August 10, 2023 • 21 mins
In this episode, Chad explores a scientific theory of consciousness first put forth by Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff in the 1990s called quantum consciousness. This unorthodox, yet-scientific theory proposes that consciousness arises out of highly coordinated quantum processes occurring in the cells of the brain. This theory combines quantum mechanics, relativity, neuroscience, cognitive science, molecular biology, and philosophy.
It’s different than prevailing theories of consciousness, which suggest that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the firing of synapses in the neurons of the brain. Instead, Penrose’s theory suggests that subatomic particles collapse of their own accord and thereby create what Penrose calls proto-consciousness. It is an elegant way to bridge the two prevailing theories of consciousness: materialist and idealist.
This theory also has major implications for artificial intelligence because it means that machine learning and neural networks may never achieve true intelligence, strong AI, superintelligence, or anything resembling artificial consciousness.
Chad also explores the idea of computability, computers as universal metaphor, and the possibility that quantum computers might be a more promising avenue for research into artificial general intelligence.
This episode was inspired by Chad's work in the philosophy, cosmology and consciousness program at CIIS under Kerri Welch, for a course called The Epic of the Universe. Thank you Kerri for providing such rich pointers for further study!
The original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa5eRD4lGDA
To learn more, we recommend starting with this Penrose & Hameroff paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
For more about quantum weirdness and how nobody really understands what is happening when the quantum and classical worlds interact, check out this explainer from PBS Spacetime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT7SiRiqK-Q&ab_channel=PBSSpaceTime
This conversation with Roger Penrose by Lex Fridman is pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0&t=644s
For a great intro to quantum computing, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fz3dqhN44&t=6s
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I recently recorded a videoabout something called quantum
consciousness as part of theproject at the California
Institute of integral studies inthe philosophy cosmology and
consciousness program. I'mmaking the audio available here
because I thought it was such afascinating exploration. If you
want to see the original video,you can find the link in the
show notes for this episode.
Now, here's my exploration ofquantum consciousness.
(00:37):
Welcome to cosmic intelligence,a Podcast where we explore the
intersection of philosophy,cosmology, consciousness, and
emerging technologies likeartificial intelligence. If
you're new here, I'm Chad, aphilosopher, technologist,
product manager, yoga teacherand attorney based in Los
Angeles.
(01:03):
I want to tell you about areally interesting and
unorthodox theory ofconsciousness called quantum
consciousness. This is a theorythat was proposed by the
physicist Roger Penrose in the90s. And then evolved in his
collaboration with this Dr.
Stuart Hameroff. Throughout thepast few decades into where we
are now, and I want to tell youa little bit about it. The
theory basically says thatconsciousness in the brain is
(01:26):
arising out of the quantumrealm, inside the millions and
billions of proteins that areinside the neurons of the brain.
So let's unpack that a littlebit. Before we get into the
details, I want to just bring inartificial intelligence, this
theory of consciousness ishighly relevant to the larger
conversation that we're havingright now about artificial
(01:49):
intelligence, it as we gothrough this kind of AI
revolution. So the explosion ofAI right now has been raising
all sorts of interestingquestions. Can machines become
intelligent? Can they becomesuper intelligent? Can they can
we achieve Artificial GeneralIntelligence? Can AI machine
become self aware, sentient,conscious, what is
(02:10):
consciousness? These are allinteresting questions that are
coming out of this artificialintelligence conversation, it
seems to me and Roger Penroseagrees, that you cannot have
true intelligence without someform of consciousness. And
that's part of why I think weneed to look more closely at
these theories and approachesthat we're taking into
(02:31):
artificial intelligence. Withoutconsciousness, there's basically
no artificial generalintelligence, there's no super
intelligence. And so I think, aswe'll see, that means that super
intelligence and these thingsare pretty far off. Actually,
before we get into quantumconsciousness, let's first take
a step back and explore some ofthe prevailing theories of
(02:52):
consciousness. So probably themost common and the most widely
held theory of consciousness isa materialist theory of
consciousness, which says thatconsciousness somehow arises out
of the neurochemical processesin the brain. And we don't
really know how that happens.
(03:15):
But that seems to be the case.
Right? So the consciousness isseen as basically an
epiphenomenon of the brain. Oneof the big problems or
challenges with the materialistview of consciousness is that it
bumps into what we call the hardproblem of consciousness. And
the hard problem ofconsciousness is, there seems to
be some phenomenologicalexperience of being you, when
(03:39):
you eat a strawberry or youdrink a delicious beverage, or
you are in awe of the night sky.
