
Electrons May Well Be Conscious - prostoalex
http://nautil.us//blog/electrons-may-very-well-be-conscious
======
pontus
Honestly, as weird as it might sound, to me it's even weirder to claim that
consciousness somehow is just a manifestation of effect that we are already
familiar with.

Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a
side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. I'm definitely
comfortable saying that consciousness is correlated with complexity and
information processing, but claiming that it is fully explainable in some
mechanistic way sounds suspect to me.

It would sort of be like saying that since large electric charges have only
been observed in nuclei with proportionally large mass, then somehow charge is
just a manifestation of mass. When we go further it turns out that charge is
fundamentally distinct from mass, in fact so distinct that we have to add an
entirely new attribute to fundamental particles. The same story goes with
spin. Once you have spin and electric charge you get magnetic moments.
Ultimately the reason why a magnet is magnetic is because all of these
subatomic particles conspire in just the right way to have a macroscopic
effect. Of course, not all materials have the property of being magnetic even
though they all are made from protons and electrons, but some materials are.

To me, trying to say that consciousness is just something emergent is like
saying that electric charge is emergent from mass. I would not be surprised if
some type of proto consciousness would be needed in order to understand how
macroscopic objects like human brains are self aware, have sensations, etc.

~~~
Retric
Consciousness seems like it should be special, but that’s not evidence that it
is. Consider, after a lifetime of subjective experiences from exercise etc, a
cardiac surgeon can still know far more about your heart than you do. Nobody
is arguing some mysterious force is pumping blood through their bodies, but
the feeling of blood pumping through your veins somehow feels primal not
simple plumbing.

You can intellectually extend that to everyone else about our bodies, so why
not consciousness?

~~~
pontus
Understanding how a brain works may only require a mechanistic model, but
consciousness is different.

Consider the following thought experiment: suppose that we had a complete
understanding of how neurons work (as well as the brain more broadly). I think
this is totally reasonable. Then suppose that we created artificial neurons
that acted identically to biological neurons. If we replaced the neurons of a
brain with these manufactured neurons, I would imagine that the resulting
brain would still be conscious. Now imagine taking some of these neurons and
removing their interior structure instead routing the inputs / outputs to a
machine somewhere else where the correct computation takes place in order to
determine the output from the neuron. From the rest of the brain's perspective
nothing has changed so presumably it's still conscious.

Now take this to the extreme: replace all of these neurons with empty shells
and route the computation to a billion people in the world to perform on pen
and paper. Is it still conscious? If so, what if you removed the brain
altogether and just performed the computations directly on paper, is the paper
conscious?

The paper would definiy still be intelligent, it would possibly come up with
interesting inventions, claim that it was sad or happy etc, but would it
actually _be_ sad?

~~~
Enginerrrd
>but would it actually be sad?

To the fullest extent that _you_ are capable of being sad. There is no even
remotely plausible alternative to this physicalist argument.

I would argue that you aren't nearly as conscious as you think you are. That's
the conclusion I've come to after many hours and years on the meditation
cushion cultivating awareness of my own cognition. Any thought, choice, or
action that you make doesn't actually happen in your conscious brain. You just
become aware of it after it's happened. That's all there is.

~~~
zuminator
It's premature to take for granted that a paper brain emulator can exist in
principle.

Take something else less...emotionally laden. A black hole. Could we model a
black hole on paper? If so, we ought to just be able to drop a computational
particle in and see exactly what happens at the singularity. Except we can't
-- the whole reason we call it a singularity is because we get divide by
reality errors if we try to compute it.

But I would argue there's a different problem. A black hole is the most
computationally efficient method of calculating itself. Any method of
accurately emulating the black hole on the Planck level is going to take more
energy (and mass) than the actual black hole. As a result, those pieces of
paper would literally collapse into an actual black hole long before they
could properly emulate the black hole they were modeling.

Which isn't to say that the brain is anything like that but the point is, it's
not a foregone conclusion that we can construct a completely accurate emulator
of a physical object.

Finally there's something of a category error in making the claim that pieces
of paper can be sad. A paper emulation of a bar magnet would not itself be
magnetic. In the world of the emulation it would produce an output that would
model magnetism, yes, but that's the extent of it. Our paper brain emulator,
if it were constructible, would produce output that would be a model of
sadness in the emulation, but it would not actually be sad.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
> As a result, those pieces of paper would literally collapse into an actual
> black hole long before they could properly emulate the black hole they were
> modeling.

That is wrong. Any method of emulating the black hole within a volume less-
than or equal to the Schwarzchild radius of the black hole would collapse, but
you could do the calculation over a larger volume and avoid that. The most
massive stars are far more massive than the least massive black holes.

The smallest black hole known that I could find from a quick search is XTE
J1650-500, at about 3.8 solar masses with a "15 mile"[1] diameter. There are a
lot of stars more massive than that.[2]

[1]
[https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/smal...](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/smallest_blackhole.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_stars)

~~~
Enginerrrd
>Any method of emulating the black hole within a volume less-than or equal to
the Schwarzchild radius of the black hole would collapse, but you could do the
calculation over a larger volume and avoid that.

...This was my intuition as well, but I'm far from certain about it. It's not
uncommon for the universe to find sneaky ways to prevent us from "cheating" so
to speak. These often result from deep symmetries/conservation laws and
fundamental limits on information.

I'm actually a big opponent of the simulation argument for that reason. I
don't think you can accurately simulate the universe without having a universe
to simulate it in. Otherwise, you could just 'turtles-all-the-way-down' the
simulation. The information density would have to be unbounded, and this seems
to be in disagreement with fundamental laws of the universe.

We don't have a theory of quantum gravity... it's definitely possible that to
simulate the blackhole in a more spread out manner would be impossible. I
could envision a fundamental tradeoff where to replicate the information
exchanges between the microscopic constituents requires that either you
satisfy the hoop conjecture, or you keep increasing the size of your model
without bound, whereby for any finite size you still satisfy the hoop
conjecture. (Particularly since the required mass/energy density goes down
_significantly_ as the radius increases.) I know that's wild speculation, but
I feel like it's not quite crazy enough to take for granted.

------
scotty79
Out of all the crazy theories about electron my favorite is single electron
universe. That all the electrons and positrons are actually single particle
that that goes back and forth in time, and positron are exactly the same as
electrons just going in the opposite direction in time.

It neatly explains what and why is antimatter and why all particles of given
kind are exactly the same. Although it's a hard sell because it predicts that
all of the matter-antimatter symmetry breaking is not intrinsic or even
spontaneous.

Also it make hard to wrap your head around how antimatter could form any
macroscopic objects while going back in time. Or how it can behave exactly
like matter while going back in time.

~~~
stared
Closely related, especially given the context of consciousness, one of my
favorite stories: "The Egg"
([http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html),
or if you prefer read by Kurzgesagt:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI)).

~~~
mercer
Possibly interesting fact: the writer of The Egg also wrote The Martian.
Haven't read the book, but the film was great and much funnier than I
expected.

------
keithnz
A while back I read 'Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of
the Mind' (
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41571759-conscious](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41571759-conscious)
) which attempts to promote panpsychism. It does a pretty good job at
exploring the curious nature of consciousness, but panpsychism I think is just
at the level of 'woo'. It makes the case that because we are having trouble
with fully understanding what consciousness is, we must fully engage in
exploring ideas like panpsychism. While I generally support coming up with all
kinds of ideas and exploring them, the proponents of this idea seem a little
too convinced it's a real thing based on zero evidence, they promote quite a
bit through seemingly scientific "speak" but use words like "may" "might"
"possible" etc to exploit the basic fact that we simply don't know yet and
want to present it as a credible possibility.

