The Subconscious, Free Will, Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness | George Musser

In this talk at Mindfest 2024, George Musser explores whether free will can exist in a universe governed by laws, suggesting that our limited understanding of quantum mechanics might offer the illusion of free will.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:58 - Curt Introduces George Musser
03:53 - Twin Hard Problems
14:01 - Penrose & Hameroff / Microtubules
18:31 - Free Will
24:42 - Determinism vs. Indeterminism
27:13 - Stuart Hameroff
31:08 - Defining Our Terms
33:30 - Testing Theories
37:22 - Subconscious
39:28 - Collapse of the Wave Function
44:24 - Selection Process
47:40 - Intuition
50:22 - Outro

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[TheoriesofEverything]

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:58 - Curt Introduces George Musser
03:53 - Twin Hard Problems
14:01 - Penrose & Hameroff / Microtubules
18:31 - Free Will
24:42 - Determinism vs. Indeterminism
27:13 - Stuart Hameroff
31:08 - Defining Our Terms
33:30 - Testing Theories
37:22 - Subconscious
39:28 - Collapse of the Wave Function
44:24 - Selection Process
47:40 - Intuition
50:22 - Outro

[davidchartrand]

You are the best Curt! What a journey! Keep it up.

[maddyman]

I find it so fascinating that no one there even bothers defining consciousness or free will before debating how they "arise" or if they exist.

Consciousness is not hard at all, it's knowing. The verb "to know". That's it.
To be more esoteric, it's "that in which all experience arises, that within which all experience is known, and that of which all experience is made."
Done.

Free will is also easy when thought thru.
You have two animal by culture and environment, and aligned with the movement of the entire cosmos. That's it.
It has to do with how aware you are moment to moment to moment. Are you falling into the trap of ego and thinking you're an "I"....alone and small in a big world?
Or...are you aligned with the totality. In the flow, spontaneous.
Do you recognize that "you" is an idea...a bit of language in Mind?
When you do, you are not a small "me", you're the whole thing.
A wave is made of and connected to the ocean...as are we in the sea of existence.
No wave is "separate" from any other wave OTHER THAN BY CONVENTION! We talked our way into really believing anything is truly separate from anything else.
Once you recognize that simple plain fact...you're free. You're will is that of the entire Universe...and we get no more free than that.

[TCC]

I love Kurt's channel. He is such a brilliant guy. He makes physics less intimidating for me.

[liminally-spacious]

Thanks for sharing these, Curt! It's been so enjoyable as someone who hasn't heard of this event before.

[cgtxzvh]

@26:15 Perfect. Curt describes it like a film director explaining the seen... And then this is like a cherry on top...
Great work & service...

[donaldf.switlick]

Self-consciousness, like a mirror, is the recognition of ourselves,  by the reflection, from the mind in our brain's other hemisphere.

[cgtxzvh]

Finally... Well deserved praises...

Once the subscriber count hits 2M, my faith in humanity will be restored.

[BenReierson]

Amazing to get access to these talks. Thank you!

[jacksonvaldez]

26:05
Non determinism = computational irreduciblility

[DavidGP]

It is beyond me how anyone still thinks that free will is even a thing. From Schopenhauer to Hossenfelder and Sapolsky, every sane thinker inevitably must conclude that free will not only can not exist, but even is a nonsensical concept. Any quantum randomness, which btw. is also false if you follow Sabine Hossenfelder, does not change this conclusion in the slightest.

[mannequinskywalker]

Nice job, Curt! I don't feel like I learned a lot of new ish on ths topic, but enjoyed observing the vibes there & had some good laughs at the Q & A part!

[maciekjanicki]

I’d love to see debate between Sapolsky, Hameroff and Bernardo

[advaitrahasya]

Great to hear from one of the very rare people who study deeply, but manage to escape the mental traps of specialisation.

Only those who manage this have a shot at an overview …

Indeed, a copernican paradigm shift is what is needed if understanding of the simple and elegant mechanism is desired.