These these things are producinga an experience in the brain,
that's not just analyticalprocessing, it seems to be some
kind of something higher levelin a sense. So how is that
(04:03):
possible when what we're talkingabout is basically this metaphor
of the mind as a machine as aseries of neurons that are
firing and synapses that arefiring and like, how does that
actually produce theseexperiences of consciousness?
It's a big question that doesn'treally have an answer. Not only
that, but the current approachesto artificial intelligence are
based on this theory ofintelligence, this theory of
(04:26):
mind, seeing it as basically acomputer that is operating in a
neural network in the brain. Andso artificial intelligence is
basically modeling this neuralnetwork. And that's why we have
machine learning, which is aneural network. And that's what
that's what's kind of drivingthese large language models and
generative AI chat GPT midjourney. This is all based on
(04:49):
this approach to consciousnessand the brain and intelligence.
And so it's interesting becausethe theory I think, among a lot
of AI researchers is that if wecan just to produce enough of a
complexity and enough of a largeenough data set driving a large
enough data model and a largeenough neural network, then
(05:09):
somehow true intelligence andeven consciousness will arise,
spontaneously somehow. So that'sthe current approach to
artificial intelligence. Andthat's the materialist
worldview, that's driving thattheory of consciousness, the
alternative theory ofconsciousness is called pan
(05:31):
psychism. Or idealism, dependingon where you're coming from. And
this is the view thatconsciousness is fundamental.
And everything is made ofconsciousness. And so our entire
experience is withinconsciousness. And the brain is
basically inside ofconsciousness, the bodies inside
of consciousness, emerging outof it. And so the brain, because
(05:54):
there seems to be thiscorrelation between brain
activity and consciousness isall it is, is it's a like a
radio receiver that's tuninginto the broader consciousness
that's out there. So that's,that's pan psychism. Or
idealism,it's actually quite an old
worldview. It goes all the wayback, you know, 1000s of years.
For example, in India, the yieldVedantic view, the Hindu view,
(06:15):
basically, is that everythinghas consciousness. So this is a
very old kind of view of thebrain and the mind and that kind
of thing. So that's the secondalternative view of
consciousness. And that bringsus to quantum consciousness,
quantum consciousness is kind ofthe middle way. So Roger Penrose
and Stuart Hameroff, they're,they're trying to essentially
(06:37):
make the case for a form ofidealism or pan psychism. By
sort of getting there throughmaterialist quantum physics.
It's very elegant in a way andcreative solution to bridging
the gap between these twotheories of consciousness and of
mind. In order to talk aboutquantum consciousness, we need
(07:00):
to spend a few minutes talkingabout quantum weirdness, or the
ways that the quantum world isvery strange. And I'm sure we're
all familiar with some of thesenotions from the popular
culture, and the zeitgeist.
You've got Heisenberg'suncertainty principle, and
(07:21):
Einstein's phrase spooky actionat a distance. And just this
general notion that when we gofrom the classical world of
physics to the quantum world,things seem to be a little
strange, or at least theinteraction between those two
worlds is a little bit wonky.
So, for example, when physicistsin the early part of the 20th
century, were trying todetermine whether light was a
(07:42):
particle or a wave, it behavedlike, wave until they tried to
measure the light, and then itseemed to collapse into a
particle. And so this thisstrange measurement phenomenon,
it's a measurement problem. Itcontinues to this day, whatever
quantum physicists are doingexperiments, there's this kind
(08:03):
of indeterminate state in termsof the subatomic particles, and
they're not, they don't, theydon't collapse, the wave form
doesn't collapse, as they say,until we actually take a
measurement. And so that's aquite strange result, it's a
little bit counterintuitive. Andit seems to indicate that our
consciousness is directlyrelated to the quantum world.
