Electrons don’t think

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/electrons-dont-think.html?spref=tw

by mathgenius • 8 years ago

32 57 8 years ago

backreaction.blogspot.com

kazinator• 8 years ago

Look, I'm not asking electrons to think outright; but reading a bit of the schematic would be nice.

I don't know about you, but all of my electrons diabolically thwart my every effort to contain or direct them, especially at higher frequencies. Petulant little bastards those electrons...

FakeComments• 8 years ago

This post seems to try and refute really technical philosophy with simplified to the point of being wrong science.

It just seems awkward as a result.

But thinking really simplified science is enough to completely dismiss other serious thinkers is why scientists get called closed minded: to use their parlance, this rant isn’t even wrong.

buboard2• 8 years ago

Same can be said about philosophy. And therein lies a schism between physicists and philosophers that lasts for a few decades now, that has leads to them mostly avoiding each other and growing increasingly orthogonal arguments to avoid any chance of synthesis.

SiempreViernes4• 8 years ago

Eh, probably Hossenfelder found some popular account of panpsychism that did in fact argue that electrons have some sort of independent consciousness, maybe even written by a philosopher. In fact, I spot just the argument she refuted being stated as a reply elsewhere in these comments, preceded by the words "She misses the point".

In any event, what exactly is simplified to the point of being wrong? That more internal states effects cross sections?

hprotagonist• 8 years ago

of course electrons don't think! they are merely the chaff and dross thrown off by the real movers and thinkers in the universe, which are monads[0].

"Just when one is about to judge Liebniz as having the strangest mind of anyone who ever lived, one remembers Newton and his lifelong obsession with alchemy and his strenuous efforts to predict the exact date of the End of the World by ransacking the Book of Revelations for encrypted clues"[1]

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/

[1] http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf

SmirthsDAC2• 8 years ago

Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change.

The crux of the argument seems to be here, and is simply a fallacious equivalency of free will/agency and consciousness. Two different philosophical issues that may have a unifying explanation, but not for now.

Besides, panpsychism seems to almost be tautological in its assertions: if we accept materialism, and we accept consciousness exists in some creatures, then where else would consciousness be "realized" in aggregate except distributed amongst the actual matter of the brain, down reductivly to sub-atomic particles? That doesn't mean it's a fully formalized robust theory, but the concepts underlying it are sound.

Analemma_2• 8 years ago

No, that’s crazy. It takes lots of atoms of iron and silicon to make a Boeing 747, but that doesn’t mean that a single iron atom has even the slightest amount of “plane-ness”.

SmirthsDAC2• 8 years ago

Requiring that it has "plane-ness" seems like an unpackable ambiguous criteria. I am speaking on a simple functional level.

Rather, a given iron atom is one of the atoms that make up a given 747, so it absolutely is (and here's where the tautology comes in) part of the distributed material that makes up the plane. Without such atoms there would be no plane. The same is being said here except with consciousness, no more.

evdev• 8 years ago

Demanding "plane-ness" is the mistake here: you're throwing in a kind of glib idealism. If instead you demand "the possibility of forming lots and lots of electron bonds in a shape capable of performing flight" then the iron atoms did "have an amount" of the property necessary for being a plane.

jchrisa• 8 years ago

Obligatory links to Anomalous Monism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/ and supervenience https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supervenience/

jstanley• 8 years ago

If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together?

It's all well and good saying that consciousness is incompatible with evidence, but I for one perceive a great deal of consciousness. How do "scientists" address this conflict with perception? Simple: they don't.

(FWIW, I don't think elementary particles can think).

empath752• 8 years ago

If elementary particles can't think, how can thinking arise when combinations of elementary particles are put together?

Where's the hurricane in a drop of water?

crazygringo• 8 years ago

This is possibly the biggest straw-man I've ever seen set up to represent panpsychism, and I feel like I've seen a lot.

This article is beyond nonsense. The author seems to define panpsychism as the idea that a "conscious" particle would somehow affect the number of particles produced in a collision. Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom.

Panpsychism isn't "crazy shit" we "tried long ago" and we haven't "moved on". There's currently zero solid scientific evidence for any theory of consciousness, and the idea of panpsychism -- that consciousness is grounded in the physical universe rather than being an emergent property or being something supernatural -- is just as valid as any other right now. Who knows, maybe it's something like gravity that's indetectable at the atomic scale but shows up under very particular configurations at larger scales.