~~~
Xenograph
You just shot down the book/idea (panpsychism) without providing a single
constructive reason. Instead, you applied a derogatory label ('woo'), and
attacked the proponents instead of the idea itself, saying: "the proponents of
this idea seem a little too convinced...".

~~~
keithnz
I thought I made it pretty clear they propose a whole bunch of possibilities
in the gaps of our current understanding. The problem is the proponents make
out these possibilities are much more probable than any evidence suggests. The
reason it is woo, is because they start reasoning about things based on no
evidence and present it as "knowledge". Like most woo, if you accept the
axioms without evidence, then you can create a world of knowledge that seems
logically coherent based on those axioms. That's sort of the nature of woo.
It's not attacking the proponents, it's just my observations of the situation.

~~~
elbear
What's the difference between the axioms of woo and the axioms of mathematics?

I'm genuinely asking. My understanding is that we also accept those axioms.

~~~
keithnz
Mathematics is a bit different than science, science doesn't claim truths, it
says what the best description of things are based on the facts, the facts are
evidence based. When you skip the facts and evidence part and just claim
things, then you are in the land of woo. At the basis of science is
essentially the laws of thought which, like good axioms should be, claim the
smallest possible thing to reason from (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought)
). Woo tends to claim large things partially based on existing knowledge and
partially based on things we don't know but may be possible.

------
toohotatopic
Two things that don't fit:

1) Even if electrons have consciousness, why should it be linked to our
consciousness?

2) Why is decision making the essence of consciousness?

The Schroedinger equation is just a model, not reality. There doesn't even
have to be an undecided state in reality. But even if the universe is
conscious and decides in every moment, that doesn't explain our consciousness.
If everything is conscious, in an ever increasing density why don't we have
several consciousnesses in our head? Why is our stomach not conscious?

And even if we are not free to make decisions, we could still be conscious in
the same way that we watch sporting events without intervening. Actually I
would argue that we never decide. We always 'choose' the most preferred option
that deterministically depends on our state of mind. And yet, we are
conscious.

~~~
Joeri
We do have several consciousnesses in our head, which end up acting as a
collective and then the left brain interpreter post-rationalizes the behavior
as if a single mind is at work. That’s why we act against our own decisions so
often.

You can see this demonstrated with people with split brain syndrome, where the
brain halves are unable to directly communicate and you can trick them out by
confronting the speaking left brain with conflicting actions by the right
brain. The left brain will invent an explanation on the spot.

[https://physics.weber.edu/carroll/honors/split_brain.htm](https://physics.weber.edu/carroll/honors/split_brain.htm)

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Another example would be simple dreaming. The "you" experiencing the dream is
indistinguishable from a conscious being (normal you) at least to itself. It
has thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences. There can also be other
people in your dream, and you can sometimes converse with them. Yet (unless
you're dreaming you can read minds) _your dream self can 't tell what these
other dream-people are thinking_, even though they're all part of your mind.
And _they_ can be indistinguishable to you from conscious beings.

~~~
tcgv
> your dream self can't tell what these other dream-people are thinking, even
> though they're all part of your mind

That's a great proposition! Nevertheless I'd be more inclined to believe that
these dream-people are not really thinking, and most likely don't have
conciousness, as they're stimulations of our visual perceptions slightly
modified in some sort of dynamic/interactive manner and mixed together with
our memory and recollections.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Yet you (your main dream self) perceives them as conscious. They pass all the
tests for being real, thinking beings. They respond like real people, at least
much of the time. So how can one tell if they're thinking or not?

------
DesiLurker
I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated
objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in
evolution of the quantum state of a system the collapse of wave function IS a
form of proto-consciousness. Essentially the he is saying that WF collapse is
how a system becomes 'aware' of the choice and consciousness emerges from
there onwards. A Brain of sufficient/right complexity is a connectionist
structure that is responsible for perceiving and/or translating it.

What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the
human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like
microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have
been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for
quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.

~~~
mathgenius
Penrose's stuff is very interesting, and I always enjoy hearing him talk about
it. But for me it is a soup with too many ingredients. Better to look at the
ingredients separately, for example, the idea of microtubules maintaining
coherent quantum information. That already is very interesting, and would make
a good meal.

~~~
DesiLurker
its a few days late so i dont know whether anybody will read it but my
thoughts exactly.

there should be a significant more research dollars spent on this as there is
so much unknown there. just that fact that we still dont know how general
anesthesia works and how we regain consciousness back in itself is quite
fascinating. IMO in all this philosophical debate about nature of
consciousness we often overlook the basic starting points in front of our eyes
what mechanishm are necessary to sustain it. we need serious research on this
otherwise it will be dominated by psuedo science BS like deepak chopra.

------
blacksqr
Spoiler: if you redefine "conscious" to whatever an electron is.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
More like, consciousness is a matter of degree, rather than a binary yes/no.

~~~
Analemma_
Even materialists agree that consciousness is a matter of degree; panpsychists
don't have a monopoly on that position. Humans are more conscious than mammals
who are more conscious than fish who are more conscious than insects. But the
materialist position is that any non-zero degree of consciousness requires a
substrate capable of computation, and so you bottom out to zero long before
you get to electrons.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
So if I'm getting this right, the usual materialist position is that thinking
is a matter of degree for stuff that can think, and just a straight no for
everything else. While the panpsychists think it's just a matter of degree,
full stop? No 100% unthinking allowed?

------
sixQuarks
I've been trying to formulate thoughts I have on consciousness that make sense
in my head, but I haven't been able to communicate it effectively.

Basically, why is consciousness always attached to the same physical body? Why
can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my"
consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through
sleep or injury, etc).

The answer that I lean toward is that there is no such thing as you or me.
There is only one consciousness and it is merely being filtered through each
living (or perhaps nonliving) being in containerized modules.

So, to "me", it feels like I'm experiencing my own consciousness but in
reality everyone is the same "me". You are me, I am you, etc, we are simply
filtering consciousness through different atomic arrangements.

For example, let's say you read about a criminal who does a terrible thing and
you can't imagine yourself ever doing that. But in reality, it is the same
"you", only that your consciousness has been filtered through a different
arragement of atoms that has caused that "module" to act that way. It is the
same YOU who committed that crime, all it took was a different filtering
device to make you act that way.

Anyway, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I'm sure it's not an original
thought, but I don't know what kind of philosophy this is called other than
"one consciosness".

~~~
lnanek2
> Why can't I ever wake up in someone else's consciousness? How does "my"
> consciousness know to come back into "my" brain whenever I lose it (through
> sleep or injury, etc).

Why doesn't the fire in your car's engine suddenly appear in the engine of a
car down the street?

~~~
prvnsmpth
Pretty much this. Your "consciousness" is nothing but neural activity in your
own brain. By definition, it cannot appear anywhere else but your brain.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
That is speculation.

We have _absolutely_ no idea how consciousness is produced from electrical and
chemical signalling between a large ball of fats.

