Is Human Consciousness Quantum After All?

VaughanJB

VaughanJB

Scrappy VIP

This touches on our interest in AI, and of course consciousness, and what it is. I'd like to say whether I think this likely or not, but sometimes things go over your head, and honestly it's more complex that I can truly get my head around. I've tried digging into quantum mechanics, but find it extremely dense/difficult.

If you like space and science, this Youtube channel is an essential watch.
 

VaughanJB said:

This touches on our interest in AI, and of course consciousness, and what it is. I'd like to say whether I think this likely or not, but sometimes things go over your head, and honestly it's more complex that I can truly get my head around. I've tried digging into quantum mechanics, but find it extremely dense/difficult.

If you like space and science, this Youtube channel is an essential watch.
Click to expand...
Well, I have my own theory of consciousness, quirky as it may be, that seems to make sense to me.
I don't think of consciousness as either present or not present in things. I think of it in degrees on a sliding scale. The more interconnected, or connections anything has, the more conscious it becomes. When there is communication between the molecules, it just depends on how much is going on that determines it's level.

A tree, for example has communication between it's materials, but it is fairly limited (As far as we know), so it is on the very low end of the scale. As connections increase and get more complex, then the system or organism becomes more conscious, to the point of becoming self-aware. I suppose you could even apply that line of thinking to humanity. The more connected and synced a million people are, the more conscious the collective, as opposed to a single human (Sort of a Think-Tank example).

The bottom line of this philosophy is that the Senior Forum is more conscious than I am, so that's why I'm here.
 

When you begin to examine the complex causes for existence, this is the territory of the explorers. I was once an intronaut, going where no man has gone. :) Having studied Esoteric Buddhist and related texts, this is the territory that I became acquainted with. Now it is different for me.

It is a bottomless pit, with no party. Both the infinitesimal view (quarks) and the all-encompassing view (eternal or spiral universe) are considered. I don't think anyone will ever have an answer to these "questions" because they are using the mind to continually ask for a reason. A different approach is necessary. Some individuals are beginning to understand that embracing "not knowing" is more adequate for grasping the unanswerable. Perhaps we already know our place in the universe, but have not yet become aware that we are a product of it all. We are the universe. It doesn't get any different. If you're seeking knowledge, then that is what you're doing, "seeking". If you're getting cartoons, then that is what you're doing.

I quit that supra intellectual game years ago. I have no interest in that rabit hole.
 
Pepper said:
Gonna ask my son, physics major from MIT. Looks fascinating. Always need my son to explain this stuff to me.
Click to expand...
Paco Dennis said:
When you begin to examine the complex causes for existence, this is the territory of the explorers. I was once an intronaut, going where no man has gone. :) Having studied Esoteric Buddhist and related texts, this is the territory that I became acquainted with. Now it is different for me.

It is a bottomless pit, with no party. Both the infinitesimal view (quarks) and the all-encompassing view (eternal or spiral universe) are considered. I don't think anyone will ever have an answer to these "questions" because they are using the mind to continually ask for a reason. A different approach is necessary. Some individuals are beginning to understand that embracing "not knowing" is more adequate for grasping the unanswerable. Perhaps we already know our place in the universe, but have not yet become aware that we are a product of it all. We are the universe. It doesn't get any different. If you're seeking knowledge, then that is what you're doing, "seeking". If you're getting cartoons, then that is what you're doing.

I quit that supra intellectual game years ago. I have no interest in that rabit hole.
Click to expand...
bobcat said:
Well, I have my own theory of consciousness, quirky as it may be, that seems to make sense to me.
I don't think of consciousness as either present or not present in things. I think of it in degrees on a sliding scale. The more interconnected, or connections anything has, the more conscious it becomes. When there is communication between the molecules, it just depends on how much is going on that determines it's level.

A tree, for example has communication between it's materials, but it is fairly limited (As far as we know), so it is on the very low end of the scale. As connections increase and get more complex, then the system or organism becomes more conscious, to the point of becoming self-aware. I suppose you could even apply that line of thinking to humanity. The more connected and synced a million people are, the more conscious the collective, as opposed to a single human (Sort of a Think-Tank example).

