So, what's science then?

Philosophy
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Okay, on my walk with Maddy it occurred to me that, that this brings us back to the ‘out-running your headlights’ analogy. I believe Max, Penrose, Hoffman and others are outreaching, sciences domain. (Just because it’s mathematically rigorous doesn’t make it science!)

It’s presumptuous to think science can supply every answer. We are after all human, and have our limitations.

I know many would disagree, science provided the key to eliminate all those natural hurdles Nature set up for us, I’ve been told. Now we are masters of the universe and we will find that Ring, the answer to everything.

I myself thinks that way lies unhinging and craziness and ruin.
I’m okay with working with and around limits.
Redefining perspectives, rather than expecting the world to yield to my petty desires.
But another type wants it all. Damned the outcomes for the rest of humanity, or Earth’s creatures. So sad.

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In the case of microtubules, knowledge of how they work could be of great value in finding medical cures for brain diseases.
The problem is that a lot of causal forces are invisible but measurable in various ways.

Deep knowledge of natural processes at that fundamental scale is very important in so many ways that allows us to copy universal processes, i.e. we have the potential to become gods.

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I tend to agree. It sounds way too much like
[Genesis 1:26] Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Or, just about any argument for libertarianism or unfettered capitalism.

The Ring from LOTR is a great analogy. To have it gives you power, and it’s nice to think that we would use that power for good. But to have it gives you power, and we know what powerful people do. We know that wisdom has limits. The 20th century is full of evidence for how we use power to tear up the earth and disregard our future children and perpetrate crimes against the living.

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That’s not what Tegmark, Penrose, Hoffman are suggesting.
Heck, Chalmers charming “Hard Problem” is, at it’s heart, all about puzzling out how mathematical constants are turned into observing thinking processes.

Why doesn’t Chalmers ever dive into evolution’s roll in the process? I mean, well sure okay, the God’s of Mount Olympus gotta go to the heart of that matter, so instead of finding consciousness in biology - we’re off looking for consciousness out in the voids of the universe and math and philosophy - and they wonder why the problem is so unsolvable.

It’s unsolved able because the question is butt backwards to begin with!

The fundamentally ludicrous nature of Chalmer’s Hard Problem of Consciousness

Part A

Why does it feel like something to be a Bat?

Because the bat is a specific biological creature, there is no other way for it to perceive the world around it.

Why does a person feel like a Human and not a Bat?

Because a person has the specific biological arrangement of an individual person and not an individual bat, and because a person inhabits a human reality and a bat inhabits a bat’s reality.

Part B

How does inanimate physical matter create living matter?

It gets complicated, read up on R. Hazen, S. Carroll, N. Lane, etc. to learn about the primal road to the Krebs cycle, which kicked off biogenesis and Life on Earth.

How does consciousness evolve?
Out of necessity!

From the get go, even the tiniest creatures needed to learn, observe, choose, and act.

Any hard problem exist down at this level, and not within optical illusions and mind experiments that are trapped within our human experience (which incidentally doesn’t even encompass all of the last couple minutes on Earth’s 24 hour clock.)

Mathematical constants, don’t have any reason to observe and react, there’s no call for “FREE WON’T” in the atomic world - fabled quantum collapses not withstanding.

Without appreciation for the specialness of the chain of unique coincidences occurring here on Earth, coincidences that created a space for biology to evolve, like nothing else we’ve ever observed, it’ll just be a never ending dog-chasing-tail tale.

Without thoroughly integrating our planet’s Evolution’s pageant and rise of biology and then interacting creatures - you’ll never puzzle out the nature of consciousness - you’ll just have a dance floor for the greatest minds to outshine each other in their pretensions.

But, I hear, if you play the game right, it can pay pretty penny.

Okay, but we live here on Earth in a cornucopia of life. Why some apparently have a hard time figuring out which is which, is something I’d love to understand.

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My pal, Anton Petrov just put out a wonderful video that can serve to highlight my analogy of what it means for science to outrun it’s headlights, or more specifically what it means to keep within science’s headlights.

To my perspective math and philosophical-physics had gotten so advanced, that it’s left simple reality based science behind, in favor of idea based science. I reject this, I also consider anyone who doesn’t incorporate the reality of us being evolved biological thinking creatures, as missing the boat.

Here’s an example of advanced science that sticks to the fundamentals that science does well. You’ll learn a lot more about consciousness (9:00ish, really made a few neurons buzz) then looking into the heavens of our mindscapes. :kissing_heart: :yum:

Groundbreaking Discoveries About Human Brain and Neuronal Complexity

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about recent discoveries about human brain and various types of neuronal cells Links:
This is the largest map of the human brain ever made
https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158… https://nemoarchive.org/ https://www.science.org/collections/b… https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s… https://news.rub.de/english/press-rel… https://www.nature.com/articles/s4155… https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158… https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159… https://elifesciences.org/articles/76143

Crazy stuff, details way way over my head, but the fundamental outline, that’s within grasp.