We know that it is (because we perceive our own), but we can't map from one
thing to another.

If consciousness is merely neural activity in a brain, then why can't we
simulate really simple brains?

~~~
PeterisP
Because really simple brains don't have consciousness, they aren't
sufficiently powerful enough to have the "mental machinery" needed for
consciousness.

We know that brains can implement things like theory of mind, self-awareness
and abstract concepts; these particular things don't require a _human_ mind
but they do appear only in animal brains above some level of complexity, and
don't appear in brains so simple that we'd have the power to simulate them in
2020.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
We don't know that. How would we ever observe such a thing?

Like the core problem of consciousness is that we experience it, but have no
way of identifying it otherwise.

------
sebringj
Intuitively we would think if an animal can move, meaning it has locomotion,
it is NOT because it is intrinsic to all matter (i.e rocks), rather it is
because there is some bio-mechanical reason for it. Scientist could figure out
how things moved and the underlying cellular processes to obtain energy in
order to do it. A proponent of this article then might say that all matter is
in constant motion. Then we are not talking about the same things. We are
talking about directed motion to obtain food or some goal for survival. Atoms
are not alive so they don't need to survive and do not have goal-oriented
motion. But then those same proponents would list off how electrons move
according to laws that behave similar to living creatures etc. so its some
intrinsic thing. You can't win with those people. They will always have a
response framed in some narrow definition that does not have any basis for
what we are thinking of what locomotion means. That's a long metaphor.

~~~
sebringj
I thought of one more but it's less wordy and children can understand it. If
you take a lego, with enough of them in a particular arrangement...you can
create a wheel of sorts so it rolls. Legos don't roll unto themselves but are
necessary parts to create the wheel-like behavior. Legos are boxy so they
can't roll by themselves obviously and yet they can roll when put together in
a certain way. This concept relates to nature in that atoms are building
blocks to create properties of things in a particular arrangement. It's easier
to understand because we have no magic bias surrounding legos or sense of
purpose or importance in coming to that conclusion.

------
enoreyes
The mind-body problem is an interesting philosophical debate. It would be
funny if our ancestors had been on to something the whole time with the
various forms of panpsychism that have occurred throughout history. We tend to
overestimate our own ingenuity and heavily discount the intelligence and
natural intuition of the past. Not saying this is a credible theory, just an
interesting reoccurring idea throughout human history.

~~~
undershirt
My favorite approach[1] to the mind–body problem is a recent one, placing the
_interaction_ between the mind and body at actual primacy. Neither the
_perceived_ nor the _perceiver_ can exist without the process of _perceiving_.
However absurd, the things related can be seen as derivative of the
relationship itself.

Resonates with zen, as famously espoused by Alan Watts[2]: “How does the thing
put a process into action. Obviously it can’t. But we always insist that there
is this subject called the knower. And without a knower there can’t be
knowing. Well that’s just a grammatical rule, it isn’t the rule of nature. In
nature there’s just knowing.” Also said[3]: “The grammatical illusion is that
all verbs have to have subjects.”

[1]: [https://www.magic-flight.com/pub/uvsm_1/imc_01.htm](https://www.magic-
flight.com/pub/uvsm_1/imc_01.htm)

[2]: [https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-2-not-what-should-be-
pt-2](https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-2-not-what-should-be-pt-2)

[3]: [https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-11-limits-of-language-
pt-1/](https://www.alanwatts.org/1-1-11-limits-of-language-pt-1/)

------
seemslegit
No they may not well be.

IIT is pure sophistry - some years ago Scott Aaronson showed that using their
definition of potential for consciousness electronic devices employing certain
kinds of algebraic error-correction codes have it - meant as a reductio-ad-
absurdum of IIT, apparently its promoters have decided to try and own the
absurdity.

In other news - nautil.us is an utter garbage chute of an outlet, the new-
science-journalism equivalent of British tabloids and I fully expect them to
publish a psuedoscientific apologia for astrology or an evolutionary theory
supporting the existence of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster - post-
Darwinnian cryptozoology anyone ?

------
nine_k
Electrons may as well be <insert anything> as long as we cannot observe it.
This is not interesting because the Occam's razor shaves it off instantly.

A much more tantalizing hypothesis (also unverifiable by construction) would
be to assume presence of a metaphysical being which alters the probabilities
of quantum processes ever so slightly as to have a macroscopic effect, but is
careful enough to never do it for processes under direct experimental
observation.

One can invent a number of such undetectable constructs, it's a good
entertainment, and does show the limits of the scientific method. Practical
applications of these are nil, though.

------
robbiep
Worth looking at - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
electron_universe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

------
axguscbklp
Discussions of consciousness tend to frustrate me a bit. So many otherwise
smart people, for some reason, simply do not understand the hard problem of
consciousness. They'll say things like "well, consciousness is just a given
pattern of physical stuff" but they do not realize what to me is an obvious
objection - to say that consciousness is equivalent to a given pattern of
physical stuff does not explain why that pattern of physical stuff is not
simply present without any consciousness associated with it. I can imagine a
being that is physically identical to a human in every way, but is not
conscious - there is no reason to think that intelligent behavior requires
consciousness. So what is the difference between such a being and a conscious
human, if the two are physically identical?

~~~
sandgiant
You may be able to imagine a body physically identical to yourself not having
a consciousness, but you cannot deduce from that, that this is something that
can actually happen in our Universe. It may just as well be true that any
exact physical copy of a body containing a consciousness is also conscious. In
fact, the latter seems like a simpler assumption than the former.

My own take is that we, as biased humans, put too much value on consciousness.
I have not seen any evidence that consciousness is nothing more than a
convenient way to organize a complex pattern of elementary particles for self
preservation. In that sense the discussion of consciousness is an interesting
exercise in analogies, and while it may very well put us on a track to better
understand everything from quantum mechanics to the mind, it still, to me, has
a very anthropic vibe to it.

~~~
axguscbklp
>You may be able to imagine a body physically identical to yourself not having
a consciousness, but you cannot deduce from that, that this is something that
can actually happen in our Universe.

Agreed, but doesn't that just further throw us back to the mystery of
consciousness as something that transcends the physical? Why would a given
arrangement of physical stuff necessarily give rise to subjective experience?

>It may just as well be true that any exact physical copy of a body containing
a consciousness is also conscious. In fact, the latter seems like a simpler
assumption than the former.

Maybe, but that assumption brings us no closer to understanding consciousness,
since consciousness is so radically qualitatively different from physical
stuff.

What does "a convenient way to organize a complex pattern of elementary
particles for self preservation" have to do with subjective experience,
qualia, etc.?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _but doesn 't that just further throw us back to the mystery of
> consciousness as something that transcends the physical?_

No, I think it does the opposite - it dissolves the concept of consciousness.
"Conscious" or "unconscious" is a label we put on complex physical objects to
separate them into categories by their behavior, in the same way we use "hot"
and "cold" to separate things by the degree of their apparent temperature. So
an atom-perfect copy of your brain would be just as conscious as you, and a
program running on a hardware, both of equivalent complexity to you, would be
just as conscious as you.

------
peter_vukovic
From a logical standpoint, questioning whether Consciousness "exists" is
ludicrous. Consciousness is the foundation of our capability to observe the
world around us and make conclusions about it. Protons, electrons, atoms,
molecules and other phenomena do not exist outside of our Consciousness and we
cannot prove absolutely anything about the world that is not a part of our
Consciousness. Therefore, if something is to be questioned, it is our strange
desire to prove the existence of the only thing we are directly experiencing
all the time - Consciousness. It's like a computer program becoming aware of
itself and trying to find that awareness in the source code. It's not there.

------
joncrane
When I used to commute via mass transit, my train load of people would all
rush down the platform, into a plaza, and down only one escalator. You had
people who would rush forward, people who would take a steady pace, and people
who would hang back. I often times looked at the flow of people and it seemed
to me it was extremely similar to a flow of particles.