(08:24):
And they're they'reinterconnected, Roger Penrose
came along, and he kind ofturned this on its head. So he
said, not only doesconsciousness or observation
seem to influence the quantumrealm, but the quantum world
itself can then in turn, createconsciousness. So he has this
theory of basically selfcollapsing particles in the
(08:48):
quantum quantum realm. And thishappens through something called
quantum gravity. And that's awhole other thing we don't need
to get into right now. Butbasically, he's saying that
there is this phenomenon wherethroughout the universe, quantum
particles can self collapse. Andthis can create a sort of proto
consciousness he calls it. Andthis this phenomenon of self
(09:09):
collapse and the creation ofproto consciousness or low level
consciousness, let's say, thisoccurs throughout the whole
universe, and has been going onsince the beginning of time
since the Big Bang. And we'llsee in a moment, why that is
relevant to the largerconversation. This theory of
quantum consciousness isbasically saying that the brain
(09:29):
is actually structured in a waywhere these microtubules are
sort of orchestrating thislarge, entangled set of quantum
processes that all together areforming these various moments of
consciousness. That's the theoryof quantum consciousness. Not
only that, but the brainstructure seems to be designed
(09:52):
to, to not only orchestrate thiscollective entangled series of
Quantum interactions. But toprotect that whole process from
what physicists would callenvironmental entanglement,
meaning that it's selfcontained, it's not being, at
least not typically beingaffected by the quantum
(10:12):
processes that are happeningoutside of the brain. And so
it's a self contained system.
And part of the benefit of thestructure is that it's able to
shield it from environmentalinfluences. Another benefit of
the structure of the brain forthis purpose is that it's able
to achieve quantum computing,essentially, at ambient
(10:32):
temperatures at bodytemperature, which is something
that we haven't figured out howto do yet. If you know anything
about quantum computers, theseare required to operate at
pretty close to absolute zero.
So they have to be, I think,around 15 milli Kelvin, which is
almost zero degrees Kelvin. Sosomehow, the brain is able to
sustain these quantum processesat body temperature,
(10:55):
essentially. And there's,there's some empirical evidence
for this theory. Becauserecently, in the past few years,
scientists have found a kind ofsimilar process happening at the
quantum level, in the processthat plants use for
photosynthesis. Sophotosynthesis seems to be
happening in a kind of organizedway at the quantum level, inside
of the cells of the plant.
(11:30):
So what's really incredibleabout this theory, meant one of
the many things that'sincredible about it is that it
seems to suggest that thebiology and life basically
evolves in a way is driven bythis inclination, or you could
say desire for the protoconsciousness to kind of self
(11:51):
organize into more complexstructures to achieve higher and
higher levels of consciousness,that seems to be part of the
implication of this theory. Andthat makes a lot of sense. I
think, if we look at theevolution of nature and the
genesis of the cosmos, we cansee this process unfolding,
basically, where we're life iscounteracting entropy, and
(12:14):
creating increasingly complexstructures that are finding
increasingly creative ways toburn energy to create higher
levels of consciousness. Andpart of part of this theory to
is that the reason thatconsciousness is so attractive
or so beneficial to evolve, isbecause it the, the higher the
consciousness, the moreaccurately it's able to
(12:35):
represent the, the world, so tospeak, which is depending if
you're a duelist, or not, youknow, we can say the external
world or just the world, butit's able to accurately
represent the world. And notonly that, but to then provide
the organism with experiences ofpleasure. And this is something
that further drives increasingevolution. And in essence,
(12:57):
evolution is the pursuit ofpositive experiences. And it's,
this is great too, because,again, going back to the yogic
philosophy, the one of the viewsin the tradition of yoga is that
the purpose of life is to hastwo purposes, it's to evolve,
(13:17):
and to enjoy to celebrate. Andso this theory seems to confirm
that in a way, that's quantumconsciousness. In a nutshell,
there's a lot more to it. Butthat's, that's the essence of
it. I want to talk for a momentabout this idea of
computability. And talk aboutthe reason that this whole
theory is relevant to the largerconversation about artificial
(13:40):
intelligence as well. One reasonto be skeptical about the
ultimate success of the currentapproaches to artificial
intelligence is that the currentapproach is assume that the mind
is an algorithm that the mind isa computer. And this is because
one of the godfathers ofartificial intelligence, Alan
Turing had this attitude. Soback then everyone kind of saw,
(14:03):
this is back in the early partof the 20th century, everyone
saw the brain and the mind andconsciousness as simply
computation. What is acomputation? Exactly? So a
computation is essentiallysomething that's solvable with
an algorithm. Mathematics is agood example, formulas, that
kind of thing. Things that arevery easily sort of linear and
(14:27):
and analytical are, arecomputable. In essence, whether
there are things that are noncomputable, for example,
determining whether a very largenumber is a prime number or not,
that's non computable. And whichmeans that a algorithm would
probably never reach a solutiongiven any amount of time. And so
(14:48):
there are these these things.