A way to shortlist the many notions out there is testing them against two obvious truths:

1. Existence is self-similar at many scales.

and

2. A true explanation of the fundamental mechanism is necessarily extremely simple, requiring at most: one assumption about one thing.

Physicists have been telling us what their experiments and models force them to acknowledge for a long time, but they have trouble explaining it within their aristotelian paradigm.

Indeed, “time“ is illusory, “matter“ is made of nothing real and “space" isn't empty.

Time to listen to yourselves, dear Physicists, or outsiders, most likely technologists, will beat you to it.
;)

[bradmodd]

Rebranding the mind body problem as the hard problem is a masterstroke in efficiency and style

[nyworker]

The brain is a mechanism and neurons are biological cells. What makes neurons special is that they form networks or cellular unities.

[mygamecomputer]

Obviously we’re collapsing the wave function. That’s the only reasonable explanation to why when something is not measured it simulates all choices but when measured, it provides only one.

[InterfaceGuhy]

Ok I have to hear George and Vervaeke sort out the secrets of the universe

[SandipChitale]

It was very surprising to hear that Stuart Hameroffs Orch OR is a panpsychist theory. How? I thought it was a physical theory. QM wave function collapse in microtubiles is a physical process. Can someone clarify?

[marcobiagini]

I am a physicist and I will explain why our scientific knowledge refutes the idea that consciousness is generated by the brain and that the origin of our mental experiences is physical/biological .
My argument proves that the fragmentary structure of brain processes implies that brain processes are not a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness, which existence implies the existence in us of an indivisible unphysical element, which is usually called soul or spirit (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). I also argue that all emergent properties are subjective cognitive contructs used to approximately describe underlying physical processes, and that these descriptions refer only to mind-dependent entities. Consciousness, being implied by these cognitive contructs, cannot itself be an emergent property.

Preliminary considerations: the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what exists objectively are only the single elements. In fact, when we define a set, it is like drawing an imaginary line that separates some elements from all the other elements; obviously this imaginary line does not exist physically, independently of our mind, and therefore any set is just an abstract idea, a cognitive construct and not a physical entity and so are all its properties. Similar considerations can be made for a sequence of elementary processes; sequence is a subjective and abstract concept.

Mental experience is a precondition for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and cognitive constructs, therefore mental experience cannot itself be a cognitive construct; obviously we can conceive the concept of consciousness, but the concept of consciousness is not actual consciousness.
(With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams).

From the above considerations it follows that only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, and consequently the only logically coherent and significant statement is that consciousness exists as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because we know that there is a correlation between brain processes and consciousness. This indivisible entity is not physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties; therefore this indivisible entity can be identified with what is traditionally called soul or spirit. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience.

Some clarifications.

The brain doesn't objectively and physically exist as a mind-independent entity since we create the concept of the brain by separating an arbitrarily chosen group of quantum particles from everything else. This separation is not done on the basis of the laws of physics, but using addictional subjective criteria, independent of the laws of physics; actually there is a continuous exchange of molecules with the blood and when and how such molecules start and stop being part of the brain is decided arbitrarily. Brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a subjective abstractions used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole (and therefore every function/property/capacity attributed to the brain) is a subjective abstraction that does not refer to any mind-independendent reality.

Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. However, an emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess; my arguments prove that this definition implies that emergent properties are only subjective cognitive constructs and therefore, consciousness cannot be an emergent property.
Actually, all the alleged emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective/arbitrary classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described directly by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option is possible; in this case, more than one possible description). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes. Emergence is nothing more than a cognitive construct that is applied to physical phenomena, and cognition itself can only come from a mind; thus emergence can never explain mental experience as, by itself, it implies mental experience.

My approach is scientific and is based on our scientific knowledge of the physical processes that occur in the brain; my arguments prove that such scientific knowledge excludes the possibility that the physical processes that occur in the brain could be a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness.

Marco Biagini