~~~
danharaj
At a high enough density, crowds act like fluids. At a high enough speed, so
does a person.

------
kendallpark
There are a lot of different philosophical positions with regard to the mind-
body problem, but very few attempts at a testable scientific theory about how
consciousness works. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is such an attempt.

Nature Opinion article:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44](https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44)

Wiki:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)

~~~
knzhou
Note that IIT has been criticized [0] for being extremely gameable: it is
trivial to build simple circuits that do absolutely nothing, but have more
"consciousness" than all humans who have ever lived.

0:
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799)

~~~
GregarianChild
Scott's article devastated IIT. Lot's of people stopped looking at IIT after
it appeared. Here is a related question: _has IIT ever lead to an interesting
neurobiological insight?_ Has IIT suggested an interesting research hypothesis
that has been proven or disproven? In other words: is IIT an interesting
scientific methodology? Short answer: no.

------
aetherspawn
We can not yet measure consciousness. We can not say for certain, as an
example, whether a brain or AI that we design experiences it’s own
consciousness or not. And yet, they are made as all the same particles as you
and I.

We can say that consciousness is something to do with the links in our brain,
but how many times can I slice a brain before it is not conscious? Does a
brain sliced down into single neurons not experience the world as a billion
separate individuals? If I were to reconstruct the brain from its individual
parts, would those individuals feel as though they had died as their
consciousnesses merged?

I’m willing to still accept the traditional view that consciousness is a
special sauce. That when we reproduce, it’s something that we can fork, but it
is not common in the universe.

And I think that the true litmus test to the nature of consciousness is to
effectively kill someone by freezing them (so that they are actually dead in
the sense there is zero electrical activity) and then successfully bring them
back to a conscious state. Then you will have paused a consciousness, and yet
it did not leave. I do not think it’s possible. I think something like that
ruins the special sauce and the resulting experiment may be able to survive
(breath, react at a motor level), but effectively does not live a conscious
life.

~~~
pc86
> I think something like that ruins the special sauce and the resulting
> experiment may be able to survive (breath, react at a motor level), but
> effectively does not live a conscious life.

But if we have no way to measure consciousness (and arguably, we _can 't_, if
it's truly a "special sauce"), you can't prove whether or not this reanimated
creature is simply a mechanically moving shell of what was, a la every zombie
movie, or the same person, or something in between.

~~~
aetherspawn
Yes, I sat at night thinking about this for a long time after writing that
post.

------
im3w1l
I have taken multiple university courses in theoretical physics, in artificial
intelligence and in neuroscience, including on the topic of consciousness.

I can directly observe my own consciousness and I can tell that without a
doubt it can not be explained by current physics and "complexity". It is
completely different in kind.

If you believe that consciousness could arise _just_ from complexity and
information processing, then you are frankly mistaken. Whether you lack a
consciousness or just the introspective ability to perceive it... or I suppose
a knowledge of physics.

Now beyond saying "there is something going on", things quickly become much
more difficult. Pan-psychism is a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If there is
some phenomenon going on at a macrolevel, then we do expect it to be made up
things going on at a microlevel. Some kind of consciousness or proto-
consciousness. But am somewhat pessimistic. We don't really know what we are
even looking for, so how can we expect to find it?

The attempts to connect wave-function collapse with consciousness are
unconvincing to me. It seems basically like tying together two things we don't
understand with each other based on... not a lot.

~~~
nsilvestri
Until sufficient evidence is provided supporting one way or the other, we do
not know whether our current understanding of physics is sufficient for
understanding consciousness. You are claiming that it can't, so you now have a
burden of proof which you, at the moment, cannot fulfill, and therefore your
claim is unjustified.

~~~
im3w1l
You are trying to impose an impossible burden on me, and I have no choice but
to reject it. I realize that from your point of view, the claim that "I can
just feel it" is unsatisfactory, but that really is the essence of it all.

If your are sincerely curious meditation and/or drugs may be a path.

~~~
nsilvestri
If the burden of proof is impossible to fulfill then you have by definition
made an unfalsifiable claim, so your claim can be discarded immediately. "I
can just feel it" does not stand as evidence because it is subjective. The
only justifiable position you can currently take is "I do not know."

------
mirimir
Once you take this path, you can make up anything that you like. There's no
way to test it. Except, I suppose, based on how you feel about it, how well
societies work whose members believe it, and so on.

~~~
TheUndead96
I agree with this. There are similar arguments that you cannot prove reality
is real. Sure, but how does that help us solve the energy crisis or world
hunger? It is philosophical musical chairs. Aristotle and Plato investigated
how to live a better life.

------
ChrisCinelli
I read once of the NDE of a person that is very well documented. I think it
was Pam Reynolds. [http://www.neardth.com/pam-reynolds-near-death-
experience.ph...](http://www.neardth.com/pam-reynolds-near-death-
experience.php)

It is hard to explain if you do not want to consider that our counsciuness may
trascend our mortal existence.

~~~
Zigurd
Getting you to consider that seems to be the purpose of the publication in
which the article appears.

------
zozbot234
Since identical particles[0] are inherent in QM, I don't think you could even
_define_ what one "electron" is or what it might mean for it to be conscious.
But conciousness (or rather, proto-qualia, which are the part of
"conciousness" that really seems to demand some physical explanation) could
subsist in more complex systems, probably involving a high-dimensional
internal description as a result of some sort of stable quantum entanglement.

(Indeed, the fact that the sort of basic subjective experience we're familiar
with seems to empirically exist as part of intelligent life is a rather
compelling argument for non-trivial quantum computation of some sort being
quite feasible in the real world.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles)

------
Animats
Back in the 1980s, I had an exam question in Michael Genesereth's AI class at
Stanford, "Does a rock have intensions". I answered "no". I forget whether
that was considered correct.

This was back when AI had more philosophy and less number-crunching. And
didn't do much. "Common sense" and "intension" came up a lot back then, but
"consciousness", not so much. There hasn't been enough progress on common
sense and intension since then. Common sense is being able to predict the
consequences of actions, actual or potential, with enough accuracy to get
something done without damage. That's a concrete problem, and one that current
AI systems do not do well.

We don't know enough yet to address the "consciousness" issue.

~~~
pcmaffey
Rocks definitely have intensions. [1]

But whether or not rocks have intentions, I think the correct answer is "we
don't know."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intension)

~~~
enoreyes
obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/505/](https://xkcd.com/505/)

------
badrabbit
I would be very amused if modern science discovered souls (your "operating
system") and the spiritual realm exist. Much like dragons/monsters were
discovered (but renamed Dinosaurs). I already believe this so I am biased, but
I do firmly believe that modern humans overestimate not only what they know
but what they are capable of knowing and undetstanding. I think the realm of
reality you interact with originated from elsewhere.

This and some of the topics I am learning about in quantum mechanics (like
virtual particles) remind me of this:

"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that
what is seen was not made out of what was visible." \-- Hebrews 11:3 NIV

Just sharing an opinion and an observation.