This is a whole other topicthat's very deep, but there's
the there's these problem setsthat are not computable. And
part of the advantage of quantumconsciousness is that it too is
not computable in the positivesense, which means that it seems
to indicate that the thatconsciousness itself is not
limited to strictly being analgorithm, it seems to go so
(15:08):
much beyond that, the human mindseems to be able to solve
problems that are noncomputable, or to at least take
a non algorithmic approach toproblem solving. And this bears
out if you simply reflect onyour own experiences, your own
way of solving problems, youmight begin on one train of
thought and follow that to acertain point and then realize
(15:30):
you need to jump up a level andquestion the assumptions of
that. And then you might take adifferent tack and go a
different direction on adifferent train of thought. And
then you might jump up a levelfrom there. And then you might
compare those two, and thatmight sort of reveal to you what
was wrong with that approach tothe problem. And then maybe
you'll take a break, and you'lltake a shower, or you'll
(15:50):
meditate or take a nap orsomething like that, where
suddenly the solution to theproblem just spontaneously
emerges and pops into your head.
And this is such a common thing,that it's even got a name, it's
called abductive reasoning. Andthis is the kind of thinking
that is very common in ourexperience, but very hard to
(16:14):
emulate or implement in aartificial intelligence system
today, given the currentapproaches, because this is the
case, it seems like we may needa new approach to artificial
intelligence. And maybe that'squantum computers, since they do
operate in the quantum realm, inthe same way that this theory is
proposing our consciousnessdoes. And so maybe that's one
(16:38):
avenue of of research that wecould pursue using quantum
computing for achievingartificial intelligence, quantum
computers have shown a lot ofpromise because they're able to
do very high level parallelprocessing, they may not be non
computable, they may, they maystill be algorithmic at the end
of the day, but they're able todo this high level parallel
(16:59):
processing through the quantummechanical realm. And that's
allowing them to define theprime factors of very large
numbers. And to simulate nature,these are things that they seem
to be good at doing. So it couldbe interesting place to do some
research, at least on to theviability of AI through quantum
(17:20):
computing. With this theory,there are still a lot of open
questions, it's relatively new,none of it has really been
experimentally verified. It'snot even close to any kind of
empirical support. But it'spromising. It's interesting. It
takes a novel approach. And itsuggests a lot of avenues for
research. Another thing itdoesn't really get into so much
(17:43):
from what I've read is wherememory is stored how memory
memory works. And so that'sanother kind of an unanswered
question with this theory. But Ilike the way that it is sort of
bridging the gap betweenmaterialism and idealism. In
fact, it's either a very elegantsolution to bridging the gap
between materialism and idealismor pan psychism. Or it's it's a
(18:07):
way of trying to get to panpsychism and idealism, but
clinging on very tightly tomaterialism. So I can't quite
tell which it is based on myresearch. But either way, it's
really interesting. And I thinkit's, it's time for us to
explore a new approach to thesequestions of consciousness. And
I really love this idea thatconsciousness and life is
(18:29):
evolving to create theconditions for ever increasing
levels and ever increasingcomplexity of consciousness
itself. So this, this idea thatconsciousness and life in the
universe is basically organizingeverything, partly for that
purpose, and partly to enjoy aswell as evolve. I'll leave you
(18:51):
with this interesting side note,Roger Penrose feels very
strongly that quantum physics asa whole is a kind of a stopgap
theory on the way to somethingmore elegant and powerful,
because we have this quantumweirdness. And because it seems
like we don't quite understandwhat's going on. There's no
unified theory of classicalphysics and quantum physics. So
(19:12):
it's interesting to me that,despite the generally held view
that quantum physics is thispinnacle of achievement in the
20th century. It's also verycomplete and needs a lot of
further theorizing, and a lot offurther research. I want to
leave you with this questionabout metaphor and just ask you
to notice metaphor and your lifeand the ways that we use it.
(19:37):
There's no doubt that wecurrently live in the age of the
computer metaphor. So almosteverything seems to be seen
through the lens of computermetaphor. The mind is a machine
and chaos theory and systemstheory sees the purpose of of
everything as sort ofcompressing information, and
(19:58):
many people think that we mightlive in a semi lesion. These are
all things that are very muchinside of this computer
metaphor. And I think metaphorscan serve serve a beneficial
purpose. But at the same time,it's so important for us to
constantly be vigilant andnotice where this metaphor is
coming in, and where it mightnot be totally accurate or where
(20:18):
it might not be serving apurpose. So just leave you with
that. Just notice just notice,metaphor and your life and and
where it's being used. Andwhether it's being used
appropriately, whether quantumconsciousness turns out to be a
viable theory. There's no doubtthat with quantum physics and
(20:38):
everything we know about scienceright now that we are intimately
connected to everything else.