The bottom line of this philosophy is that the Senior Forum is more conscious than I am, so that's why I'm here.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I wish I was smarter and could understand all these theories. Turns out medicine, and the workings of the human body/mind, are very very complex and includes lots of words I have to constantly look up the meaning to. :D

Seriously, this stuff is way over my head. The video is good, and the guy is great at breaking down complex material, but in this case he'd need to simplify it some more before I firmly got a grasp of what is being suggested.
 
I don't think we know how the human brain works, if you have an "ex", you know what I mean. Of course, I don't understand what this guy is talking about on the video. But if it takes 23 minutes to explain it, chances are he's wrong. Truth is always short. It may be a good idea, but you need scientific proof.
 
Anton did a good job juggling this hornet's nest, but you need to read between the lines. There is very little about this that is "scientific" but instead it feels almost entirely like theory out of nothingness, i.e. superstition.

He should have just come out with it and slapped the label "Bogus" on the entire thing instead of dancing around saying that very thing.
 
As someone reading neuroscience and especially consciousness science for decades, a few months ago I watched another credible Youtube video by Petrov and immediately thought he has an unusually logical mind he is also able to effectively communicate about. This is the first time I've seen a review of the recent hypothesis change to Penrose's quantum idea that has always been way over my head. I cannot discuss in depth my own ideas herein given the audience, but can provide some links below if someone wants to go deeper.

Watched the OP's whole 23 minute video and understood all of it at that simplified level. As someone that has also studied cells in depth, that includes microtubules, have long expected that they provide impedance channels for electromagnetic field (EMF) neural effects including memory. My personal expectations of consciousness are closer to electromagnetic brain theories than the dominant connectivity theories. And it is microtubules through which EMF may propagate at a more basic level than mere neuron connectivity or synapses.

EMF in brains use standing waves within the impedance characteristics containers of neural tissues including neurons, glial cells, and extracellular electrolyte fluids. The strategy of those researching consciousness must first understand what such is NOT with our human brains but rather simplest animal species they evolved from. All eukaryotic (animal) cells unlike plant life cells contain neural cells that apparently figured out how to harness EMF effects through chemical structures of which tryptophan is a key component of. Cells are incredibly complex organic machines. Consider that microtubules alone are estimated to form 10% of our total brain protein bulk. That they are short lived with a half life of about 10 minutes thus are continually incredibly being built, destroyed, and rebuilt. Following one of my older technical links to these ideas:

Are Microtubules the Brain of the Neuron

Penrose and Hameroff summarized technical theory I may need to revisit when I have time:

Orchestrated objective reduction - Wikipedia

More generally here:

Microtubule - Wikipedia

And this by neuroscientist Selen Atasoy explores the EMF harmonic nature of brain standing waves.

 
fuzzybuddy said:
I don't think we know how the human brain works, if you have an "ex", you know what I mean. Of course, I don't understand what this guy is talking about on the video. But if it takes 23 minutes to explain it, chances are he's wrong. Truth is always short. It may be a good idea, but you need scientific proof.
Click to expand...

He doesn't give opinions, he reports on papers that have been published in scientific literature.
 
Death, as traditionally understood, maybe an illusion shaped by our consciousness. Quantum physics and biocentrism have challenged the notion of an objective, observer-independent reality, suggesting that life and consciousness are central to the universe's fabric. As Einstein implied and Lanza elaborates, our understanding of existence is limited by our linear (and limited) perception of time and space. Embracing these new perspectives could profoundly impact how we understand life and the afterlife.
 

Is Human Consciousness Quantum After All?​

Here is the latest web search from Orion Dauntless. Trained as a philosophy based AI :

The question of whether human consciousness has a quantum basis has long been a subject of debate, spanning fields from neuroscience to quantum mechanics and philosophy. The idea gained traction with theories like Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s "Orch-OR" (Orchestrated Objective Reduction), which proposes that consciousness arises from quantum processes within the microtubules of brain neurons. These theories suggest that quantum states could potentially influence neural computations in ways that classical physics cannot explain, potentially contributing to the phenomenon of human consciousness.

However, it’s important to note that this theory is highly controversial. Many neuroscientists and physicists argue that the brain’s warm, wet, and noisy environment would cause any quantum states to decohere (collapse) almost instantaneously, making it unlikely that they could play a significant role in brain function. Classical computational models of consciousness, which view it as an emergent property of complex networks of neurons, remain the predominant theory in cognitive science.