~~~
joycian
A virtual particle is only a virtual particle because we as humans implicitly
have the particle view as fundamental. There's nothing special about a
fluctuation in a quantum field being not long lived enough or not stable
enough for us to recognize it as "a real particle".

So your quotation is right, but you need to go one level deeper.

~~~
badrabbit
Interesting and thank you. I have much to learn about quantum physics, but it
is very fascinating.

------
bufferoverflow
That sounds a lot like Deepak Chopra's pseudoscientific woo.

~~~
sitkack
Deepak studies a specific branch called, Ching Cha Ching, which enables him to
make lots of money.

~~~
faeyanpiraat
Worth watching a Deepak / Sam Harris interview, they tend to turn into -
painful, but - great comedy.

------
eru
Scott Aaronson wrote about this before
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799)

The title 'Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist (or, The
Unconscious Expander)' tell you what he thinks of the theory.

Some more discussion also at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7avunr/inte...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/7avunr/integrated_information_theory_a_rationally_and/)

------
abellerose
I theorize nothing is truly conscious. Everything reacts from a cause & effect
"chain of forces" exerted upon everything in the Universe. I'm curious what we
will learn when we can modify the human brain to be exactly the same as it was
a year ago for an individual that volunteers to be such a test subject. Would
all his/her memories be reverted back to that very day? Or would the
experiment result in a failure because our concept of how we react to
everything compared to other things in the universe is flawed.

~~~
adrianmonk
Although there are popular theories of the mind which include both free will
and consciousness, the two aren't the same thing.

There is no reason why, in principle, you can't have a deterministic thought
process and a consciousness that observes and experiences these thoughts from
the outside.

There's also no reason why you couldn't have a deterministic form of
consciousness that is a part of a deterministic thought process.

~~~
abellerose
I think the two are simply illusions. Humans think of as free will and similar
to thinking of having a consciousness in reality is just illusions at play. We
can assume consciousness is similar to an outside external force that ends up
with causing an outcome. Similar as a domino being interacting with another
domino and resulting in a cause & effect outcome. I don't think humans are
responsible at all for anything of their own doing. Some things are in fact
impossible and even with how hard we desire them.

My previous comment is suggesting that it would be interesting to learn if
somehow the processing of thinking isn't happening purely in the brain. Such
as if we could revert all neurons back to a previous state of time before
external forces changed everything up. I like to theorize about the universe
having some state that's stored somewhere outside of what's physically
observable.

~~~
throwphoton
> I think the two are simply illusions

I've never understood this line of reasoning. If consciousness, in the sense
of subjective experience ("qualia"), is an illusion, that what is being
fooled? It seems to just push the question one level deeper without providing
any insight.

~~~
mikeyjk
It's our understanding/perception that is fooled. We feel like we are the
conscious authors of our thoughts when really they are summoned from within
and calculated for us. We feel like pilots but really we're riding coach.

I feel like there is a chance I'm misinterpreting your question though,
apologies if so.

~~~
throwphoton
I think you're combining consciousness and free will into a single thing.
Consciousness lies in the subjective experience (in fact it seems like you
allow for perception); whether you have any agency or are just a subjective
experiencer "riding along" with deterministic fate is a separate matter.

~~~
abellerose
You make a good point. As for me, its really hard to think of consciousness as
real because it's similar to other things I'm forced to observe while
previously I used to think I was somewhat in control. So I think thoughts or
awareness are just like external forces making whatever happens from all the
previous forces.

I guess I'm wondering if we would still think we're conscious if we someday
prove we're no different than a character in the video game the Sims. We
currently think of the characters in the Sims as not having a conscious. But I
guess we could be wrong if electrons somehow had a state being received and
from everything that's happening in the universe for making it experience
similar to what we do. Thus, the theory of panpsychism. But to me that just
seems like consciousness is an illusion in the traditional sense because
awareness has always felt like requiring more than a video game character
being controlled by external forces.

~~~
Nevermark
Consciousness, at least to each of us individually, is demonstrably real.

Consciousness is a perception and perceptions are not illusions, even if we
misunderstand what we are perceiving.

If I send you a message that says "I am not sending you a message", we can
argue about what it means, but not that you got a message from me, no matter
how much you trust (Edit: Or distrust) what I say to you.

Even if you don't believe you have consciousness, if you perceive you
disbelieve in consciousness, then too bad: you have it.

\--

In contrast, free will is a completely different and easily explained kind of
phenomena.

Questions and opinions about free will predate any discovery of evidence for
such a thing. (There is no evidence yet!) That is a critical clue.

Free will is just a typical case of motivated reasoning. We believe some
things without any rational support because they make us feel better about
ourselves, the universe, allow us to focus on more practical matters. Not
because they are true, or even a valid concept.

But understanding that free will is a product of motivated reasoning suggests
that explaining free will is just evidence-free motivated reasoning will not
settle the issue. Because people will continue to be motivated to want it to
be true, they will find it hard to simply label it as self-serving, often-
useful irrationality and move on.

~~~
abellerose
That’s just an illusion to me. The word conscious is a subjective construct
and awareness has always been associated with it as a necessary role in
expressing consciousness exists. Well if a person is just metaphorically a
domino like everything encompassing his/her existence and there can be
conflict between the parties to a significant degree. Then it’s arguable that
neither person is truly aware but just similar to a character in a cutscene of
a video game. All of us just acting out without any control to what the story
entails. Similar for the discussion at hand. I think it’s a philosophical
issue and where human language attempts at making it seem more possible than
it being an illusion but is in fact not the case.

~~~
Nevermark
Your domino reference suggests you continue to confuse free will with
consciousness.

Free will is the idea that out minds might somehow have a self-generated non-
deterministic ability to make decisions that is unmoored or constrained from
causes that others can see or investigate.

This is either trivially not true (as in the "many worlds" deterministic
interpretation of quantum mechanics), or trivially true in a weak sense
(quantum mechanics non-deterministic interpretation) i.e. our decisions are
controlled by quantum randomness, but not by any special property of our
minds.

There is zero evidence of "free will" and yet people have conjectured they
might have it for as long as we have records of people's introspection. This
phenomenon is easy to understand: it is a typical example of motivated
reasoning. We have a biological imperative to desire freedom of action and
though. "Free will" is the ultimate fantasy of freedom of thought. So
regardless of all lack of evidence, people will be drawn to, and depending on
rationality, adopt a strong belief, in their "free will".

So we can dispense with that self-motivated "illusion" based on good science.

In that sense, there is an illusion as you say.

\---

That leaves your point (if this rephrasing of your point is acceptable to you)
that self-awareness in a functional sense does not necessarily imply an entity
has the qualia of self-awareness, i.e. consciousness.

I also agree with that. Somewhere between us and a deck of cards saying things
like "I am conscious" is a mechanism we could build that had some level of
self-referential ability, could say things to you or me that looked like
consciousness to us, but which didn't really understand itself. And therefore
could not actually be conscious.

