Sir Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff: Collapsing a theory of quantum consciousness? Part 2 (248)

Part two of our live conversation with Nobel Prize Winner and renowned mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Dr. Stuart Hameroff.

Watch Part 1: Sir Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff: What is Consciousness?
   • Sir Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff: ...  

00:00 Intro
01:00 How does the Everett 'Many Worlds' play into consciousness?
30:00 Artificial intelligence and consciousness
33:00 Emperor's New Mind
39:00 Can consciousness exist in 2 dimensions of space plus one of time?
42:00 Falsifying ORCH OR
45:00 Roger's thoughts on the Simulation Hypothesis and quantum computers
47:00 Polyominos and non-computability
50:00 What is consciousness really? Is it just what a computer can do?
51:00 Career advice for students and well-wishers
52:00 How complex is the brain? Eighteen orders
54:00 Clarke's Laws: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong”. What have you changed your mind on?
56:00 Roger's thoughts on Aliens in the previous 'aeon' and their ability to communicate via neutrinos or gravitational waves
1:02:00 Stuart on alien techno-signatures and panspermia
1:04:00 An afterlife?
1:05:00 Why is Roger an agnostic?
1:07:00. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
1:09:00 Advice to go into the impossible?

Collapsing a leading theory for the quantum origin of consciousness https://phys.org/news/2022-06-collaps...

Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff have tackled one of the most vexing problems in science -- how does consciousness work? Their theories of consciousness were selected by the Templeton Foundation for study. We will discuss Is the brain a sophisticated computer or an intuitive thinking device? Following on from their conference in Tucson which pitted Integrated Information Theory (IIT) against Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR), Sir Roger Penrose OM and Stuart Hameroff discuss the experiments that might explain human consciousness and objections to them from FQXI and others.

Sir Roger Penrose describe examples of ‘non-computability’ in human consciousness, thoughts and actions such as the way we evaluate particular chess positions which cast doubt on ‘Turing’ computation as a complete explanation of brain function. As a source of non-computability, Roger discuss his ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) self-collapse of the quantum wavefunction which is a potential resolution for the ‘measurement problem’ in quantum mechanics, and a mechanism for non-computable physics.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff reviews neuronal and biophysical aspects of Orch OR, in which ‘orchestrated’ quantum vibrations occur among entangled brain microtubules and evolve toward Orch OR threshold and consciousness. The nature, feasibility, decoherence times and evidence for quantum vibrations in microtubules, their role and correlation with consciousness, effects upon them of anesthetic gases and psychedelic drug molecules will be discussed, along with Orch OR criticisms and predictions of microtubule quantum vibrations as therapeutic targets for mental and cognitive disorders.

Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS, Emeritus Professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, and winner of the Wolf Prize in Physics, has made profound contributions across a broad range of scientific disciplines. His work encompasses geometry, black hole singularities, the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity, the structure of space-time, and the origin of our Universe. His geometric creations inspired the works of Escher, and the Penrose steps have been featured in several movies. In 1989 Penrose wrote The Emperor’s New Mind which challenged the premise that consciousness is computation and proposes we need new physics to understand it.

Biography: Stuart Hameroff MD is an anesthesiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In the mid 1990s Hameroff teamed with famed British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop a quantum theory of consciousness (‘orchestrated objective reduction’, ‘Orch OR’) based on microtubule quantum computing. Highly controversial and harshly criticized, Orch OR is now supported by evidence, e.g. that anesthetics act in quantum channels in microtubules, and that microtubules have multi-scalar resonances, e.g. in megahertz. He’s appeared in the film ‘WhattheBleep?’ and numerous TV shows on BBC, PBS, Discovery, OWN and History Channel.

Sir Roger Penrose:    • Nobel Prize in Physics, Black Holes a...  
Sabine Hossenfelder:    • Sabine Hossenfelder: This is what’s w...  

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