I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she comes across as anything but scientific.

KineticLensman• 8 years ago

I don't know who this author is, but based on this post she is certainly anything but scientific

The article is credited to Sabine Hossenfelder, who according to [0] is "an author and theoretical physicist who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group. She is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder

TheOtherHobbes• 8 years ago

I think she's perfectly scientific.

She's also clueless about philosophy and metaphysics - which is unfortunately not that unusual among contemporary scientists.

And I don't mean philosophy in the sense of being able to debate the fine points of anything much - but in the sense of having the breadth of conceptual education to understand what's required of genuinely a rational and consistent argument, and what's actually an irrational and irrelevant appeal to authority, as this "argument" is.

This isn't particularly about panpsychism or consciousness. It's that the quality of the argument being presented is so poor.

She's drawing an identity between a taxonomy of observed behaviour and independent consciousness, and saying that any entities that can be fitted into a taxonomy can be conscious.

Which is "not even wrong."

You could just as well argue that electrons are conscious because they can read our minds while we do experiments and are trolling us by creating some made-up rules they've invented which happen to look like quantum theory.

Both make as much sense, and both are equally unhelpful as rational arguments.

SiempreViernes4• 8 years ago

Hossenfelder is speaking about the type of consciousness she herself posses, while in your argument you are talking of such consciousness as Batman might have.

Is this the underlying misunderstanding?

skh3• 8 years ago

You could just as well argue that electrons are conscious because they can read our minds while we do experiments and are trolling us by creating some made-up rules they've invented which happen to look like quantum theory.

One can argue similarly to give a possible explanation for anything. It's not a question of whether it could be this way but rather what seems to be the most plausible explanation. The argument you gave above (I know it's not one you are seriously purporting) seems much less likely to be correct than the one Sabine gave.

My reading of Sabine's argument is that we get the random behavior from particle collisions you expect if quantum mechanics is correct and thus electrons aren't conscious. The particles follow randomness and not what one would think would occur if there was consciousness/free will involved. Yes, she seems to make the connection between the two concepts.

I don't know if Sabine is correct but I certainly don't think

Both make as much sense, and both are equally unhelpful as rational arguments.

skybrian5• 8 years ago

While consciousness isn't solved yet, scientists have figured out quite a bit about how brains work, including a lot of things that are closely related like inputs, outputs, and memory.

So there does seem to be quite a bit of evidence for consciousness being emergent. If consciousness were anything other than what neurons do, you'd have to show how information gets transferred back and forth between neurons and the other thing.

I don't see how philosophy that's not grappling with the findings of neuroscience can be relevant?

modzu5• 8 years ago

if consciousness were anything but what the brain does, how would you know? we don't really have a means to check for consciousness other than asking someone. that's pretty weak!

because there isn't a consciousness test, philosophers are trying to point the science in the right direction, in terms of what are legitimate possibilities or what theories may not be sufficient explanations. in other words, they are grappling with the very question you asked, ie, "show how information gets transferred back and forth...".

bobthechef• 8 years ago

But it does: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/01/against-neurobabble...

marcosdumay• 8 years ago

Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom.

Quantum mechanics is very clear in that the possible states of a particle determine a lot of things, including the probability you have of spotting one after a collision. And if you try to ignore QM, there are not much that you can change without violating the second law of thermodynamics either.

teilo• 8 years ago

This is a common problem when people think about consciousness: the assumption that it is a commutative physical state.

Is it? That's the problem. We don't know.

usaphp• 8 years ago

I don’t know who this author is, but based on this post she comes across as anything but scientific

Author is Sabine Hossenfelder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder

SiempreViernes4• 8 years ago

Well, the exact version she contends with has been posted in these comments as a reply to the criticism Hossenfelder raises. So if it is indeed a straw-man, then it is being used in by proponents of panpsychism the wild, and is thus indeed fair game.

buboard2• 8 years ago

For a physicist , the hard problem of consciousness sounds indeed crazy. It's a subjective argument (what it feels like) that presents itself as objective. Physicists believe that, if consciousness is some fundamental quantity, then it is subject to the laws of physics. E.g. if it is conserved, what is the fundamental symmetry linked with it? Science generally is objective, not feelings-based.

