…
… So, should you “believe” Penrose concerning his ideas about the cyclic universe, or about microtubules and consciousness, or whatever? Of course not!!
At least, not more than Penrose himself believed Einstein, who after creating his general theory of relativity argued that of course in reality there couldn’t really be black holes. And that, after all, was the opinion of Einstein, the greatest scientific celebrity and authority of the time! No, you shouldn’t just “believe” any scientist, however famous and respected.
Instead, you should carefully consider his or her arguments, then make up your mind whether you find them convincing, and if not, try to come up with better ones. And, finally, you should have the courage to confront opposing points of view in open public discourse! That’s how science is supposed to work.
I could even imagine Penrose himself not really believing in some of his more speculative ideas, but being convinced that they nevertheless deserve some serious pondering and analysis, and so forwarding his arguments in favor of them. That’s a bold statement, and of course, I’m only speculating. Be it as it may, given the stature of someone like Penrose, his arguments are without any doubt worth pondering; but remember, it just might be a game he’s playing. …
Write4U, back to the thing I don’t understand: What do you think microtubules down at the nano scale can tell you about human consciousness? Don’t misunderstand, I’m not knocking the studies, the facts, or even the connections being made.
The knowledge is important, but I don’t understand why you make it sound like microtubules are the key to understanding human consciousness. What do they offer beyond engineering secrets?
Thinking is a process. A process demands the presence of a processing system.
Other than the neural system, what can possibly process information that is received by the senses?
NOTHING!!! There is nothing else unless you believe in magic, which I don’t.
In the absence of any other possible network that might compete for consideration, the neural system is the logical choice.
As the neural system is comprised of microtubules and microtubules are processors, the logical conclusion is that the information processing by the neural system and its nanoscale processors must somehow give rise to emergent sentience and the evolution of conscious awareness. Even as we cannot yet measure this process because it borders on chaos, we can trace the evolutionary path of increasing sensory acuteness and functionality from the oldest single-celled organisms, to plants, to insects, and so on up the evolutionary ladder until we get to humans who possess the relatively largest brain of all "self-aware " organisms.
Interestingly, the human extraordinary ability for experiencing sensory awareness and our relationship to our environment has come at a cost of limited generality, rather than extraordinary evolved specialization as found in some other species.
There are plenty of other animals that can outperform humans in sensory acuteness, but they are limited in general information processing which is the very strength of human intellect.
The one thing they all share is microtubules. There is one common denominator in all Eukaryotic organisms on earth and that is the abundance of microtubules that are “necessary” for a host of functional information processing from photosynthesis to mitosis (DNA copying), to neural transport of sensory information to the brain and most importantly the incredible neural network of the brain itself that involves 100 billion microtubules connected by 100 trillion synapses.
To me, this presents overwhelming evidence that emergent consciousness is a product of the neural network and the actual information processing and storing via microtubules and microtubule organizational patterns.
But like the impossibility of studying the cosmos and its incredible size in toto, the brain is so complex and so small that any observation cannot be made in vivo, lest it destroys the patterns. that are being studied.
Thus all experiments have to made in vitro and obviously that presents challenges.
Interestingly, I believe that the new artificial intelligence can provide deeper insight in loop data processing and arrive at weighted responses to sensory information.
Emergence is a key concept here.
Microtubules exist in all eukaryotic cells.
All cells have a certain degree of awareness, command and control. Microtubules might well play a key roll in that process. But that is not consciousness. let alone self-awareness.
To me it’s like you saying logic gates are the key to the computers ability to answer questions - when it seems to me algorithms do the heavy lifting, so why should I single out logic gates as the holy grail of computers? It’s a weird circular argument we’re left with.
Like deciding if the kidney is more important than the liver, or heart. It’s philosophizing with no practical answer possible, just dog chasing tail.
I’m telling you, you really should read Ed Yong’s, An Immense World, it’ll open up a new dimension for you.
Okay, but don’t dismiss and ignore the more complicated aspects of our evolved neural networks and the ways they harness the actions of gazillion microtubules in action. Which is what bothers me about your microtubule worship.
It feels like a reflection of that desperate search for “Truth,” any truth even if we need to make it up, that infused the Western Way, the Abraham way.
Besides the answers must be capable of incorporating the reality of the interaction that life and consciousness is - an obsessive focus on the tiniest components, won’t teach much about the interconnected, interactive nature of consciousness. (Sure it’s important that some scientists should be obsessed with them enough to spend their lives studying the widgets, but that’s science and we’re talking general comprehension of the whole, at the general public level.) Even if it can sell lectures and books.
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To me it’s like you saying logic gates are the key to the computers ability to answer questions - when it seems to me algorithms do the heavy lifting, so why should I single out logic gates as the holy grail of computers? It’s a weird circular argument we’re left with.
In the end, thinking is a physical process (by whatever name you want to call it), that cannot ever be dismissed.
Like deciding if the kidney is more important than the liver, or heart. It’s philosophizing with no practical answer possible, just dog chasing tail.
It’s really hard to realize that kidneys, liver, heart cells are all made up of the cytoskeleton (microtubules). MTs are pervasive in ALL cells. To me that confirms the fact that the microtubule network throughout the entire body and organs is the active information processing mechanism. You cannot deny what Tegmark calls the “hard facts”, the evidence.