We can agree that their can be an illusion of consciousness. But note the
illusion is to external observers. The limited entity itself has no subjective
awareness of the illusion or anything else.

\---

Which is why consciousness cannot be an illusion to an entity that experiences
it. It is one of the very few (the only?) completely direct experience we
have, with no intermediary.

If you have the qualia of self-awareness, then you have it. There is no
illusion of having it. If you don't have consciousness, you cannot experience
the qualia of an illusion of consciousness.

~~~
abellerose
I appreciate you writing all that for me. I'm now uncertain where I fall with
my position. I don't really think I'm aware because everything is
predetermined and even if randomness is thrown into the equation it doesn't
matter. I know you think I'm mixing free will with consciousness but I just
think a person cannot be aware if they're always going to process a certain
way because of the starting point of the universe. It just seems like I'm a
sim in a video game. Where everything is completely programmed out for
whatever to happen and I cannot say that either a character in a video game or
I, would be resembling what consciousness means for me. In any case I'm
undecided now.

------
foxes
I agree that conciousness of people is not "special", but why the need to add
in an extra meta physical quantity of "conciousness". I agree it is probably a
spectrum, but I think it is more just an emergent quantity.

People are just relatively high up on the scale so its different to imagine
what other types of conciousness would be. Yes it is difficult to say what
exactly is going on in a human brain, but I believe when you think it is
entirely just a physical process, some very complicated electro-chemical
interactions.

------
sdhrnrhbrt
If we consider a large group of people as a whole, can we say that this group
has its own consciousness? For example Congress is a bunch of old dudes with
their own consciousnesses, but as a whole it makes decisions by voting and
other complex internal interactions between these individual consciousnesses.
For an outsider, this organization behaves like a conscious being.

Another way to look at this idea is that consciousness is when we impose a
boundary condition on a "medium" made of conscious "particles". I'd even
compare humans with a liquid. When it flows freely, it obeys some general
fluid laws and its behavior is rather uninteresting. It's when you confine a
part of this liquid into some boundaries, the captured liquid starts to
demonstrate some interesting effects. Same with humans. When they act freely
and barely interact with each other, they form a uniform mess, but once we
impose various boundaries, such as countries, companies or various forms of
organizations, humans captured in those boundaries are forced to interact with
each other more often and those interactions are governed by various laws, and
at that moment these fictional entities start to look like conscious beings.

------
mannykannot
At the very least, this seems to me to be a way to avoid the difficult and
interesting issues of, and relating to, consciousness. I am not interested in
debating whether it is possible to come up with some definition of the word
"consciousness" such that one can say that even electrons have it; I am
interested in how conscious, self-aware, theory-of-mind-holding minds work.

~~~
Nevermark
"some DILLUTION of the word "consciousness"

Fixed that for you and ... agree on all counts.

I feel like while we can't explain consciousness yet, it isn't hard to make
well supported conjectures about what it needs.

First, what I experience and call "consciousness" involves an awareness of a
dynamical thing, me, for my environment (a gravitationally organized semi-2D
place), myself externally (i.e. controllable hands and feet), my own internal
responses to the environment (sensory perception, reinforcements, patterns),
and the fact that this awareness on my part seems to be encoded with
information that is used by my dynamical response generating apparatus.

I.e. Self-reflection does not seem to be segregated from other forms of
information used to generate my responses: My awareness of self is not just in
a spectator role, since it influences action.

The fact that self-awareness is not segregated from responses creates a
wonderful side benefit: I can share my self-reflection by communicating to
others about it.

If you took away any part of what I just described, I don't think I would
continue operating in a way I understand as "consciousness" and my behaviors
would certainly be very different. I don't think other's would describe me as
"conscious" either.

And none of these seemingly necessary complicated and recursive pre-conditions
for consciousness shout out as reasons to include individual electrons as co-
conscious in any way.

Question: Assuming an electron has consciousness, what experiment would you
attempt to falsify that?

I am anti-electron on this issue. :)

~~~
klyrs
> Question: Assuming an electron has consciousness, what experiment would you
> attempt to falsify that?

This is the question that the article ends on -- the philosophers are
entertaining the notion and looking for a testable hypothesis.

We're talking about a 1-qubit Turing test, essentially. I'm not about to take
a position yay or nay, (I'm a mathematician, goddammit).

For an apparatus, we could capture individual electrons in a ring of magnetic
bottles. Perform tests on individuals in the chambers, advance them in a
"shift register" fashion, and repeat. Do any individuals show behavior that
differentiates them? A clear signal of individuality would be a real shocker.

One thing we use for macroscopic beings is a "mirror test" \-- can an electron
recognize itself in a mirror? Again, sounds absurd, but the general question
is considered an acceptable proof of consciousness.

------
pontifier
I came up with a similar theory a few years ago. It's based on the idea of a
Gaussian surface for information. The surface could be drawn around a rock or
a person. In both cases, information passes into the surface from the
environment (photons, vibrations, forces, motion, etc), is "processed" by the
matter inside the surface, and emitted by the object after processing.

Things start to get weird when you play around with different time scales, and
where to draw the surfaces. You might see a tree differently when you see it
shifting and changing over longer time scales. It's also strange to think
about drawing this type of a surface over different regions such as a
classroom, non-contiguous regions such as every member of a family, or even
conceptual regions such as mathematical functions, a scientific theory, or
program source code.

------
stevebmark
I suggest you stop supporting nautil.us. Look at the bafflingly low quality of
this article. Is it coincidence that nautilus articles like these frontpage
once a weekend? Is it an organic submission? Or something else? This is like a
throwaway class paper (which, given how nautilus sources, may very well be).

~~~
nefitty
I have questions about their agenda. They were exclusively funded, initially,
by the John Templeton Foundation.

Whatever one’s personal feelings about Richard Dawkins, this bit he said in
The God Delusion is apropos, regarding how he feels the Templeton Foundation
doles out rewards, “usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something
nice about religion".

------
marcAKAmarc
After reading all the comments to this article, I get the weird feeling that
some people, though obviously intelligent and convincing in their argument,
obtain no consciousness. Further more, for the life of me, I can't decide if
that supports or detracts from the idea of panpsychism. Making the argument
"consciousness is not special - it simply emerges from data processing" feels
so dead, but is really saying that everything is alive to a certain degree. On
the other hand, saying "There is something special about consciousness that
needs to be explained" almost supports the idea that consciousness is
exclusive to certain entities and not others, and therefore needs explaining.
That feels so backwards to me for some reason, and I can't put a finger on it.

------
odyssey7
Something that concerns me for conscious particles is that some of them could
be suffering endlessly somewhere in the universe, but I think this is probably
rare.

The ability to hold a conscious particle in its seat while keeping it
uncomfortable implies some sort of system trapping it in place.

Life could be such a roller coaster, where good and bad stimuli are always
being presented to the particles, and there isn't much hope for getting off
the ride as long as the lap bar is down. The sensation of discomfort might in
fact be the feeling of a conscious particle straining against its chains,
trying to escape the body that has trapped it.