The problem with the physicist's approach is that the philosopher controls the goalposts (the language) and moves them to increasingly absurd distances, usually leading to desperation.

Where she gets that definition from, I can't even begin to fathom.

That is literally what Chalmers says about it, that it 's a fundamental property (quantity) in the universe:

More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience

There's currently zero solid scientific evidence for any theory of consciousness

There is a lot of solid evidence about how to manipulate consciousness (in various definitions), how to predict it or suppress it.

skh3• 8 years ago

Panpsychism isn't "crazy shit" we "tried long ago" and we haven't "moved on".

She doesn't claim that panpsychism was tried a long time ago. She claims that

Now, look, I know that physicists have a reputation of being narrow-minded. But the reason we have this reputation is that we tried the crazy shit long ago and just found it doesn’t work.

She's saying physicists today have a reputation for narrow-mindedness because of their reaction to having tried out crazy shit in the past. Her definition of panpsychism is

I recently discovered panpsychism. That’s the idea that all matter – animate or inanimate – is conscious, we just happen to be somewhat more conscious than carrots.

She furthermore claims that electrons can't have consciousness and gives an argument for why. The author does not define panpsychism as the idea that a conscious particle would somehow affect the number of particles produced in a collision. I don't see how you could have concluded this from what she wrote. Her reason for discounting panpsychism is that

---------

Since the particles have quantum properties, anything that can happen will happen. If a particle exists in many variants, you’ll produce them all – regardless of whether or not you can distinguish them. The result is that you see more of them than the standard model predicts.

Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change. It’s hard to have an inner life with only one thought. But if electrons could have thoughts, we’d long have seen this in particle collisions because it would change the number of particles produced in collisions.

----------

I think you have badly misinterpreted what was written. I make no claims on panpsychism since this is the first time I've heard the word. I do know that Sabine is a physicist and knows physics quite well. You could have seen this by clicking the "About" link on her blog.

modzu5• 8 years ago

sabine seems to be a physicist without much knowledge of the philosophy of mind (hence why they "just discovered" panpsychism). a shame because if her characterization of panpsychism were correct we would have a tidy little refutation of it. we do not.

to paraphrase the author, "if a physicist starts talking about consciousness, run?"

tMcGrath• 8 years ago

As I understand it her point it that what we take to be fundamental particles have certain properties - charge, spin, etc - and no others. If they had other properties, this would lead to measurably different outcomes in collision experiments for quantum-mechanical reasons (not because of any 'free will' on the part of the particles, as I believe some other commenters have interpreted it).

If these few numbers really are all the information that an electron (for instance) contains, then where is the informational content of consciousness located, assuming that panpsychism claims that electrons possess a certain small amount of consciousness? This is how I interpreted her sentence on consciousness implying the ability to change; not as meaning the ability to decide, but as meaning the ability to carry extra information by being in different states. I think this seems like a reasonable objection and I'm interested in how panpsychists might respond.

gus_massa2• 8 years ago

Apparently there are some versions of panpsychism that affirm that electrons are conscious. From the first result of "panpsychism" in Google https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

According to the definition of consciousness that is dominant in contemporary analytic philosophy, something is conscious just in case there is something that it’s like to be it; that is to say, if it has some kind of experience, no matter how basic. Humans have incredibly rich and complex experience, horses less so, mice less so again. Standardly the panexperientialist holds that this diminishing of the complexity of experience continues down through plants, and through to the basic constituents of reality, perhaps electrons and quarks. If the notion of “having experience” is flexible enough, then the view that an electron has experience—of some extremely basic kind—would seem to be coherent (of course we must distinguish the question of whether it is coherent from the question of whether it is plausible; the latter will depend on the strength of the arguments discussed below).

If electrons are conscious, then they must experiment some kind of change that is related to the consciousness. One possibility is that they are conscious but they don't change at all, but then why don't just say that they are not conscious, because it would be totally equivalent. Another possibility is that the consciousness of the electrons is just following the usual laws of physics, but also it would be equivalent to have non conscious electrons. So, the interesting case is when the consciousness of the electron can affect the electron somehow. So the electron must have at least two secret states (or more) and the conscious experience must make the electron change between these states.