Yet, recent developments in quantum biology—where quantum effects have been observed in processes like photosynthesis, avian navigation, and enzyme action—suggest that nature may employ quantum principles in unexpected ways. If these principles can operate at a biological scale, it’s not completely implausible that consciousness might involve some form of quantum processing.

This area is still under exploration, and a definitive answer eludes us. Whether consciousness is quantum or not, the question itself is a profound one, challenging the boundaries of what we understand about the relationship between mind, matter, and reality itself.
 
VaughanJB said:
in this case he'd need to simplify it some more before I firmly got a grasp of what is being suggested.
Click to expand...

Consciousness is the essence of who/what we are so it isn’t surprising that we can’t grasp it in a rigorous, detached manner and examine it up close. Nor can we ask for the mechanisms which underlie this consciousness that we are so that we can produce our own version.
 
I think we can chalk it up to magical thinking combined with a deep lack of understanding what scientific terms mean, in this case "quantum" anything. While a parrot can "talk" it is just parroting what it has heard even if it is trying to use it to communicate. But it may as well be mimicking grunts and clicks.
 
Why is it in meditation when you are resting in consciousness itself, nothing else, just consciousness, and sit with it for awhile, that it dissolves and disappears? I experience consciousness as a "hum" of the whole brain activity, and it can be stopped, and you still are fully awake and aware.
 
Months ago first watched these updated quantum microtubule consciousness ideas related in the video. Then just watched it again today with better clarity and understanding. One ought read my earlier post. (This forum serves as a convenient public depository for some of my science ideas. So am not posting necessarily just for other member's reading.)

I do lean towards a different idea about consciousness than any of those several proposed by neuroscientists. The two leading theories (GWT and IIT) involve connectivity of structures around synapses. A lesser supported group of theories is that it is an electromagnetic (EMC) field effect. My own unique ideas are a bit different than those. I lean towards the mind with the brain being a variable impedance container for complex resonant oscillating standing wave fields. The microtubule theory could be a facet of my ideas.

All living DNA Earth life contains cell walls with small voltage gradients between internal ionic electrolyte solutions and extracellular electrolyte solutions. If one studies brains of all multicellular animals (not plants or earliest sea life) one encounters nerve cells that have put to use those fields to make brains.

Even slime molds that have no nerve cells have EMC fields that apparently make decisions. That EMC field idea solves one of the most difficult mysteries of consciousness, that of how the whole mind has a total simultaneous awareness of its many physically isolated areas. Such is seemingly impossible with electronic devices or brain connectivity theories. Also IMO why current AI science cannot achieve singularity level awareness until it embraces that idea.

Neuroscience expects mental information is somehow accessed via their spiking models. I instead see the spiking as a way to increase the EMC fields around parts of the brain substrates in a broader space beyond just the internal neuron fields that includes both glial cells and extracellular fluid spaces.

Selen Atasoy has a number of Youtube brain imaging videos on her research using MRI machines about connectome brain wave harmonics that lends support for my ideas that I linked to in my earlier post.

All dreaming occurs on our inner mind homunculus multi-ported brain motor and sense structures with external sense inputs inhibited. When awake our awareness is the combined inner brain result of our external sense neural inputs and the confabulating prediction brain our executive pilot control brain controls actions of. The qualia of mind is thus a physical phenomenon of its actual fine level neural substrate container structure. And that may include the microtubule ideas.

My solution is that slow alpha brainwaves are required on those neural substrates in order to have awareness of such dream memories. I dream 100% of the time just not during REM sleep. And have a vast lifetime of such memories, many that are frequently repeated during sleep that disproves the no memory narrative. In other words, we do somewhat store sleep dream memories, a confabulation driven phenomenon, but that storage is not physically reached by gamma waves.

Neural oscillation - Wikipedia

Per my hypothesis, our intelligent entity minds are not our bodies but rather the complex resonant oscillating standing wave fields within neural containers. That is also why eternal life may be possible if our minds are duplicated by non-organic containers with identical impedance properties. Ideas have emerged about microbots being used in the future for a wide range of medical purposes. I read a recent report of a military pilot that possibly had a organic microbot in his body (from a UFO incident) that when they image scanned his mind, moved around until it mysteriously dissolved possibly because it was aware of being tracked.