I’m telling you, you really should read Ed Yong’s, An Immense World, it’ll open up a new dimension for you.
Thanks, I shall.
Okay, but don’t dismiss and ignore the more complicated aspects of our evolved neural networks and the ways they harness the actions of gazillion microtubules in action. Which is what bothers me about your microtubule worship.
Regardless of how deep you want to go, you always end up with microtubules as the information processing system.
Recognizing evidence is not worshipping. Do we worship atoms? Without atoms there would be no physical reality of any kind, right?
It feels like a reflection of that desperate search for “Truth,” any truth even if we need to make it up, that infused the Western Way, the Abraham way.
Why “desperate”? When it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, it’s a duck. There is nothing desperate about that.
Besides the answers must be capable of incorporating the reality of the interaction that life and consciousness is - an obsessive focus on the tiniest components, won’t teach much about the interconnected, interactive nature of consciousness. Even if it can sell lectures and books.
And in that lies the crux. I am interested in the science of consciousness. You are more focused on the practical application of consciousness as it pertains to the environment. But again, in the end it is all due to the evolutionary processes (via natural selection) that fine-tune all organisms to their environment, regardless of the survival mechanism employed.
Prokaryotes did not have microtubules, but they did have a simplified version, so that even there the evolutionary process can be traced back to a proto model of the “modern” Eukaryotic MT.
Note that while all individual MT look alike, the way they are organized enables them to process different types of information.
As a final piece of evidence. Alzheimer’s and other loss of general brain function is always due to microtubule catastrophe and the ability to process sensory information.
IMO, these functional facts have all been falsified, which proves their absolute necessity for intra- and inter-cellular communication. There simply is no viable replacement.
Sure, they seem to be about the most fundamental structure element.
Like rivets in a bridge.
Computational ability/potential, no doubt
But
you can question the interpretation,
you can question the presumption of completeness,
you can question where the other pieces of the puzzle lie,
Sure and in a computer you always end up back at a switch.
Where’s the profundity in that?
What can the switch tell you about the process and outcomes (of a gazillion switches working in harmony)
You’re not trying to tell me atoms are answer to my physicality.
Well from certain learned lectures I listen to it sure seems like the “quantum” - “quantum effect” is worshipped.
Do you notice how you never really answer the question, what can a gazillion microtubules functioning away in the nano-realm, which they do for all Eukaryotic cells, tell us about human consciousness, in action? (which is after all an interaction with the outside world)?
What about sensing organs, sure it all unfolds within a matrix of microtubules >>> and all sorts of other nano components and systems, what about their varied roles? etc.
Well, the puzzle consists of trillions of neural connections neurons, creating an internal EM field in the brain that evolution has selected for the best understanding of the environment and survival actions.
Why do birds flock in a specific way? Why do fish school in a certain way?
Natural selection has selected those birds that form the same patterns of escape and create a physical, observable pattern that offers the best protection from predators.
It is the self-organization that is already described in Chaos theory. It appears that the logic of natural functions always ends up with emergent awareness and behavioral adaptations that provide the best protection. Conscious awareness is just another step in that evolutionary process and can be traced all the way back to the very simplest living things.
I think your analogy of rivets is inadequate. Rivets are designed to fasten stuff and make it rigid, not to make it more flexible and adaptive. OTOH, microtubules can grow, shrink, and repair themselves and each conformation offers an additional survival potential, in that it enables the entire system to contribute to the adaptive behaviors as required by external environmental conditions.
I would compare the microtubule network to the new GPT artificial intelligence.
With its staggering 175 billion + parameters, GPT -3 offered remarkable language understanding and generation capabilities, allowing for more advanced applications such as machine translation, content generation, and virtual assistants. Despite its impressive achievements, GPT -3 still had room for improvement, paving the way for the development … Read more
Remember, the sensory data collected by sensory organs are immediately converted into transmissionable information and transported to the brain where the data is retranslated and processed against memory organs. Microtubules are engaged in every step of the data processing, from raw input to “confirmation”.
This may explain.
Lets look at the eye and at what stage the microtubules become involved.
Note the optic nerve.
Optic nerve. A bundle of nerve fibers that connect the retina with the brain. The optic nerve carries signals of light, dark, and colors to the area of the brain (the visual cortex), which assembles the signals into images (for example, our vision).
Microtubules in synapses of the retina
Using a new method, microtubules can be seen running up to, and lying in close relationship with, the synaptic ribbons in the outer and inner plexiform layers of the frog retina. In the inner plexiform layer, microtubules can be seen running up to the terminal membrane in the non-ribbon synapses. Unlike non-ribbon C.N.S. synapses (frog and rat) processed by the same method, there is no clear association between synaptic vesicles and microtubules in the approach regions. Microtubules in synapses of the retina | Brain Cell Biology
Emergent properties of Large Language Models (LLMs) including ChatGPT
I intuitively tend to agree, that the way Capitalism is organized it’s not possible to be affluent and moral. I can also see the problems with his analogy of the drowning child.