That is definitely the case. Andso I just asked you, after you
watch this, when you're whenyou're contemplating your
thinking, when you're having aquiet moment, just reflect on
the fact that your thinking isprobably happening in the
quantum realm. And so your, yourexisting, we're all existing in
(21:01):
some sense in the quantum world.
So I'll leave you with that. Soif you have any comments or
questions about this, I wouldlove to hear from you. You can
contact me, you'll find all thelinks to everything in the show
notes for this episode. Thankyou so much for listening, and
I'll see you next time.
I recently recorded a videoabout something called quantum
consciousness as part of theproject at the California
Institute of integral studies inthe philosophy cosmology and
consciousness program. I'mmaking the audio available here
because I thought it was such afascinating exploration. If you
want to see the original video,you can find the link in the
show notes for this episode.
Now, here's my exploration ofquantum consciousness.
(00:37):
Welcome to cosmic intelligence,a Podcast where we explore the
intersection of philosophy,cosmology, consciousness, and
emerging technologies likeartificial intelligence. If
you're new here, I'm Chad, aphilosopher, technologist,
product manager, yoga teacherand attorney based in Los
Angeles.
(01:03):
I want to tell you about areally interesting and
unorthodox theory ofconsciousness called quantum
consciousness. This is a theorythat was proposed by the
physicist Roger Penrose in the90s. And then evolved in his
collaboration with this Dr.
Stuart Hameroff. Throughout thepast few decades into where we
are now, and I want to tell youa little bit about it. The
theory basically says thatconsciousness in the brain is
(01:26):
arising out of the quantumrealm, inside the millions and
billions of proteins that areinside the neurons of the brain.
So let's unpack that a littlebit. Before we get into the
details, I want to just bring inartificial intelligence, this
theory of consciousness ishighly relevant to the larger
conversation that we're havingright now about artificial
(01:49):
intelligence, it as we gothrough this kind of AI
revolution. So the explosion ofAI right now has been raising
all sorts of interestingquestions. Can machines become
intelligent? Can they becomesuper intelligent? Can they can
we achieve Artificial GeneralIntelligence? Can AI machine
become self aware, sentient,conscious, what is
(02:10):
consciousness? These are allinteresting questions that are
coming out of this artificialintelligence conversation, it
seems to me and Roger Penroseagrees, that you cannot have
true intelligence without someform of consciousness. And
that's part of why I think weneed to look more closely at
these theories and approachesthat we're taking into
(02:31):
artificial intelligence. Withoutconsciousness, there's basically
no artificial generalintelligence, there's no super
intelligence. And so I think, aswe'll see, that means that super
intelligence and these thingsare pretty far off. Actually,
before we get into quantumconsciousness, let's first take
a step back and explore some ofthe prevailing theories of
(02:52):
consciousness. So probably themost common and the most widely
held theory of consciousness isa materialist theory of
consciousness, which says thatconsciousness somehow arises out
of the neurochemical processesin the brain. And we don't
really know how that happens.
(03:15):
But that seems to be the case.
Right? So the consciousness isseen as basically an
epiphenomenon of the brain. Oneof the big problems or
challenges with the materialistview of consciousness is that it
bumps into what we call the hardproblem of consciousness. And
the hard problem ofconsciousness is, there seems to
be some phenomenologicalexperience of being you, when
(03:39):
you eat a strawberry or youdrink a delicious beverage, or
you are in awe of the night sky.
These these things are producinga an experience in the brain,
that's not just analyticalprocessing, it seems to be some
kind of something higher levelin a sense. So how is that
(04:03):
possible when what we're talkingabout is basically this metaphor
of the mind as a machine as aseries of neurons that are
firing and synapses that arefiring and like, how does that
actually produce theseexperiences of consciousness?
It's a big question that doesn'treally have an answer. Not only
that, but the current approachesto artificial intelligence are
based on this theory ofintelligence, this theory of
(04:26):
mind, seeing it as basically acomputer that is operating in a
neural network in the brain. Andso artificial intelligence is
basically modeling this neuralnetwork. And that's why we have
machine learning, which is aneural network. And that's what
that's what's kind of drivingthese large language models and
generative AI chat GPT midjourney. This is all based on
(04:49):
this approach to consciousnessand the brain and intelligence.
