[ExI] few bits per second (was extropy-chat Digest, Vol 81, Issue 37)

[Ross Evans]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>wrote:

> On 6/26/2010 3:41 PM, Keith Henson quoted:
>
>  How Many Bytes in Human Memory?
>>
>> by Ralph C. Merkle
>>
>
>  The remarkable result of this work was that human beings remembered
>> very nearly two bits per second under all the experimental conditions.
>> Visual, verbal, musical, or whatever--two bits per second. Continued
>> over a lifetime, this rate of memorization would produce somewhat over
>> 10^9 bits, or a few hundred megabytes.
>>
>
> A rather different take on all this was offered by the late physicist Evan
> Harris Walker. I have serious doubts about his calculations, not to mention
> his theories, but here it is in brief:
>
> http://www.newdualism.org/papers/E.H.Walker/Dualism.html
>
> <Without a theory of consciousness that embraces the known characteristics
> of consciousness and accounts for these characteristics, an answer is
> impossible. There is no theory of consciousness that has been proposed that
> even attempts to do this other than the quantum consciousness theory (QCT)
> that I have proposed (see Walker, 2000).
>
> This quantum consciousness theory associates consciousness with an ongoing
> continuum of quantum mechanical interactions in the brain that serve as the
> interface between consciousness and physical phenomenology.3 At any moment
> of this consciousness, this quantum interaction couples a subset of the
> brain’s synapses. The specific interaction envisioned takes place by means
> of quantum mechanical tunneling that produces successive "state vectors" (or
> wave functions) followed, alternately, by successive individual states
> describing specific synaptic firing events. The quantum states are the basis
> for consciousness, the particular configurations of the synaptic firing
> potentialities provide the content of the consciousness.4
>
> Quantum theory tells us that this quantum coupling is a local process. That
> is why we are conscious of what is going on in the brain. These states are
> defined by the conditions of the brain. The number of synapses that are so
> coupled provides a measure of how much information is carried. This
> information data rate C≈5´ 10^8 bits/sec.
>
> Quantum theory is mute as to what causes specific synaptic firings to occur
> out of these quantum possibilities. The cause cannot be physical in the
> conventional sense. Quantum theory itself fails to give any mechanism
> describing what causes a specific state of the state vector to occur.
> Specific synaptic firings, however, do occur. Quantum mechanics tells us how
> to compute the probabilities, and it tells us that these probabilities are
> not classical probabilities that arise from an ignorance of an actual real
> single state. Quantum theory insists that the state vector before
> measurement is the complete physical description of the system. The cause of
> specific synaptic firings, therefore, cannot be physical in any conventional
> sense.
>
> One state will occur. Because this state selection happens in association
> with consciousness, has a range of potentialities that could happen, and
> that one specific "course of mental action"5 does happen as a result of the
> state vector collapse, this cause (the nonphysical thing that causes the
> state selection) satisfies the requirements of a philosophical definition of
> "will."6 Will causes the collapse. Details as to how this state selection
> can be triggered and as to its structure are given elsewhere by Walker
> (1988).
>
> Now, we know how to calculate the Shannon information measure involved in
> the state vector going from the potential for any one of the collection of
> synapses firing to one specific synapse firing. The amount of information
> associated with this will is W» 6´ 10^4 bits/sec as an ongoing process.>
>
> I await various squeals of rage. Don't shoot the messenger.
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>


All this is essentially pure speculation. We don't know how the brain
encodes information, and as such to even talk in terms of bits and bytes is
to fall foul of the assumption, that the brain can be shoehorned into a
conceptual framework, that sees it deemed to be little more than a digital
computer. The other extreme is the promulgators of the quantum consciousness
idea, which is little more than new age quackery dressed up as serious
science.

Ross
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