On 20 Jan 2014, at 21:11, [email protected] wrote:
Brent, as much as I like the idea of quantum effects being true, and
the Hameroff-Penrose thesis that microtubules are da' bomb,
There is a big difference between Penrose and Hameroff.
Penrose disbelieve comp. The soul in Penrose is not even emulable by a
quantum computer. The mircotubules are just used by him to suggest a
role for the quantum, but that role is in the non computable wave
packet reduction, that Penrose speculates to be related to gravity. It
is a non comp theory.
Hameroff does not go that far, and accepts comp. He believed that the
microtubules defined some quantum computer in the brain. For example,
in that case the UD proof goes through. Notably.
I feel we have to ask what good this does us? Medically, or
philosophically, I am not certain. How does knowing that one of the
moons of Neptune is called Neirid? Exactly! It don't. Am I
screaming for the cause of willful ignorance? Not intentionally, but
I still want all scientific analysis to benefit humankind. Call it a
super-goal.
Most of the human misery might be due to people who want the good for
the humankind.
Science, even ethical science, should be neutral. Then the good
appears when we learn to no more hide the possible truth. Happiness is
very simple, once it is not made into a goal.
For the human kind, people should do their job, and correct it when it
hurts. The problem is when we put bandits at the top, which will
professionally hides the truth and the suffering for personal
benefits. We have to fight that indeed, but in a spirit of self-
defense, not in the spirit of imposing new views on the world, because
that leads to unhappiness and lies.
Keep in mind that when we have discovered a cure for cancer, it has
been made illegal at once, even the research on it. That illustrates
the kind of barbaric world we live in.
Bruno
-----Original Message-----
From: meekerdb <[email protected]>
To: everything-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, Jan 20, 2014 2:27 pm
Subject: Re: Discovery of quantum vibrations in brain microtubules
confirms Hameroff/Penrose consciousness theory basis
On 1/20/2014 9:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 Jan 2014, at 10:50, LizR wrote:
On 20 January 2014 22:39, Russell Standish <[email protected]>
wrote:
The point about acting randomly is that clearly you are not
optimising
your utility. You a choosing something other than the optimum
action,
so are behaving irrationally by definition. Yet, it could be a
beneficial strategy to do so, for all the reasons raised (fooling
your
opponents, making a timely decision, and so on).
Sorry to be dense, but I still don't see this. When I say "acting
randomly", I assume we don't mean just doing anything, deciding to
go swimming in the arctic or declaring yourself to be Napoleon, I
assume we mean picking one of a number of options that appear to
have equal utility.
Let's say we're playing scissors-paper-rock. The best strategy -
the one that gives you the best chance of winning at least half
the time - is to choose randomly. Anyone who doesn't choose
randomly is open to having their moves predicted, and losing more
often than they otherwise would. So in this case acting randomly
is rational... isn't it?
OK. But now acting randomly is not that simple, and studies have
shown that the humans are very bad at that. A machine can easily
distinguish a human from a good pseudorandom generator. Humans have
a tendency to homogenize adding an order implicitly. Most humans
get wrong when shown ten pictures of random and non random pictures.
When presented with true randomness, humans extract order which are
not there.
Most people are amazed of the presence of long sequence of 1 and 0,
and 10, ... in the binary development of PI
(11.001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011...).
Can we act randomly? Well, we might do that when panicking. Or we
can use some random generator, or the rest of coffee in a cup, or
the shape of the clouds, ...
Of course what we need to do is to act unpredictably, and random is
just a limit of extreme unpredictability. In an actual finite
sequence of actions there's no way to distinguish true random from
just sufficiently random.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