I agree that this is what it has become. But the equivalent of Capitalism in non-human organisms is identified as “invasive species”.
Most species have no control over this natural amoral phenomenon, but humans have a “choice” in the matter and become responsible for the harm we do to the environment and to each other. Unlimited competiton without forced restraint always ends up in mutual extinction or in a symbiotic co-existence.
Witness the pollinator species, which help produce food for 75% of all life on earth.
IMO, bees should be worshipped and protected as divine creatures.
Write, Lausten ? Did either of you share this link?
It’s been open in a side tap for ? and finally got to reading it, can’t recall if I came across it, or if it was shared?
When they modeled outcomes rooted in cognitive simulation, they found that actors engaged in as-actor simulation produce a variety of systems typically explained in terms of cooperation or kin-selection. They also found that an observer can occasionally coordinate with an actor even when this outcome is not advantageous.
Their model suggests that empathetic systems do not evolve solely because agents are disposed to cooperation and kin-selection. They also evolve because animals simulate others to envision their actions. According to Mafessoni, “the very origin of empathy may lie in the need to understand other individuals.”
This makes sense because the more we get to know about animals the more we are appreciating every moment is not consumed with surviving, they are also busy going about living.
Most at least four limbed animals spend a good deal of time of simply hanging out and observing, some interacting with kin, soaking it in, always processing the influx of information. Interspersed with hunting, eating, chasing sex, and protecting babies.
Also the amount of interspecies interactions being documented on YouTube is amazing, it’s not all put ons, or pets. Animals are aware of their surroundings and the inhabitants of those surrounds. They are curious and interact as they try to recognize relevant patterns, having a good day, with all the trimming. Yes those include vicious moments, but they are short lived and relatively dispersed, then it’s back to living one’s life.
In the brain it is the mirror neural network that triggers empathic response.
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an organism acts and when the organism observes the same action performed by another.[1][2][3] Thus, the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Mirror neurons are not always physiologically distinct from other types of neurons in the brain; their main differentiating factor is their response patterns.[4] By this definition, such neurons have been directly observed in humans[5] and primate species,[6] and in birds.[7]
In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the inferior parietal cortex.[8] The function of the mirror system in humans is a subject of much speculation. Birds have been shown to have imitative resonance behaviors and neurological evidence suggests the presence of some form of mirroring system.[6][9] To date, no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions.[10][11][12] Mirror neuron - Wikipedia
I propose that microtubules may have something to do with this imitative behavior which reveals common abilities and neural ways of data processing.
All these species have abundant numbers of microtubules in their brains as well as in every cell of their bodies. What better neural pattern that would lend itself to “copy” behaviors.
Okay, but nerves play a part too. As do our sensing organs and where we point them.
Also behavior is initiated in respond to macroscopic triggers. Neurons are cogs in the process, as are microtubules. All have to work in exquisite concert with each other to properly function.
Sometimes this on going back and forth makes me think it’s a bit like being challenged with deciding which is more important to me, my heart, or my liver?
CC you need to get a clear picture of what microtubules are and where they are located throughout all Eukaryotic life.
“Nerves” and “sensory organs” are like the “electrical wiring” with copper wires doing all the transport and regulating the data flow.
Microtubules are the biological equivalent of copper wiring and sensory regulators (resistors, condensers, limiters).
The fact that they are very small allows them to create networks containing trillions of microtubules that do all the data distribution.
No matter what part of the body you want to identify, the fact is that all data is translated , regulated and transported via microtubules and retranslated by microtubules.
A nerve is a cell made up of cytoplasm and cytoskeleton, all organized by microtubules.
It is always the microtubules that do the actual processing. “Nerve” (axon) is just a generic term for the neural cellular network connecting and protecting the microtubule network inside that network.
Why? Iy is clear that what we have is sufficient for all extant life to relate and operate efficiently within their own environment.
That is Tegmark’s claim. He says rather than looking for some mysterious “extra” ingredient, why not accept that we already have all the tools we need.
How we use them is another matter.
Note that we don’t even need to be conscious for homeostasis to keep the body alive, albeit in a “vegetative” state.
That Earth provides for all?
That would be an odd way of looking at it
Everything Earth provides?
How about the bottom up, evolutionary perspective?
Earth evolved everything, how else could it not be as exquisitely interwoven as it is?
It’s that sort of ass-backwards thinking (to my sensibilities) I find irritating. Tegmark represents the ancient search for ultimate answers and god combined with the human ego, to think “I have figured it out!”
To me he represents that pre-evolutionary world-view that self satisfied attitude to believe the ultimate answers can be found within our thoughts.
The very definition of the self-absorbed, self-serving nature I keep referring to, (though it sadly offends more than enlightens).
I believe in figuring out this dimension I live in, and frankly you’re constant jumps to math, and microtubules is the very antisepsis of getting down with the living world reality that I’m all about and that I think too much ignored. The constant need for the mind to jump into the metaphysical realm of conjecture and math.
I see something very different, very material and biological and slightly mysterious and beyond our human mastery. The living here and now.
Not that I don’t love the science and the deeper understanding we are developing, I simply have a more realistic appreciation for fundamental limitations and …
