[ExI] quantum brains

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Sun Jan 24 03:08:28 UTC 2010


On 1/23/2010 8:35 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

>> >  Are you familiar with the analyses by physicist Evan Harris Walker,
>> >  somewhat along these lines? (I happen to think he was full of shit, and
>> >  said so to his e-face, but I might be wrong.) And of course Eccles and
>> >  Popper, back in the day.
>
>  I am Googling them but short of references to his book which I have not read,

The book's the simplest source, but there used to be papers on his 
website. He died several years ago so maybe the site is dead too.

>Could you elaborate on his analysis and what you disagreed with?

There was a lot of email on a list, but it all went away with the magic 
smoke several computers ago. I found his analysis madly reductive and 
overly concrete, as well as handwavy with numbers. But then he was a 
nuclear weapons physicist and I'm an sf writer so who am I to say? He 
calculated bit rates for volition and consciousness, and had a model of 
mind tweaking electrons at synaptic junctions, as did Nobelist 
neuroscientist Eccles.

Damien Broderick




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list