The rules of Quantum Mechanics for collisions say that when a particle has many states, then in the debris after the collision you must consider all of them. When the state doesn't affect the forces involved in the collisions it's simple because you multiply by the number of states. For example, quarks have 3 colors, so the probability of getting a quark after a collision is 3 times bigger than the expected probability in a universe where color doesn't exist. [The actual calculations are more complicated, because you can't multiply some probabilities of the fake colorless universe by 3 and expect that the total sum of all the probabilities is still one. And you must also sometimes consider interference too. There are many technical details here, but the idea is that somewhere in the calculations you must put some 3 here and there, or the result will be wrong.]

Electrons don't have color, but they have spin. An electron can have spin "up" or "down". If there are no strong magnetic fields, the 2 version of the electron are equivalent. So in the calculations you must put a few 2 here and there to get the correct result. [If there is a strong magnetic field, or the electron is moving too fast, or you consider the weak force the two versions are not equivalent, but for the sake of simplicity let's assume boring electrons.] [The quarks have spin too, so in the calculation you must put a 3 in some places and a 2 in other places, and there are a few more details that it's better to forget to simplify the discussion.]

So... if the electrons have some additional hidden states, then by the rules of quantum mechanics you must remember to consider the secret states. In the simple case it's just a multiplication. In more complicated cases, perhaps the altered state of the electron is more heavy and the calculation is more complicated. The author says that since we haven't seen this secret state in a high energy particle accelerator, it unbelievable that it may be relevant inside your brain that. Other possibility is that the hidden state is different of the other quantum states and doesn't appear in the calculations, but I think that this possibility is too magical.

As a simplified version, be can consider the Pauli exclusion principle that says that in any orbital you can have up to 2 electrons. It's the same number 2 of the other paragraph. You can put in the orbital one electron with spin "up" and one electron with spin "down", and with a few simplifications both electrons are equivalent. The interesting part is that this rule was discovered experimentally, but later it was deduced from the rules of quantum mechanics. So instead of a complicated calculation [that I only can do partially, and I don't remember the details now, so I need a week or two to find the books and look at the details] ... so instead of a complicated calculation you can count how many electrons you can put in an orbital. This is very easy, you get some hot Lithium vapor in a vacuum tube and some sparks, and you can measure the energy of the third electron. In the experiment you get the first two electrons in the lower orbital, and the third electron in the next orbital. All the Chemistry is based on these kind of facts, so the Pauli exclusion principle is very well proven experimentally.

And the problem is that in the Pauli exclusion principle you get a 2, that is due to the spin. You don't have room for secret states that may be affected by the conscious experience of the electron.

Svettie4• 8 years ago

Another possibility is that the consciousness of the electrons is just following the usual laws of physics, but also it would be equivalent to have non conscious electrons

So I think this is where the disagreement happens. You are following the laws of physics, but I wouldn't say that you're not conscious. Notably, we're talking about "consciousness" and not "free will", which is what I think you're actually arguing against for the electron.

rthomas6• 8 years ago

This definition of consciousness, that there is some internal state that can change based on input, and changing this internal state leads to different behavior, is problematic. So is a definition that defines consciousness as responding to identical stimuli in different ways.

The whole problem is that consciousness as a concept is poorly defined. I do not think the people the believe inanimate objects have "consciousness" believe consciousness necessitates thought, or even internal state.

jf-• 8 years ago

The author misses the point. Panpsychism is in part a response to the hard problem of consciousness, the question of how subjective experience arises from non-experiencing matter. If consciousness at some basic, low level is instead a property of matter, the issue stops being a difference of kind and starts being one of degree: consciousness is an organisation of a property that already exists in the components, so it need not arise at all.

Consciousness and thought are also separate things. The seeing of the colour red or touching a rough surface are experiences, though neither could be described as thoughts.

empath752• 8 years ago

Any macroscopic property doesn't exist in single elementary particles. Why single out consciousness?

rebuilder• 8 years ago

does subjective experience arise from matter? By which I mean, does it exist?

I realize that seems like a completely bananas question to ask. But any theory of consciousness seems to get into absurd territory very quickly. The only proof we have that consciousness even exists is that each of us (or me, anyway, who knows what you guys are) vehemently professes to experience it. Other than that, all we seem to find is complex web of deterministic reactions.

