It was suggested I could learn a lot from this talk. I’ve watched it a number of times and have made an effort to point out why I’ve come to believe Hameroff dances on both sides of the serious-science vs. pseudo-science approach to reality.
The cornerstone of serious science is fidelity to the truth, both your own and those of opposing views. Serious science is also predicated on being limited to what can be observed, measured, and the replication of experiments - and experiences.
I don’t have the time to do a perfect job with Hameroff’s quotes, they are accurate, but of course selected, and under a time & interest budget, so please refer to full context of his lecture if the quote I copied leaves you guessing.
Quantum consciousness and its nature in microtubules _ Dr. Stuart Hameroff _ YouTube.
Nov 28, 2015
2:05 Hameroff “perhaps life evolved and originated in order to access consciousness to take advantage of consciousness to feel good in some sense”
Right out the gate Hameroff mixes mystical, philosophical, religious outlooks into what’s billed a scientific investigation into consciousness.
2:15 Hameroff: “now in Western philosophy, the world out there, is all in our head.”
But we moderns know that is an ego-centric contrivance, the physical world definitely exists out there, beyond our thoughts, within our bodies and permeating all of nature. All we’re doing is perceiving, composing an impression for ourselves.
3:09 Hameroff: “this brain in a vat, I’m walking outside in the Sun, Bing (Hameroff’s shorthand for emergent conscious), and so that means the consciousness and reality may both be an illusion. Now on the other hand in Eastern philosophy consciousness pervades a deeper level of reality being is everywhere we’re like awash in a sea of consciousness and Atman from Brahman and it gets organized in such a way and we have self-consciousness and that’s a pretty solid approach”
But we moderns know, that’s an ego-centric conceit and that the physical world definitely exists out there, beyond our bodies.
Here I’m disturbed that no mention is it doesn’t acknowledge that earlier religious meditation on becoming one with the universe, was all the universe of living biosphere that surrounded our body. Becoming one with the radiance of the sun, and wind and life and the All.
Not to be confused with the sort of understanding we moderns have developed thanks to amazing observational instruments that have brought the substance of the heavenly vault into focus - like the ancients could never have ever imagined.
Beyond the sky, was a figment, it’s the living biology/conscious universe under that celestial dome that a living meditating human touches and that produces the feedback. Mother Earth.
3:39 Hameroff: “Now in modern science the brain is seen as a neuronal synaptic computer on the left we see a bunch of neurons connected by synapses and on the right we see a computer network and people have assumed for many years that the brain is a computer neurons are bits and switches or synapses or switches and furthermore”
- “Neuronal synaptic computer” metaphor was never a consensus view of neuroscientists to begin with!
- And these days it’s a view that’s been explicitly rejected in dozens of papers and articles. Don’t take my word for it
15:40 Hameroff: I read a book by Roger Penrose involving quantum physics and you might also say where’s the Bing, but also isn’t the brain just a receiver,
Here Hameroff describes the difference between “Classical localized physics” vs. “Quantum superposition nonlocal, wave-like, small.”
Thing is, scaling makes a big difference and Quantum Weirdness gets lost in the sauce of piling up bazillion atoms on the way to making actual matter.
Also worth noting is that “the observer” of physicists fame, is nothing other than encountering another particle. The story seems more drama than insight.
18:05 Hameroff: “superposition and classical environment disrupts quantum state” “multiple worlds” overlapping and despite how absurd this is, a lot of people take it serial seriously and it is untestable. But it’s popular, …”
Key concept “it is untestable.” “Popular” is no proof of validity.
19:40 Hameroff: “(quantum) choices influenced, by saying that consciousness is a process in the structure of the universe ripples in the very structure of space-time geometry, now how could particles exist in superposition in two or more places…
19:45 “Consciousness within the structure of universal space-time.”
Isn’t it time they define this “consciousness"?
Like the quantum event waiting for an observer, and the observer being another quantum particle
After all, in our physical biological realm here on this planet, “consciousness” is all about creatures “interacting” and "feedback loops.”
Then look at living creatures in the act of living, it’s all about sensing, processing, decision making, engaging action - all of it can be observed and understood through strictly physical biological processes of that particular creature.
Directed action, awareness, interaction, introspection, all that belongs to “Consciousness” and we don’t know all the details but we know enough to understand its housed and produced within a biological creatures.
23:52 Hameroff: “give a delocalized electron cloud pie resonance and we know that this type of oily like medium is where consciousness comes from and we know that because anesthetics act in these regions to reversibly erase consciousness”
It feels to me like confirmation bias and over-reach.
Also, seems to anesthesia is often describe as interrupting neural communication. Here my thought is that interrupting a process isn’t the same as being that process. I mean, one can snarl up freeway traffic with a car accident, okay, but what’s that really tell us about what the freeway is doing.
Quantum effects in the understanding of consciousness
Stuart R Hameroff, Travis J A Craddock, Jack A Tuszynski
“This paper presents a historical perspective on the development and application of quantum physics methodology beyond physics, especially in biology and in the area of consciousness studies. Quantum physics provides a conceptual framework for the structural aspects of biological systems and processes via quantum chemistry. In recent years individual biological phenomena such as photosynthesis and bird navigation have been experimentally and theoretically analyzed using quantum methods building conceptual foundations for quantum biology.
