Electric Sheep

One of the most confusing things when reading about advanced science is the terminology used. For example, how much coverage of the research around Higgs Boson, or the "God Particle" focused on supposed links with religion? In fact the name God Particle was coined by Leon Ledermen in the book "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question", where it had nothing to do with spirituality, but instead referred to the this particle's central role in modern Physics.

Careful definition of terminology is key to almost all scientific studies. Historically the focus was on defining terms ideas that seem commonsense, or that are so integral to our every day existence that it is taken for granted. This can lead to counter-intuitive results, or some divergence between the scientific term and the meaning of the term in everyday conversation. One of the first lessons in schoolbook Physics is on defining energy, with unusual properties such as that it can't be created or destroyed, only transformed into different forms. What most people mean by energy has more common with entropy, a term the students will not learn until much later. Terms used can help to convey some parallels between physical processes we are familiar with and those that we have no way to directly experience. Electric current has much in common with the current of flowing water, but the further we get from the scale we experience, the more strained these parallels become. Particle spin for example is difficult to conceptualize, certainly it seems to have little to do with the idea of a spinning sphere that we might imagine. With more recent particles scientists seem to have given up hope of tying them to intuitive concepts, the word Quark is apparently taken from a line of Joycean nonsense, there are charm quarks and strange quarks, and Quantum Chromodynamics describe colour forces that have nothing to do with "real life" colours.

I wonder what level of intuitive understanding an advanced phycisist who understands and works on these theories has of them? Do they actually have some way of visualising 2/3 spin up hadron, or do they just "do the maths"? The use of colors in chromodynamics makes it easier to draw interactions between these particles - does it make it easier to think about them? As the frontiers of physics move so far out that it takes the greatest minds in the world many years to come to a basic understanding, will the next advances come from better descriptions and that make existing theories easier to learn?

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an interesting entry on Quantum Approaches to Consciousness. One of the key observations is that of the approaches which try to describe a specific mechanism for consciousness involving quantum mechanics, none to date have demonstrated testable conclusions. The approach described with most success is in applying some of the mathematical approaches developed for describing quantum mechanics, and applying these in psychological theories. Although this has resulted in devlopment new theories validated through empirical tests, it does not indicate any underlying quantum physics taking place - it is common for mathematical approaches in one topic to be usefully applied in seemingly unrelated fields.

The transition from a quantum mechanical description of reality and the classical mechanics that we are used to is not yet fully understood. This lack of understanding provides an explanatory gap which could be big enough to include consciousness. Consciousness is not precisely defined here, other than that it goes beyond what is possible using a neural network or turing machine. In attempting to describe how quantum mechanics could facilitate such computation within the brain they may shed light on the nature of consciousness objectively rather than subjectively.

In their paper Penrose & Hameroff describe Orch OR, their theory on this topic. In terms of human thinking, Orch OR represents one mode of operation of the brain, the other being the generally accepted processing of information through a neural network. One interpretation of the transition from Quantum to Classical mechanics describes this transition as a genuine physical event called Objective Reduction (OR), an event that takes place when the difference between the state evolving through quantum mechanics and the original classical state reaches a specific threshold. Orch OR is a form of quantum computation which takes place within the microtubules of neural cells, influencing how that cell processes signals from it's synaptic inputs. The quantum state can involve microtubules in many cells in the brain. The brain alternates between classical and quantum modes of operation at a frequency which depends on the amount of information being processed in the quantum state - the more information involved in the quantum mechanical evolution the less time the quantum state lasts for before "OR" takes place putting the brain in a new classical state.

Orch-OR is associated with "moments of consciousness". One of the facts mentioned that grabbed my attention was that "Some Buddhist writings quantify the frequency of conscious moments". I had come across this before in a book "The Diamond Sutra", which attempts to apply some Buddhist principles to modern life. After a very brief search for earlier references to this idea I assumed that it was a modern interpretation to something that may have had a quite different meaning originally. Seeing it here with several different references makes me wonder when these estimates were made, and if more than a few hundred years ago I'm surprised they could even conceive of 60-80 moments of consciousness, yet alone hit on a value that matches that predicted by these theories. Another interesting feature, though I would say it is more tentative - is that the affects of Orch OR transition can propogate forward or backward in time, though limited by the same very small energy limits. It would be interesting to see if this feature of quantum mehanics can be experimentally demonstrated.
The paper is published in the "Journal of Cosmogony" - not the most prestigious of scientific journals, so it looks like these theories are being relegated to the fringes of acceptable science. Criticisms of previous publications are addressed, I have not yet found how the scientific community has responded to these rebuttals.

Subjectively, I think consciousness is about the processing of information. and that almost all thinking is carried on at the mechanical level, and so could be simulated by a neural network - this includes reasoning, emotions, skills. Consciousness is primarily about observing information, and again the amount of information which can be observed (i.e contribute to a quantum computation) is limited. This theory puts a framework around how this could be measured. The second aspect of consciousness is freewill, and the limited influence that quantum computation can have on normal processing within the brain reflects the relatively few conscious decisions that people normally make. Orch OR can only influence the firing of neurons by injecting a relatively small element of randomness (from the classical point of view) into the normal neural operation. Again we can now measure this but I would not be surprised if the results of an Orch OR cycle can only result in the equivalent of one or two neurons firing - but spread out through a much larger number of cells.
One question to follow up - how much information processing does a Paramecium cell actually do,

Intuitively I think there is a limit to the amount of information of which one can be conscious of at any moment. As we change our attention other inputs fade - focus on a part of the visual field without moving your eyes. Focus on breathing or touch sensation & visual details fade. What is the maximum quantity of information which one can be conscious of? Is there a corresponding minimum - a quantity of information which the brain recognizes, but which we are not consciously aware of. What is the information capacity and algorithmic complexity of a single neuron?