A mesothelium divides the subarachnoid space into functional compartments

Primates and non-primates differ in the architecture of their neurons

Homo sapiens and Neanderthals share high cerebral cortex integration into adulthood

New insights into anatomical connectivity along the anterior–posterior axis of the human hippocampus using in vivoquantitative fibre tracking

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This is off topic. Science doesn’t exist for mathematical constants. Physical forces went about being forces for a long time without thoughts getting in the way. We, the ones who think, can look at a volcano or a glacier and say it “destroyed” whatever was in its way, but those were just forces, not trying to destroy anything. If you could ask them what they were doing and why, they’d look at you funny.

“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. […] A human being may well ask an animal: ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?’ The animal would like to answer, and say, ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say’ - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent.”

― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

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When I say thinking I mean neural activity in biological organisms. But data processing does not necessarily require biological brains.

A perfect example is AI, a mathematical “thinking” machine (pattern).
This is why these people are exploring the field of self-referential data processing.
“ORCH OR” (orchestrated objective reduction) and Chalmers’ “Naturalistic Dualism”

Chalmers characterizes his view as “naturalistic dualism”: naturalistic because he believes mental states supervene “naturally” on physical systems (such as brains); dualist because he believes mental states are ontologically distinct from and not reducible to physical systems. He has also characterized his view by more traditional formulations such as property dualism .
David Chalmers - Wikipedia

We know that there are many things that are capable of data processing of all different kinds.
The question is at what point does data processing trigger an awareness of the data being processed and the biochemical reactions that accompany thinking with feeling?

Note that many animals are able to orient themselves is specific positions relative to the environment of prey. This orientation requires awareness of one’s position and here we may start to acquire the ability for conscious interaction with the environment.

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Data processing goes on everywhere in the universe. The difference is at which point self-referential data processing creates a biochemical reaction that is experienced as feeling. Theoretically, if this can happen on Earth in many biological species, it should be possible on similar planets throughout the universe.

According to Hazen, Earth is an average planet with an average mineral distribution and there should be plenty of these around.

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For a half of a sentence, this post had something on topic. Life on other planets isn’t relevant to what science is

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Unless the science is about life on other planets! Science is not only about earth.
This is where I seem to be missing the thrust of the description ands application of science as an objectively disciplined research.

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I’ve been going through CCs blog. This one starts by addressing the question of origin of life, and how there is a lot we don’t know, so we start with an Occams Razor choice. Just the first few minutes

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Why would science change if you are talking about other planets? That breaks a premise of science, that the forces are the same everywhere.

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The point is that science doesn’t change. It is the same for all of the universe.
Moreover, any discussion of science as a peculiar science apart from universal science, limits the science only to the earth.

I see a conflict in goals (paradox?).

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You’re seeing things. No one in this thread limited science to this planet, or made a distinction about “universal” science.

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And that places Tegmark’s perspective outside of science!

Same with Chalmer’s charming Hard Problem.

I want to choke when I hear an interactive alive environment/biosphere reduced to “self-referential biochemical reactions”. It’s inhuman, which seems the hallmark our age - the age of human beings being subsumed in automatons, by their digital overlords.

Sure theoretically, probably inevitable within certain ranges,
but there is still billions of years of just right happenings between pond scum and sentient being similar to humans.

Actually the accumulating facts don’t support that “average - average - average” dismissal. I imagine Hazel has pulled back from that statement made a number of years ago.

Right and Science is limited to what can actually be observed and measured and replicated. Philosophical/physics follows different rules .

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I believe that’s Chalmers’ dualitistic argument fo consciousness.

Tegmark’s position is that everything is mathematical, quasi-intelligent, but not necessarily conscious, i.e. not everything is conscious, but that certain patterns have an emergent property of consciousness (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.)

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Still not a word about Earth of billions of years of evolution. I rest my case. :bouquet:

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Of course there is. It’s all contained in the words about 13.8 billions of years of universal evolution that also contains earth’s biology specifically.

Hazen has a persuasive argument about the role of biochemicals and minerals in the evolutionary process.

CC, you keep repeating the term “evolution” without attempting to describe the process of evolution via natural selection itself. It applies to everything in the universe equally.

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Presented like a post card. You, not Hazen. Robert’s stories are spellbinding, multifaceted, and internally consistent.

I’m talking about absorbing the reality that every facet of your body has a tie-in to ancient times and specific cascades of genetic changes, that were driven by their own particular historic circumstances…

It’s about realizing consciousness is a feedback thing, A product of biology, because every living organism needs to be able to recognize some things, and avoid others, and so on. It started simple, then got more complex as creatures and environments got more complex. Cascades of time.

Your “evolution” comes across like lip service. Then you’re back at the tiniest, microtubules or the loftiest mathematics. I’m talking about human awareness of the flow of feedback loops that go into making us, and in turn tie us with all other living creatures on this fantastical Earthly Middle Kingdom of matter.

… { He prudently snips a further 350 words. :woozy_face: } …

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Oh, no, I take the concept of evolution via natural selection as a fundamental axiomatic proof of the exquisite natural mathematical functions and processes underlying the dynamics of emergent reality .

Evolution via natural selection (of anything) is a mathematical process.