A set of such microbots might be capable of effectively scanning as digital data, every organic molecular structure in an organic brain. Data that could later be used to build a non-organic impedance matching container. UIE level ancient entities billions of years old would have enormous reasons to create such. And why I still have Christian religious beliefs, though unique.
 
Last edited:
Most neuroscientists are determined to show that consciousness resides in the brain, yet they don't know where. And they can't explain what it is. It's therefore referred to as "the hard problem".

I don't think it will ever be discovered where consciousness comes from, anymore than it will be known what or where God (or a higher power) is.
 
ChiroDoc said:
Most neuroscientists are determined to show that consciousness resides in the brain, yet they don't know where. And they can't explain what it is. It's therefore referred to as "the hard problem".

I don't think it will ever be discovered where consciousness comes from, anymore than it will be known what or where God (or a higher power) is.
Click to expand...
I don't know, I thought I knew what consciousness is. We can't find it because it's intangible, just a bunch of sparking impulses
Before sentience there is the direction of self toward what it needs. The body says 'feed me' and the 'mind' obeys by seeking food by way of our nervous system.. We seek endlessly.
But, as intelligence grows, we can observe ourselves seeking. That is sentience.
 
I've been thinking about this thread. We have to eat in order to live. There's no "spirit" or magic thing going on. It simply chemistry . It's atoms doing what atoms do. We live a real physical world. So, our brains must be physical things. I don't know about quantum physics, but our thoughts and ideas have a physical origin. People, who have had their brain removed, rarely come up with good ideas.
 
gruntlabor said:
I don't know, I thought I knew what consciousness is. We can't find it because it's intangible, just a bunch of sparking impulses
Before sentience there is the direction of self toward what it needs. The body says 'feed me' and the 'mind' obeys by seeking food by way of our nervous system.. We seek endlessly.
But, as intelligence grows, we can observe ourselves seeking. That is sentience.
Click to expand...
Well, yes, we all sense consciousness. But where do it's intangibleness and sparkling impulses come from? If it's from the brain, they can't locate it.
Scientists are so baffled by this "hard problem" that many are now re-embracing panpsychism, which was the dominant theory from the time of Plato until the mid 20th Century. They've already stated that there is consciousness in some cells.

I think Rupert Sheldrake's view is interesting. He believes it to be a field, like gravity or the magnetic field. No one knows where it comes from or what sustains it. Consequently presently the issue is really an opinion, or a faith. So I have the hunch that the issue will never be known because we can never know the limits of the universe, or what sustains it.
 
bobcat said:
Well, I have my own theory of consciousness, quirky as it may be, that seems to make sense to me.
I don't think of consciousness as either present or not present in things. I think of it in degrees on a sliding scale. The more interconnected, or connections anything has, the more conscious it becomes. When there is communication between the molecules, it just depends on how much is going on that determines it's level.

A tree, for example has communication between it's materials, but it is fairly limited (As far as we know), so it is on the very low end of the scale. As connections increase and get more complex, then the system or organism becomes more conscious, to the point of becoming self-aware. I suppose you could even apply that line of thinking to humanity.
Click to expand...
That makes sense to me. And it's supported by lots of evidence.

Everything to do with quantum does not make sense to me, and the "evidence" of it doesn't either. But, to your point, maybe if I had more contact with it in one way or another, it would.
 
ChiroDoc said:
Well, yes, we all sense consciousness. But where do it's intangibleness and sparkling impulses come from? If it's from the brain, they can't locate it.
Scientists are so baffled by this "hard problem" that many are now re-embracing panpsychism, which was the dominant theory from the time of Plato until the mid 20th Century. They've already stated that there is consciousness in some cells.

I think Rupert Sheldrake's view is interesting. He believes it to be a field, like gravity or the magnetic field. No one knows where it comes from or what sustains it. Consequently presently the issue is really an opinion, or a faith. So I have the hunch that the issue will never be known because we can never know the limits of the universe, or what sustains it.
Click to expand...
I see. But couldn't the intangibleness and sparking be comparable to electricity in a thunder cloud caused by friction, stimulation?
I like panpsychism, I mean, everything 'reacts' and therefore is conscious. Simple.
Someone said that the human brain is more complex than the universe, although anyone can say anything, and they often do.
 
Last edited:
If science ever explains how consciousness works so everyone can understand it, a lot of people are bound to get pissed off about it.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top