------
codesnik
that article (which imho is totally devoid of any substance) still reminded me
about other thought experiment by Feynman: What if there's just one electron
in the universe, traveling back and force in time, becoming positron when
changing time direction, consuming energy when turning forward and releasing
when turning back? He was quick to reject this idea, because in this case
there would be exactly the same amount of electrons and positrons in the
universe, and it doesn't seem to be the case, but I just love the elegance of
the conjecture.

~~~
nefitty
There’s something fishy about Nautilus. One of their main contributors is the
John Templeton Foundation:

“The work supported by the John Templeton Foundation crosses disciplinary,
religious, and geographical boundaries. Our grantees produce field-leading
scholarship across the sciences, theology, and philosophy. From probing
gravitational waves to updating the modern evolutionary synthesis, they have
contributed to major discoveries in the basic sciences. Other grantees have
opened critical new topics to scientific investigation, including prayer,
gratitude, immortality, and imagination.”

An initial reaction from someone online, [https://ksj.mit.edu/archive/does-
science-magazine-nautilus-h...](https://ksj.mit.edu/archive/does-science-
magazine-nautilus-have-agen/)

In 2013, Amos Zeeberg, the digital editor of Nautilus said this in an
interview: “The Templeton Foundation provided all of the money for our launch
and for the initial operation of the magazine. We hope they’ll fund us
further, and we also are getting revenue from advertising and potentially
other foundations.”

------
lidHanteyk
Nobody's mentioned the Conway-Specker-Kocken Free Will Theorem!? It lines up
perfectly with the idea of "quantum choice" discussed in the article: Free
will is when particles _choose_ to reply to quantum measurements with non-
predetermined values.

From this perspective, electrons are a little conscious, while humans are a
lot conscious (because we have lots of electrons in our brain), but we don't
have to define consciousness beyond the ability to be forced to make choices.

------
chewbacha
I’m a little skeptical of this theory. Mostly, because it sounds exactly like
animism [0]. The consciousness discussed here sounds a lot like the “soul”
that religions asserts exists. But this is the problem with science that is
almost entirely theoretical built in a concept that is entirely subjective:
what is consciousness?

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism)

------
jodrellblank
> _Quantum chance is better framed as quantum choice—choice, not chance, at
> every level of nature._

But why? All the choice we're familiar with relates to predator/prey
interactions, sexual selection, finding food, avoiding danger, protecting the
next generation, and so on. What possible reason could electrons have for
preferring one outcome of an interaction to another?

Say "highly rudimentary" and you can ignore everything else?

------
willis936
All of the quantum choice theories seem to be based around an incorrect answer
to the measurement problem. They can be forgiven, as many of the smartest
scientists in the past 100 years have fought hard for their own
interpretation. I suggest watching this episode of spacetime (and a few
before/after if you have time).

[https://youtu.be/CT7SiRiqK-Q](https://youtu.be/CT7SiRiqK-Q)

------
gitgud
There's the _Mechanical Universe_ theory and then there's the _Everything is
Conscious_ theory.

It's interesting to see the steps taken to arrive at that.

\- A person has thoughts, yes

\- A chip has thoughts, yes

\- A dog has thoughts, yes

\- A mouse has thoughts, yes

\- A fly has thoughts, yes

\- A microbe has thoughts, maybe

\- A virus has thoughts, maybe not

\- An atom has thoughts, maybe not

\- An electron has thoughts, maybe not

It's a blurry line between life and matter, and perhaps consciousness goes
down to that level too.

I'm still a "Mechanical Universe" guy though

~~~
tachyonbeam
I would argue that intelligence is a tool that life has evolved to become more
adaptable to its environment. Intelligence exists at many scales, and
consciousness is an emergent property of high intelligence. At some point, as
your model of the world becomes sophisticated enough, you have to have a model
of yourself, so you become self-aware. Self-awareness evolved because it made
for smarter, more effective animals.

Unicellular organisms do information processing and react to their
environment. You could say they they're intelligent in that sense, they can
actually have very complex behavior. However, they're not self-aware, they
don't have a model of the world that incorporates a model of themselves.
Neurons involved in multicellular organisms as an effective way to quickly
send signals across, making multicellular creatures more adaptable to their
environment. These neurons started to organize in more complex circuits that
could do increasingly sophisticated information processing because that was
good for survival, and so on and so on, until you get self-awareness.

------
xornox
Because we do not know what consciousness is, it is not reasonable discuss if
electrons have or have not something we do not understand at all.

------
avsteele
I would think that a set of particles that are literally indistinguishable
from one another could not meet any definition of 'mind'.

There is no difference between an electron that's flown around the universe
and one that was just created in a particle collider. If that doesn't negate
the possibility of 'subjective experience' I am not sure what would.

~~~
jasonlfunk
They are only indistinguishable in all the ways that we know how to look.
There may be a way to differing them that we haven’t discovered yet.

------
mlatu
So, there is only this one electron, standing in for every electron we can
observe, this electron may well be conscious, so what if there are molecular
structures (our brain) that "enjoy to feel conscious"? Perhaps there is only
ever just this one consciousness and we all are (read: everything is) part of
it?

------
yalogin
This feels a lot closer to Hindu philosophy actually. May be someone more
knowledgeable can correct me or add more.

~~~
imvetri
You are right.

------
dmix
David Bohm's Implicate vs Explicate Order seems to be a root question here (as
indicated in the article)...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicate_and_explicate_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicate_and_explicate_order)

------
rantwasp
for a definition of conscious yes. the problem is that we don’t really
understand what consciousness is and we tend to anthropomorphize everything.

what if consciousness is the synchronicity of the observations of the outside
world with the predictions of our brains?

no more, no less, with and added layer of hierarchies and recursion.

------
tylerjwilk00
If we consider our brains conscious, and the foundational building blocks of
that consciousness are electro/chemical reactions, it seems plausible that
there is an innate property of consciousness to the underlying matter of those
processes.

------
jpfdez
Maturana and Varela 1987.consciousness like a pilot flying blind in conditions
of very poor visibility relying only on the instrumentation in the cockpit
where any environmental inputs are mere blips on the radar screen

------
gmuslera
Is that statement falsifiable?

------
Seb-C
This is very much interesting and exciting, but all I see in this article is
arguments from authorities. I fail to see any facts or demonstratable proofs.

How is that theory different than any other religious belief?

------
ecoled_ame
check out Orch OR theory developed by Roger Penrose and an anesthesiologist
from Arizona. Basically they think microtubule proteins create electron
resonances that can reach a threshold time to produce consciousness that
wouldn’t be available to most electrons outside the system. I’ve been
researching this topic during quarantine so i’m happy to answer any questions
or supply some cool facts.

------
markhahn
panpsychism is the flying spaghetti monster.

with added pretense.

------
bobsh
Christopher Alexander arrived at a similar conclusion, in his later works,
albeit from a radically different direction.

------
pacala
Humans are unique in evolving recursive language. Consciousness is a recursive
agent: observe me observing the world, several layers deep. Likely the exact
same mutation / brain structure backs both mechanisms.

Neither electrons, nor the Universe, are recursive agents. Maybe some of the
Devil's apprentices playing with reinforcement learning AI will inadvertently
create a non-human consciousness, but other than that, humans _are_ special.

------
CKN23-ARIN
I suspect the experience of being an electron is something like this:

 _" Wheeeeee!"_

------
classified
So what if they are? Will they talk back if I send them to the anode?