The paper Theories and measures of consciousness: An extended framework aims to describe measures of consciousness, referring specifically to brain activity in the "dynamic core" of the brain. It treats consciousness as something like wakefulness, as in someone who is under anaesthetic would have a low measured consciousness, however it does not exclude measuring consciousness experienced while dreaming.

Neural Complexity C_N
Measures neural network complexity like an algorithm

In terms of the consciousness definitions described by Natsoulas and discussed at Conscious Entities this corresponds more to c6 - wakefullness. This appears to be the primary sense in which consciousness is discussed in this paper.

Information Integration ?
Measures consciousness as a capacity rather than a process. Not practically measurable. it is possible to construct an ann with arbitrarily high Phi, contradicting suggestions to use this measurement as a test of consciousness. It is a quality of the network rather than a measure of activity, same result whether alive or dead.

? is defined in An information integration theory of consciousness as the “effective information” across the informational “weakest link” of a system, the so-called “minimum information bipartition”

In this sense, consciousness is treated more like definitions c3 or c4 - what someone is actually aware of at a point in time.

Causal Density (cd)

Measures consciousness as a process based on the relationship between the inputs to the process and the outputs.

Now more than a week has passed since the announcement of anomolies at OPERA, and with no obvious flaw found in the experiment to date I am beginning to think it more likely they have a result that tells us something new about the universe. The strongest argument against is that the results go against accepted physics, but these tests are at the edge of known physics, and so it is not that surprising that they will see edge case results that do not fit with our current understanding.

For me the biggest issue is that the tests were carried out at different energies without seeing a dependency on the timing of the neutrinos detection. The simplest explanation of this is that the distance has ben measured incorrectly, and I still think this is the most likely individual explanation, but I think it more likely that one of several physical explanations is valid.

I've also seen suggested errors relating to the actual electronics used in the experiment, however if these were at fault I would have expected a wider spread of results rather than a consistent 60ns discrepancy.

The MINOS results are in favour of the results at OPERA, and it is the existence of these results which has been the biggest factor in favour of the results at OPERA for me. The observation form SN1987a is almost irrelevant - I have yet to find anyone saying why they think neutrinos arriving at earth 3 years earlier would have been detected - 1984 was quite early in the detection of cosmic neutrino radiation.

So one of the first results from CERN which is both interesting and easily understood, at least superficially. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484. The experiment showed neutrinos detected about 60 ns before they were expected, having travelled a distance of
732km. The most likely explanation for now has to be experimental error, for example if the distance between transmitter and receiver is out by just a few meters it could account for this much of an error. Of course, this distance has been measured more accurately - to the level of centimeters, but it does give an idea of the level of accuracy required.

OPERA have now released a paper on the findings, and there is a good description of the experiment and the result here. The story is headline news now, the publicity can't do much harm for CERN, though it could be embarassing if it does turn out to be due to a flaw in the experiment. That said it is clear that a great deal of results checking had already been completed before the result was made public, and while it is unlikely that another CERN will be built anytime soon to try and reproduce the result there does seem to be a few unrelated observations emerging that support the result.

A similar experiment to OPERA in America also appeared to show the same result, however in that case the result was withing the error range of the experiment, while here the result is far outside the expected levels of measurement error. Another observation which is being cited as both supporting and contradictory evidence is from detections of neutrinos from supernovae. There are reports (e.g. in the comments of the science 2.0 blog above) that what could have been a neutrino burst was detected in advance of the normal signal from a supernova, but that the result was written off as a coincidence. The result may be contradictory as the gap between the two signals should have been greater, but if we're breaking laws of physics why should the relative differences in speed have to stay the same over such a long distance?

So far I have not found too much on the possible implications of the result, possibly it just means we now have a better estimate for the universal constant, but as it came so unexpectedly if validated it should provide a starting point for new physics theories.

Finished Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 at last. What have I learnt from it - a very good overview the culture of Old Europe - in the very broadest possible sense, in the 20th century. I feel like it completes a sequence from Ken Follet covering the early part of the millenium, through Umberto Eco's "The Name of The Rose", and Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. There is a gap though around the 18th and 19th century, but it would break the tradition to deliberately go out to look for something to fill in this period.

An interesting article here from the New York Times, describing a theory that reasoning developed in order to be better at winning arguments rather than as a way of getting to the truth. Of course that does not mean reasoning will not bring us to the truth, but confirms that we should be careful of confirmation bias.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html

I look forward to trying to dig up, and get through the original article: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1698090

Japan earthquake survivors find comfort in robot seals

Physics has since its beginning been the quintessential "hard science", dealing in cold hard facts and describing the world around us in mathematical terms, ultimately leaving almost no place for us as conscious observers with free-will. Our very existence however is an important axiom in recent physical theories, through the Anthropic principle which selects theories based on whether they support our existence, and the Copernican Principle which warns against theories that put us in the center of the universe in some way.

The human brain is one of the most interesting places we know of in the universe. Imagine, if you will, an observer from outside of our universe. Somehow they have found a way to bridge the gap and can make a very limited observation from anywhere within our universe. Almost anywhere they choose, whether within a star, in the depths of space, or on some remote planet would either be so chaotic that their small observation would tell them little about anywhere else, or so inert that there is very little information to be observed. Of all the places we know of spacially small observation of the human brain would yield the most information about the universe, over time.