The Collapse of the Wave Function and Origins of Consciousness: A Conversation with Roger Penrose

[NNadir]

As my son the artist and many other people worry obsessively about AI, I kept wondering how Roger Penrose would see all this, as many years ago, I wandered desultorily through his book The Emperor's New Mind.

Somehow I found myself drifting in the internet to this lecture, which is absolutely fascinating, a discussion of the origins of consciousness viewed from a physicist's perspective. I can't recommend this clear exposition enough, which includes a wonderful discourse on the origins of the universe.

I was extremely privileged once to have spent an afternoon with the physicist Freeman Dyson in his office before he died, and this recalls that afternoon, one of the finest afternoons of my life, unforgettable. Finding this conversation, with an excellent interviewer, recalls that afternoon.

[JackSabbath]

1. You woul think...

... that on a supposedly forward thinking and progressive forum such as this, posts in science and environment would be more popular. Just goes to show that even the 'enlightened left' is more interested in carnage than knowledge. Sad.

[4dog]

2. Thanks for the link, and the recollection

I used to read Dyson first when he had an article in the NY Review of Books. Penrose's _Road to Reality_ is on my bookshelf, only partly read.

[NNadir]

5. He was close to 90 when I met him.

He was, unquestionably, the most brilliant person I ever met. I brought my sons and one of my son's best friends (who ended up being the high school class valedictorian).

The kids were probably too young to really gather very much, but they did get pictures of themselves with the great physicist. (He was a short guy, and only my son's friend was about his size.)

We treasure those pictures. In the one in which I appear, with my two sons and Dyson, I have this huge shit eating grin, because again, it was one of the best afternoons of my life.

He was patient, informative, generous with his time, engaging, and incredibly kind.

What was amazing was that I could not raise any subject with him with which he was unfamiliar, in fact his familiarity on any point was profound.

I referenced Stuart Kauffmann's Origin of Order which I think is pretty obscure, and he began to tell me things about Kauffman's personal life. He did really like Kaufmann's description of life as an "eddy in thermodynamics."

The only time he cut me off was when I began to discuss things that may or may not have been classified, nuclear stuff.

He had this huge pile of books in his office underneath his blackboard. People apparently sent him books all the time to read and the pile was those he had no time or inclination to read. He asked each one of us, the kids and myself to take at least one.

[mike_c]

3. fascinating

And now I have a small pile of Penrose's books on order. The emergence of consciousness has always intrigued me, but I approach the topic from a biologist's perspective, waving my arms a lot when it comes to the physics. I'm reminded of Penrose's comment about not knowing anything about microtubules.

[erronis]

4. Penrose continues to be a leading light (or at least a different one) in so many areas.

Just recently someone discovered a single multi-faceted shape that could be used to cover a plane (an unlimited flat area) without a repeating pattern. Penrose showed how that could be done decades ago with multiple shapes and suggested that a single shape might be possible.

His work in understanding consciousness has led many other researchers into deep analyses of how the brain regions interact, and how they are not just "programmed" but function based on extraordinarily small changes - which leads to a chaos theory interpretation of memories and actions.

A polymath extraordinaire!

[4dog]

6. Do you have a link for that tiling?

[Jim__]

7. Here are 2 links - to a brief description and to the 89 page paper on arXiv

The link to arXiv.

The link to a brief description on phys.org.

And an example:



The gray “hat” polykite tile is an “einstein”, an aperiodic monotile. In other words, copies of this tile may be assembled into tilings of the plane (the tile “admits” tilings), yet copies of the tile cannot form periodic tilings, tilings that have translational symmetry. In fact, the tile admits uncountably many tilings. Credit: arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2303.10798

[4dog]

8. Thanks, Jim, for adding that remarkable picture. On a tangent,

and if participants will forgive me for nudging this thread into shallower waters, I am curious if there is a name for a quadrilateral shape that I encounter in buildings built, I believe mostly in the 1970s. This is found in windows with two right angles at the bottom and usually 45 and 135 deg angles at the top, though it could be A and its supplement. Any thoughts?

Inspired by the rarely defined but fairly intuitive "kite" in the article.

[Jim__]

9. You're welcome 4Dog. But, I don't know anything about that quadrilateral shape.

[4dog]

10. Well, the hat tile unexpectedly dropped into my mailbox today

A mailing I get on digital security from Sophos in England:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2023/04/04/einstein-tilings-the-amazing-hat-shape-that-never-repeats/
Shows some decorative polygon tilings and gingerbread hat tile-cookies.