------
fallingfrog
No, but neither are we.

~~~
axguscbklp
You don't have subjective experience?

------
sgt
Next year, you'll have protesters chained up outside of the CERN particle
accelerators. Don't smash our particle friends!

------
simonh
It seems to me that our consciousness is most likely an emergent property of
neuronal activity. The thing with emergent properties is it's extremely hard
to draw a line where the system that exhibits the property transitions from
not exhibiting that property to exhibiting it.

Consider a cyclone, a mass of air rotating around a zone of low pressure in
the atmosphere. Clearly this is an emergent property of air, or any gas
really. But if you statistically analyse any mass of gas you will be able to
find volumes where there are regions of lower pressure than the average and
the particles nearby will have a (possibly tiny) net angular momentum around
that low pressure region. Any volume of gas will have these, but are they
cyclones? How long does such a state have to persist to count? How much
angular momentum must be present? Must it be on the surface of the earth to
count? What about near another similar surface?

You can do this with any emergent property, right down to the electrons
orbiting a nucleus, does that make them cyclones? The thing is whether you say
yes or not, it doesn't really matter because it's not a useful level of
analysis if you want to understand the behaviour or nature of cyclones in
global weather forecasting. It's a context error.

Take the idea that an electron's state is not random but chosen, per the
article. Well to make a choice implies considering reasons or following a
pattern of behaviour. However we can see experimentally that the states of
electrons do strictly follow random statistical distributions. So you can
argue that their 'nature' is to 'choose' a random state, but at this point
youre jamming a useless and explanation-free definition on the term 'choose'.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm basically a materialist. I believe that my
decisions as a free agent are determined by my mental, psychological and
essentially neuronal state. I believe this is necessary for me to be
considered to have free will, because for _me_ to have free will my decisions
must come form me, and I am my state. If my memories, instincts, experiences,
knowledge and values don't influence or even determine my decisions, then
those decisions don't come from _me_ in any meaningful sense. I don't care if
that means my decisions are in principle deterministic, that's fine, it just
means I'm a consistent being.

So yes my behaviour comes from my state and you could argue that the behaviour
of an electron comes from it's state, or the behaviour of a gas comes from
it's state. All that means is that I'm made out of matter, but it's simply a
useless level of analysis when considering consciousness, for exactly the same
reasons that studying quantum mechanics and atomic motions isn't practically
useful when looking at many other emergent properties of matter.

This article is like analysing an engine, reducing down the behaviour of the
matter an engine is comprised of down to the fundamental particles the engine
is composed of, then extrapolating that up to say that because Jupiter is made
of those particles it must therefore be an engine. If you're going to say
electrons are conscious, you have to also say they are cyclones, and engines,
and economies, and thunder storms, and planets, and whatever else because if
you take this mode of analysis as legitimate you can, without crossing any
objectively clear boundary, reduce all emergent properties of matter down to
the fundamental particles.

------
oneiftwo
>that all matter has some associated mind or consciousness, and vice versa.
Where there is mind there is matter and where there is matter there is mind.

That doesn't make sense. We know that humans (and probably most if not all
conscious animals, in fact sleep may be a prerequisite for consciousness)
spend about a third of their lives unconscious. This assertion doesn't hold,
unless you want to tell me that all these rocks are just asleep.

------
notaphilosopher
_May the Schwartz be with you._

And place the midichlorian detector on the Qi pad, wouldja?

------
caymanjim
No.

~~~
klyrs
You're so certain -- but can you prove it?

~~~
DougN7
Electrons might prefer Michael Jackson music and grapes in the summer. Not
being able to disprove it is a looong way from it being true.

~~~
klyrs
Grapes in the summer? That's your sensory experience, not that of an electron
-- not the hypothesis being entertained. Some people are seriously considering
that quantum choices might be governed by an extremely minimal, 1 qubit,
consciousness. And the status is they're looking for a testable hypothesis.
I'm not coming close to saying it's true: I asked if OP could prove the claim
they asserted.

------
yters
We avoid all the woo and counter intuitiveness is we just take the common
sense substance dualism postion we had since childhood. So what if a 'soul' is
outside our current scientific paradigm? If we ignored all ideas outside the
current paradigm, we would still be substance dualists.

------
ozzmotik
oh i am definitely going to have to finish reading this as I am certainly an
avid fan of the concept of consciousness itself being the substrate of
reality. that being said, i don't necessarily viewing it through a panpsychist
lens is entirely accurate as that perspective more or less tends to assume
consciousness as some base aspect of material reality, and as such a base
unit, but my own personal spiritual experiences and development in that regard
have shown me that it is rather the other way around, that consciousness is
the core metaphor, the non deterministic field of probability that constitutes
reality, and more emergent and highly complex life forms also gained with
their development a more strict set of deterministic rules to follow
(instincts, genetics and such), and as such it would be more apt to suggest
that material reality through the "objective" lens we (seek to) perceive it
through is just the net output of running that core algorithm of iterate over
time

propagating some aspect of your essence, ideally in a stochastic system that
allows for novelty to form, as really the pursuit of novelty is the only
underlying force that, to me, can explain the wondered emergent forms that
reality is known to take. not to mention the amazing correspondences between
micro and macro scale experiences despite appearing to (which is likely in all
reality illusory) be two separate connected-but-not-directly-related
constructs.

in any case i just always feel compelled to ramble when it comes to
consciousness and the nature of reality. i should probably read the rest of
the article now. sorry if my delivery or communication was not quite clear,
that's a known pain point and something I have been attempting to address ever
since back around 1991 when I, having caught the big dumb, evidently never got
the memo on reasonable social interaction lol

------
ffhhj
Consciouness is the observation of own states, nothing fancy about it. We
humans have powerful machines to observe ourselves, our environment, and to
"observe" their future states thru prediction. Observing our observability in
a recursive way is what give us a feeling of "consciousness". Even some
paradoxes, like Zeno's and Supertasks are simple observer's problems.

~~~
zozbot234
The notion that we can "observe our own states" does not stand up to genuinely
deep insight about our phenomenology. Experienced practitioners in insight
meditation have been able to shatter this illusion, and realize that we can
only ever observe _memories_ of some apparent "self" \- that no real "self"
observation of our observability 'in a recursive way' is going on (thus,
pithily: "no self"). But of course, they're still conscious!

~~~
ffhhj
> we can only ever observe memories of some apparent "self"

To make a "self" we observe too many ideas, these experienced practitioners in
insight meditation are simply removing those mental models and observing the
simplest states. They are saving a memory of that, so when they stop
meditating and go back to observing their "self" they remember they were
conscious in a basic observation mode. That's all.

------
visarga
Consciousness cannot apply to electrons, they have no life (no need to protect
from cold, get food, learn), no senses, limited internal state and no
evolutionary mechanism to speak of.

In order to be conscious a system must be able to adapt itself to its
environment to maximise goals, the main goal being self reproduction. Also
requires an evolutionary mechanism in order for complex agents to appear.
Consciousness is the inner loop of evolution, they both optimise for
reproduction.

This absurd idea of conscious electrons is the natural result of armchair
philosophising about consciousness. Tononi et. al had a nice idea about
integrated information, but it is an unfinished idea. For what purpose is this
integrated information? How does learning occur? It says nothing. I'd rather
look up recent DL and reinforcement learning papers for inspiration about
consciousness.