Since consciousness is attributed to human (and possibly animal) mind, quantum underpinnings of cognitive processes are a logical extension.
Several proposals, especially the Orch OR hypothesis, have been put forth in an effort to introduce a scientific basis to the theory of consciousness. …”
To me a theory of consciousness would start with defining consciousness, come down to observable fundamental. I’m not talking fun physics or math, but simply the experience of what is unfolding throughout Earth’s biosphere.
Something like, Consciousness is the inside reflection of a biological creature dealing with itself and the environment it needs to navigate. Recognizing consciousness is all about processing the observations and feedbacks from a particular moment and moving on to the next.
Quantum effects in things like photosynthesis, or various forms of animal navigation and other biological functions. That makes sense within the fabric of the world we experience.
We’ve come to learn particles and wave function collapse are part of the fabric of light and energy propagating and interacting. Happens all the time.
In hindsight it becomes kinda self-evident they would have a role in biology harnessing the sun for energy production, or birds for deciphering Earth’s magnetic field lines, or the other quantum actions being looked at by scientists. The atomic equivalent of the tire hitting the road - fantastic, but digestible and part of the background hoohum of the day to day.
On the other hand, active awareness within a dynamic environment of many creatures interacting, that’s on an entirely different level. One that requires way more systems and coordination than stamping out endless copies of sugar molecules.
Hameroff overstates and makes conclusions well beyond his evidence, and that makes me very uncomfortable.
29:05 Hameroff: Out-of-body experiences, and possibly even, afterlife as a speculative suggestion.
This is the religious/philosophical domain. It’s not science!
30:19 Hameroff: “so life apparently began in a primordial soup which was proposed in the 1920s by”
This is 2022, the primordial soup has gone by the way side, it remains relevant in some respects, but not for biological origins.
“The primordial soup theory is implausible from a physics perspective due to thermodynamics.” Nick Lane
30:42 Hameroff: “(Miller Urey) added some the right gas atmosphere a little spark for lightning which and try to recreate Earth’s primal atmosphere.”
But, no, it turned out Miller, Urey didn’t use the correct gas mix !
But then again, it still seems to have plenty to teach about chemistry,
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700010114
33:11 Hameroff: “… sequences gave positive proto conscious or our feelings providing feedback for biological structure to optimize pleasure
“and I’m trying to challenge the dogma in evolution
to say that actually it was pleasure due to this mechanism and feelings that drove evolution not the need to promulgate genes because who would that need before I mean there’s no agency there so
I’m calling this the quantum pleasure principle and suggesting that consciousness or quantum hedonism, which do you like and get a vote later that consciousness proceeded live for simple consciousness.
Maybe proto consciousness feelings were there all along in the universe.”
On the one hand there’s something poetic there, and in fact not that removed from some of my own feelings and flights of imagination into the beyond of matter.
But this stuff belongs to the poetic religious artistic side of our imagination. It’s not about “this” world or within the purview of scientific study. Hameroff tries to have it both ways.
Occam would be rolling in his grave.
34:00 Hameroff: “so let me wrap up with one final area that is to say that if if brain microtubules resonate in megahertz to give consciousness, could mental and cognitive disorders be treated by applying megahertz vibrations to the brain.”
Then he swoops in to surprise and amaze us with transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s like whiplash, from the quantum pleasure principle, to microtubules resonate, (what doesn’t resonate?), then transcranial magnetic stimulus shows positive results.”
Here’s another place that a little research makes plain that Hameroff massages this story a bit.
38:45 Hameroff: “they concluded that and the plaques went away because they activated the microglia probably by stimulating their microtubules … unstable in Alzheimer’s disease we think we’re stimulating microtubules which are …”
Then the pitch:
40:25 Hameroff: “so I think that’s a very promising tool it’s painless it’s safe it’s cheap so the drug companies will probably assassinate us at some point but what the heck”
This isn’t science, it’s salesmanship.
41:46 Hameroff: “and finally that resonating brain microtubules with transcranial ultrasound stimulation… “
The curious thing was that when I did a little homework, it became clear that Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation, stimulate the entire tissue & cell bodies.
Stimulating microtubules in addition to all the other component of cell membranes and structures, and not enough is known, to pinpoint what TUS is specifically doing to what.
I did a little fishing and besides a few papers, I found some fascinating videos, here’s one that stands out. He does mention microtubules once in conjunction with cell wall and lipids, beyond that it was mainly transport channels and other cell components in action.
Not to dismiss microtubules, only to underscore why I see Hameroff as a biased, tainted source of solid scientific information on the topic. To me it seem proving his conjectures has become more important than dispassionately following the scientific process.
Basic Mechanisms and Physics underlying Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Stimulation.
IST Neurotech
A short 20-min lecture on the history, background, and recent progress in the development of methods and devices for non-invasively modulating brain activity using transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS).