And so it's interesting becausethe theory I think, among a lot
of AI researchers is that if wecan just to produce enough of a
complexity and enough of a largeenough data set driving a large
enough data model and a largeenough neural network, then
(05:09):
somehow true intelligence andeven consciousness will arise,
spontaneously somehow. So that'sthe current approach to
artificial intelligence. Andthat's the materialist
worldview, that's driving thattheory of consciousness, the
alternative theory ofconsciousness is called pan
(05:31):
psychism. Or idealism, dependingon where you're coming from. And
this is the view thatconsciousness is fundamental.
And everything is made ofconsciousness. And so our entire
experience is withinconsciousness. And the brain is
basically inside ofconsciousness, the bodies inside
of consciousness, emerging outof it. And so the brain, because
(05:54):
there seems to be thiscorrelation between brain
activity and consciousness isall it is, is it's a like a
radio receiver that's tuninginto the broader consciousness
that's out there. So that's,that's pan psychism. Or
idealism,it's actually quite an old
worldview. It goes all the wayback, you know, 1000s of years.
For example, in India, the yieldVedantic view, the Hindu view,
(06:15):
basically, is that everythinghas consciousness. So this is a
very old kind of view of thebrain and the mind and that kind
of thing. So that's the secondalternative view of
consciousness. And that bringsus to quantum consciousness,
quantum consciousness is kind ofthe middle way. So Roger Penrose
and Stuart Hameroff, they're,they're trying to essentially
(06:37):
make the case for a form ofidealism or pan psychism. By
sort of getting there throughmaterialist quantum physics.
It's very elegant in a way andcreative solution to bridging
the gap between these twotheories of consciousness and of
mind. In order to talk aboutquantum consciousness, we need
(07:00):
to spend a few minutes talkingabout quantum weirdness, or the
ways that the quantum world isvery strange. And I'm sure we're
all familiar with some of thesenotions from the popular
culture, and the zeitgeist.
You've got Heisenberg'suncertainty principle, and
(07:21):
Einstein's phrase spooky actionat a distance. And just this
general notion that when we gofrom the classical world of
physics to the quantum world,things seem to be a little
strange, or at least theinteraction between those two
worlds is a little bit wonky.
So, for example, when physicistsin the early part of the 20th
century, were trying todetermine whether light was a
(07:42):
particle or a wave, it behavedlike, wave until they tried to
measure the light, and then itseemed to collapse into a
particle. And so this thisstrange measurement phenomenon,
it's a measurement problem. Itcontinues to this day, whatever
quantum physicists are doingexperiments, there's this kind
(08:03):
of indeterminate state in termsof the subatomic particles, and
they're not, they don't, theydon't collapse, the wave form
doesn't collapse, as they say,until we actually take a
measurement. And so that's aquite strange result, it's a
little bit counterintuitive. Andit seems to indicate that our
consciousness is directlyrelated to the quantum world.
(08:24):
And they're they'reinterconnected, Roger Penrose
came along, and he kind ofturned this on its head. So he
said, not only doesconsciousness or observation
seem to influence the quantumrealm, but the quantum world
itself can then in turn, createconsciousness. So he has this
theory of basically selfcollapsing particles in the
(08:48):
quantum quantum realm. And thishappens through something called
quantum gravity. And that's awhole other thing we don't need
to get into right now. Butbasically, he's saying that
there is this phenomenon wherethroughout the universe, quantum
particles can self collapse. Andthis can create a sort of proto
consciousness he calls it. Andthis this phenomenon of self
(09:09):
collapse and the creation ofproto consciousness or low level
consciousness, let's say, thisoccurs throughout the whole
universe, and has been going onsince the beginning of time
since the Big Bang. And we'llsee in a moment, why that is
relevant to the largerconversation. This theory of
quantum consciousness isbasically saying that the brain
(09:29):
is actually structured in a waywhere these microtubules are
sort of orchestrating thislarge, entangled set of quantum
processes that all together areforming these various moments of
consciousness. That's the theoryof quantum consciousness. Not
only that, but the brainstructure seems to be designed
(09:52):
to, to not only orchestrate thiscollective entangled series of
Quantum interactions. But toprotect that whole process from
what physicists would callenvironmental entanglement,
meaning that it's selfcontained, it's not being, at
least not typically beingaffected by the quantum
(10:12):
processes that are happeningoutside of the brain. And so
it's a self contained system.
