unscientific, and speaking to a broader idea of human knowledge, is unwise.

>But this paper merely repudiates a single hypothesis, one potential spot, at which quantum waves might occur in the brain.
Please provide a peer reviewed write-up about a model for "quantum consciousness" that does not involve decoherence.

> to disregard any recognition of the things it cannot observe, sometimes to the point that it will claim that these things don't exist BECAUSE science cannot observe them

I don't rule out the possibility of us fundamentally being unable to explain consciousness. But I'm more concerned with ontology than epistemology. And science is just a method to explain things that are. From these observations I infer that if there are non-materialist things that there has to be a non-materialist "creator" and that this creator is a pretty obsessive force to make the world run by rules and math down to the last particle. Something this obsessed with the rule-abiding nature of existence wouldn't cause rule-defying non-materialist miracles, it wouldn't be coherent anymore. Thus there is nothing but the material and God (if there even is something worthy of this name) may be the unexperienceable/unknown principle of emergence itself.
I see how this would seem like sidetracking the problem. but I also refuse to accept arbitrary metaphysical statements about consciousness coming from some non-materialist "place". It seems much more preferable to me to accept that we don't know how consciousness and free will is caused than turning empirical observations/experiences like eg Room and Time into spooks (Kant). [Dividing the world into appearances and things as they really are seems like a misconception to me.] I'm sure of my own consciousness existing and I think (I can't be fully certain) materialism is it's foundation.
Whether the correlation is fundamentally unexperienceable or just unknown I'm not sure yet, but I'm positive that it exists. Maybe by reconstructing (reverse engineering) the brain (I'm thinking of future AI) we can understand more about the nature of consciousness. If it's unexperienceable I could imagine people managing to create a conscious machine without them understanding how they did it. If it's unknown a "better brain" would be able to figure it out.

You know, I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree. I do think that the existence of subjective experience, or qualia, that you cannot know exists outside of your experience of it, fundamentally proves that either the nonmaterial exists, or that material is tethered to a fundamental subjective experience in the first place, and the two are inseparable. But just the acknowledgement that we don't know yet, and that it's possible that we'll never know, to me indicates a sort of wisdom that I find is lacking in the more dogmatic sects of science.

I still think it's true that all knowledge of subjective experience can only be observed by the conscious observer, through that subjective experience itself, which means that observing material phenomena will only ever observe the material, not the subjective. This is getting convoluted, but basically there is a fundamental disconnect between material observations and subjective ones. But I respect your stance, it's about as good a take on it as one can have.

Guy, the information is out there for you to find yourself. And I'm not saying any of the current hypothesis are correct, I'm just saying it's incredibly naive to think that we know enough to rule it out altogether, and in turn posit ownership of knowledge that you don't actually have, citing a paper that you haven't actually read, full of ideas that you don't actually understand, in the face of more broad knowledge that clearly leaves huge spaces of unstudied phenomena and has obvious implications challanging that thing that you've already assumed to be true "based on nothing" (to use your words).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_brain_dynamics

Just follow the citations, I'll do some digging on my own because I'm genuinely interested in acquiring more knowledge and a deeper understanding of what we know, what we don't, and what we can't, which is more than I can say for you on the basis of this conversation.

You still have done a remarkable job sidestepping all engagement with everything I've said. Recognize what that says about you. Allow yourself to challenge your own beliefs. Historically speaking, the position of "I don't know but there's plenty left to find out" has always been right, and "I know with absolute certainty that these questions are closed" has always been wrong, and even right this very second you continue to be demonstrably wrong, you just won't allow that idea to influence your dogmatism.

undeterminable =/= undetermined

Well that would apply if you think that quantum uncertainty only exists hypothetically, and that reality would play out exactly the same every time you rewound the clock. Is that what you think? Because I lean more towards the idea that literally every time you rewound the clock it would play a different variable in the summation of the infinite positions existing in all the waves of probability in the universe.

>You know, I think we agree on a lot more than we disagree.
I think so too.

>which means that observing material phenomena will only ever observe the material, not the subjective.
>basically there is a fundamental disconnect between material observations and subjective ones.
I think it comes down to the concept of determinism being severely insufficient. My take on it is that determinism may not exist on the fundamental scale of things. Whereas on a macro scale it somehow comes into being. If mind and free will emerge from material they do so in a non-deterministic way and thus observing the "higher" level (mind) is only possible from (at least) the same level. Nevertheless there is still worth in trying to come as close as possible in inferring subjective observations from material ones, it's not about the inferring itself (it's likely impossible), but about approximate grasping of the principle.

no, i'm saying that just because you can't determine something does not mean it hasn't been determined. You can believe in both at the same time. Say for instance, there is a god and he got really lazy at the beginning of creation so at the lowest level he decided to just make shit turn out a certain way for no (physics) reason so that quantum probability is just god's random choices. In this universe, it would be concurrently true that the best model we could have is a probabilistic one and that the universe is predetermined. Now it's not a serious example, but it illustrates that they're not mutually exclusive. From quantum physics we know there is no better model than a probabilistic one, but the block universe is the only one compatible with relativity so with current knowledge, the best bet is that our universe shares the same characteristics as my example.

The bridge between ontology and epistemology may hold the answers. I´m talking about the bridge between Heidegger s Being andTime and connections that were separately made by Bacon, Locke, Kant. Rorty may be hinted at this but went by the "I will mount the discourse" route.

No, it evolves into question whether quantum events have any influence on macro world events. Which obviously is impossible to tell right now.
>I'm stating the fact that particles that comprise the neurons that fire exist in superposition, which determines the neurons that fire
No you idiot, neurons are macro world objects. You have no way to prove that macro world object are influenced by quantum phenomena, therefore your assumption is based on nothing else than personal belief.

>You have no way to prove that macro world object are influenced by quantum phenomena

Aside from superconductivity, superfluidity, electromagnetic fields, Bose condensation, and superflourescence?

There's still this very simple logical experiment.

>Imagine you had a ball of iron orbiting a planet like object. And imagine this is a controlled environment; they're in a vacuum, and the only things that exist are the planet and the ball. The ball of iron weighs 10 grams. As long as it remains 10 grams you can predict its orbit precisely for eternity, assuming you have the computational power. The trouble is that the iron will not remain 10 grams forever. It will decay. That process of decay is only predictable in probabilistic terms. The time at which any given atom will decay is a mystery to you. So let's say I told you to predict precisely where the ball will be at one second intervals for a billion years. You won't be able to. At some point the iron will decay, and it will set it on a new parabolic path. Now imagine that the planet is made up of calcium, and it's decaying as well. You'll be even less precise as time goes on. Not imagine that instead of a ball of iron and a planet of calcium, it's a human brain, and there are dozens of chemicals, consisting of interlocking atoms by the I-don't-even-know-how-many. Billions? Trillions? All of these have interactions like these, at every moment. How dense you'd have to be to think that this can be disregarded is unfathomable.