[extropy-chat] Psychogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time Travel)

[Martin Striz]

On 6/1/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yes, but the resolution sucks and a lot of detail is
> blurred by integrating the signal all the way through
> the brain including all the white matter and inert
> stroma. This is unnecessary since consciousness should
> mostly happen in the cortex.

Sure, you can't use an EEG to read minds or determine the neural
correlates of consciousness.

> My hypothesis predicts that if you can directly
> measure the actual fluctuations of the psychogenic
> field (not its line integral) at a high enough
> resolution, you should be able to read and record
> someone's actual thoughts and subjective qualia.

There's that word again.  So steeped in mysticism we are.  I haven't
been keeping up with this thread, so I had to  go back and read what
you meant by "psychogenic field," whereupon I came across your earlier
objections to computation as a basis for consciousness.  The
information integration hypothesis that I cited earlier answers your
objections adequately:

"[Information processing] is one hypothesis but it is by no means
proven. Everything in the universe processes information to some
degree or another. Why then would the brain be conscious and
everything else not?"

Lots of things are conscious, mostly other vertebrates, but they are
not AS conscious, because they don't as high a phi value (information
integration).

"Every particle-wave in existense is constantly updating its quantum
state based on information from every other particle-wave in its light
cone. Why are not all the atoms in the
universe conscious?"

Because that's a trivial amount of information.

"If you answer complexity, then the Internet itself is hugely complex
and does a tremendous amount of information processing, why is the
Internet itself not conscious?"

Because that information is not /integrated/ into a useful system.
The Cycorp people also have a vast database of common sense
information, but they don't have a conscious AI because they have
neither the computational power, nor the right algorithm(s), to
integrate it.

"Complexity and information processing may be pieces of the puzzle but
they do not by themselves seem to suffice to explain the phenomenon."

Information integration seems to suffice in my opinion.  I like it
because it solves the problem with classical physics, no appeals to
mystical quantum states necessary.  No funky energy fields.

Conscousness really isn't all that special.  To quote Eugen, it only
seems special from inside the system.

Martin