And part of the benefit of thestructure is that it's able to
shield it from environmentalinfluences. Another benefit of
the structure of the brain forthis purpose is that it's able
to achieve quantum computing,essentially, at ambient
(10:32):
temperatures at bodytemperature, which is something
that we haven't figured out howto do yet. If you know anything
about quantum computers, theseare required to operate at
pretty close to absolute zero.
So they have to be, I think,around 15 milli Kelvin, which is
almost zero degrees Kelvin. Sosomehow, the brain is able to
sustain these quantum processesat body temperature,
(10:55):
essentially. And there's,there's some empirical evidence
for this theory. Becauserecently, in the past few years,
scientists have found a kind ofsimilar process happening at the
quantum level, in the processthat plants use for
photosynthesis. Sophotosynthesis seems to be
happening in a kind of organizedway at the quantum level, inside
of the cells of the plant.
(11:30):
So what's really incredibleabout this theory, meant one of
the many things that'sincredible about it is that it
seems to suggest that thebiology and life basically
evolves in a way is driven bythis inclination, or you could
say desire for the protoconsciousness to kind of self
(11:51):
organize into more complexstructures to achieve higher and
higher levels of consciousness,that seems to be part of the
implication of this theory. Andthat makes a lot of sense. I
think, if we look at theevolution of nature and the
genesis of the cosmos, we cansee this process unfolding,
basically, where we're life iscounteracting entropy, and
(12:14):
creating increasingly complexstructures that are finding
increasingly creative ways toburn energy to create higher
levels of consciousness. Andpart of part of this theory to
is that the reason thatconsciousness is so attractive
or so beneficial to evolve, isbecause it the, the higher the
consciousness, the moreaccurately it's able to
(12:35):
represent the, the world, so tospeak, which is depending if
you're a duelist, or not, youknow, we can say the external
world or just the world, butit's able to accurately
represent the world. And notonly that, but to then provide
the organism with experiences ofpleasure. And this is something
that further drives increasingevolution. And in essence,
(12:57):
evolution is the pursuit ofpositive experiences. And it's,
this is great too, because,again, going back to the yogic
philosophy, the one of the viewsin the tradition of yoga is that
the purpose of life is to hastwo purposes, it's to evolve,
(13:17):
and to enjoy to celebrate. Andso this theory seems to confirm
that in a way, that's quantumconsciousness. In a nutshell,
there's a lot more to it. Butthat's, that's the essence of
it. I want to talk for a momentabout this idea of
computability. And talk aboutthe reason that this whole
theory is relevant to the largerconversation about artificial
(13:40):
intelligence as well. One reasonto be skeptical about the
ultimate success of the currentapproaches to artificial
intelligence is that the currentapproach is assume that the mind
is an algorithm that the mind isa computer. And this is because
one of the godfathers ofartificial intelligence, Alan
Turing had this attitude. Soback then everyone kind of saw,
(14:03):
this is back in the early partof the 20th century, everyone
saw the brain and the mind andconsciousness as simply
computation. What is acomputation? Exactly? So a
computation is essentiallysomething that's solvable with
an algorithm. Mathematics is agood example, formulas, that
kind of thing. Things that arevery easily sort of linear and
(14:27):
and analytical are, arecomputable. In essence, whether
there are things that are noncomputable, for example,
determining whether a very largenumber is a prime number or not,
that's non computable. And whichmeans that a algorithm would
probably never reach a solutiongiven any amount of time. And so
(14:48):
there are these these things.
This is a whole other topicthat's very deep, but there's
the there's these problem setsthat are not computable. And
part of the advantage of quantumconsciousness is that it too is
not computable in the positivesense, which means that it seems
to indicate that the thatconsciousness itself is not
limited to strictly being analgorithm, it seems to go so
(15:08):
much beyond that, the human mindseems to be able to solve
problems that are noncomputable, or to at least take
a non algorithmic approach toproblem solving. And this bears
out if you simply reflect onyour own experiences, your own
way of solving problems, youmight begin on one train of
thought and follow that to acertain point and then realize
(15:30):
you need to jump up a level andquestion the assumptions of
that. And then you might take adifferent tack and go a
different direction on adifferent train of thought. And
then you might jump up a levelfrom there. And then you might
compare those two, and thatmight sort of reveal to you what
was wrong with that approach tothe problem. And then maybe
you'll take a break, and you'lltake a shower, or you'll
(15:50):
meditate or take a nap orsomething like that, where
suddenly the solution to theproblem just spontaneously
emerges and pops into your head.