So what if the question is wrong? When we parse "I think therefore I am", we look at "am" as the insight, but it seems to me the "I" is left undefined.

edit: I'm sorry, I jumped the gun on this a bit, you were saying it doesn't arise. But nevertheless, I'm left uncomfortable declaring something exists that we can not actually perceive from the outside.

kmm• 8 years ago

What an unnecessarily divisive post. Science is not antithetical to philosophy, and physicists and philosophers aren't two different camps. As someone with an education in physics, I had a physics professor who also wrote lovely articles in the subject of philosophy of science.

I don't doubt philosophers without education in the fundamentals of physics can and often do come to conclusions that are naive and hopelessly incompatible with physical evidence or models that have stood the test of time for centuries. Especially quantum mechanics is a widely misunderstood and misapplied subject. But it goes both ways, it is quite arrogant to think you can disprove an entire subject in a field of study that isn't your own with such simple reasoning.

It is true that electrons don't have a lot of internal state and can be completely described with a few quantum numbers. But my first reaction wouldn't be to conclude that panpsychism is obvious nonsense (not that I'm a fan either, I'm have no problem confessing my ignorance on the subject), but to see if someone more qualified in the topic had written something about it.

sneakernets• 8 years ago

Wow, i just read all that.

I've never seen trolling on such a high level before.

SiempreViernes4• 8 years ago

I suspect this is simply how many germans argue in english, with the cultural differences in expression lining up in such a way that their calm argument comes out rather angry in english.

lolc• 8 years ago

Look we've been shooting these particles you call "humans" at varying targets and so far they've all acted the same way. They haven't shown any difference in how they reacted with different stars, for example. Even if we shoot them back at that cold planet where you collected them, they all interact with it the same way.

Consciousness at such small scale is simply not possible. Our theories don't allow it.

21• 8 years ago

r/IAmVerySmart

https://xkcd.com/793/

skh3• 8 years ago

She's a physicist and is addressing the notion that electrons have consciousness. She works in quantum gravity and presumably knows quite a bit about particle theory. Her blog post is solely about the idea that electrons can have consciousness and why she - an expert in physics and quantum gravity - believes this isn't possible. Since, according to her conclusions, electrons can't have consciousness then the idea that all matter has consciousness can't be correct. The logic is quite sound. I don't know if her definition of panpsychism is correct but her logic is sound.

1. Electrons are matter.

2. Electrons don't have consciousness. (according to her argument)

3. Therefore the belief that all matter has consciousness is wrong.

Note that an argument can be logically sound while having a false conclusion. This happens if one of the premises are wrong. In this case it would be her conclusion that electrons can't have consciousness.

User23• 8 years ago

This is a well written and educational article, but it’s also missing the point. For a dualist, no amount of material testing is going to determine a spiritual/ideal/pickyourlabel characteristic.

Even if you hold the dualist position there’s nothing here to disagree with.

Sadly she didn’t address a question that’s interested me since reading Feynman’s QED: how do electrons “decide” how to scatter?

Edit: I’m going to bookmark this to use as a virtually perfect example of not even wrong.

nabla9• 8 years ago

Author confuses thinking, and ability to act with consciousness the hard problem. If you want to debate with philosophers, you must be ready to dig deep into definitions.

When physicists use dabble with philosophy, run.

Even philosophers (like Dave Chalmers) can't explain their thinking in detail in podcasts or popular articles. They just put some ideas there but it does not represent the analytical thinking well.

nyc111• 8 years ago

Consciousness is nothing mysterious. It is the state of the human body to be aware of itself. It's independent of any organs. It has nothing to do with the heart as previously thought or with the brain as is popular now. But it can be associated with the microbiome because consciousness or self-awareness always reacts to the microbiome. The microbiome serves to consciousness the content it creates in order to lead the consciousness. The self perceives this content as the "inner voice". A cat is not aware of itself as a cat because it experiences its environment directly and not through the filter of language as humans do. During sleep conscioussness "dies" and microbes take over and do their business of repairing the body without the meddling of the consciousness. When they become hungry and they want to be fed they wake up their slave (the consciousness) and serve him beautiful images of crossants and the smell of coffee in order to get their feed which is usually sugar. This is not a physics problem and physicists should take their atomic materialist doctrines with them and get out and continue discussing the temperatures 14 billions years ago in ever greater details. Physicists can have nothing to say about the human body.

Electrons don’t think

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