And this is such a common thing,that it's even got a name, it's
called abductive reasoning. Andthis is the kind of thinking
that is very common in ourexperience, but very hard to
(16:14):
emulate or implement in aartificial intelligence system
today, given the currentapproaches, because this is the
case, it seems like we may needa new approach to artificial
intelligence. And maybe that'squantum computers, since they do
operate in the quantum realm, inthe same way that this theory is
proposing our consciousnessdoes. And so maybe that's one
(16:38):
avenue of of research that wecould pursue using quantum
computing for achievingartificial intelligence, quantum
computers have shown a lot ofpromise because they're able to
do very high level parallelprocessing, they may not be non
computable, they may, they maystill be algorithmic at the end
of the day, but they're able todo this high level parallel
(16:59):
processing through the quantummechanical realm. And that's
allowing them to define theprime factors of very large
numbers. And to simulate nature,these are things that they seem
to be good at doing. So it couldbe interesting place to do some
research, at least on to theviability of AI through quantum
(17:20):
computing. With this theory,there are still a lot of open
questions, it's relatively new,none of it has really been
experimentally verified. It'snot even close to any kind of
empirical support. But it'spromising. It's interesting. It
takes a novel approach. And itsuggests a lot of avenues for
research. Another thing itdoesn't really get into so much
(17:43):
from what I've read is wherememory is stored how memory
memory works. And so that'sanother kind of an unanswered
question with this theory. But Ilike the way that it is sort of
bridging the gap betweenmaterialism and idealism. In
fact, it's either a very elegantsolution to bridging the gap
between materialism and idealismor pan psychism. Or it's it's a
(18:07):
way of trying to get to panpsychism and idealism, but
clinging on very tightly tomaterialism. So I can't quite
tell which it is based on myresearch. But either way, it's
really interesting. And I thinkit's, it's time for us to
explore a new approach to thesequestions of consciousness. And
I really love this idea thatconsciousness and life is
(18:29):
evolving to create theconditions for ever increasing
levels and ever increasingcomplexity of consciousness
itself. So this, this idea thatconsciousness and life in the
universe is basically organizingeverything, partly for that
purpose, and partly to enjoy aswell as evolve. I'll leave you
(18:51):
with this interesting side note,Roger Penrose feels very
strongly that quantum physics asa whole is a kind of a stopgap
theory on the way to somethingmore elegant and powerful,
because we have this quantumweirdness. And because it seems
like we don't quite understandwhat's going on. There's no
unified theory of classicalphysics and quantum physics. So
(19:12):
it's interesting to me that,despite the generally held view
that quantum physics is thispinnacle of achievement in the
20th century. It's also verycomplete and needs a lot of
further theorizing, and a lot offurther research. I want to
leave you with this questionabout metaphor and just ask you
to notice metaphor and your lifeand the ways that we use it.
(19:37):
There's no doubt that wecurrently live in the age of the
computer metaphor. So almosteverything seems to be seen
through the lens of computermetaphor. The mind is a machine
and chaos theory and systemstheory sees the purpose of of
everything as sort ofcompressing information, and
(19:58):
many people think that we mightlive in a semi lesion. These are
all things that are very muchinside of this computer
metaphor. And I think metaphorscan serve serve a beneficial
purpose. But at the same time,it's so important for us to
constantly be vigilant andnotice where this metaphor is
coming in, and where it mightnot be totally accurate or where
(20:18):
it might not be serving apurpose. So just leave you with
that. Just notice just notice,metaphor and your life and and
where it's being used. Andwhether it's being used
appropriately, whether quantumconsciousness turns out to be a
viable theory. There's no doubtthat with quantum physics and
(20:38):
everything we know about scienceright now that we are intimately
connected to everything else.
That is definitely the case. Andso I just asked you, after you
watch this, when you're whenyou're contemplating your
thinking, when you're having aquiet moment, just reflect on
the fact that your thinking isprobably happening in the
quantum realm. And so your, yourexisting, we're all existing in
(21:01):
some sense in the quantum world.
So I'll leave you with that. Soif you have any comments or
questions about this, I wouldlove to hear from you. You can
contact me, you'll find all thelinks to everything in the show
notes for this episode. Thankyou so much for listening, and
I'll see you next time.
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