Macho Consciousness 101 f*ckit or killit

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4. The Quantum Promissory Note
4.1 Having proved that Turing machines cannot account for mathematical intuition, Penrose develops the idea that Quantum Mechanics will provide a solution. QM is the crown jewel of modern theoretical physics, an endless source of insight and speculation. It shows extraordinary observer paradoxes. Consciousness is a mysterious something human observers have, and many people leap to the inference that the two observer mysteries must be the same. But this is at best a leap of faith. It is much too facile: observations of quantum events are not made directly by human beings but by such devices as Geiger counters with no consciousness in any reasonable sense of the word. Conscious experience so far as we know is limited to huge biological nervous systems, produced over a billion years of evolution.

4.2 There is no precedent for physicists deriving from QM any macrolevel phenomenon such as a chair or a flower or a wad of chewing gum, much less a nervous system with 100 billion neurons. Why then should we believe that one can derive psychobiological consciousness from QM? QM has not been shown to give any psychological answers. Conscious experience as we know it in humans has no resemblance to recording the collapse of a quantum wave packet. Let's not confuse the mysteries of QM with the question of the reader's perception of this printed phrase , or the inner sound of these words !

4.3 What can we make of Penrose's Quantum Promissory Note? All scientific programs are promissory notes, making projections about the future and betting on what we may possibly find. The Darwin program was a promissory note, the Human Genome project is, as are particle physics and consciousness research. How do you place your bets? Is there a track record? Is there any evidence?

Comment on Penrose's book Shadows of The Mind
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psych ... baars.html

Penrose replies to the comment above abut his book Shadows of the mind
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psych ... nrose.html

Online papers on consciousness, part 3: Science of consciousness
http://consc.net/online3.html#cognitive

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Macho Consciousness 101
killing is sexy
war is sexy

Study Guide for Slaughterhouse-Five (novel)
p. 52: Note connection between war and sex; it'll recur. Note also the dog; dogs, especially barking dogs, also recur
http://www.users.muohio.edu/erlichrd/vms_site/sh5n.html

Norman Mailer died.
I never could get interested in his books.

Among his most provocative work of this period was "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster," which caused a sensation when it was published in 1957 in Dissent magazine. In it, Mailer wrote: "The psychopath murders -- if he has the courage -- out of the necessity to purge his violence, for if he cannot empty his hatred, then he cannot love."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

I worked at a truck stop on the graveyard shift
I had plenty of time to read every book on the rack.
Of course the selections were limited to the reading taste of truck drivers. I think I read every Book Ann Rule ever wrote.

I am a faux hipster I been told

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Evolution of Self-Consciousness
By Chauncey Wright (1873)

First published in North American Review.
Reprinted in Norton, C.E. (Ed.). (1877). Philosophical discussions
by Chauncey Wright (pp. 199-266). New York: Lennox Hill.
(This Classics edition reproduces Norton's pagination.)

It has come to be understood, and very generally allowed, that the conception of the origin of man as an animal race, as well as the origin of individual men within it, in accordance with the continuity of organic development maintained in the theory of evolution, does not involve any very Serious difficulties, or difficulties so great as are presented by any other hypothesis of this origin, not excepting that of "special creation "; -- if that can be properly called a hypothesis, which is, in fact, a resumption of all the difficulties of natural explanation, assuming them to be insuperable and summarizing them under a single positive name. Yet in this evolution, the birth of self-consciousness is still thought by many to be a step not following from antecedent conditions in "nature," except in an incidental manner, or in so far only as "natural" antecedents have prepared the way for the "supernatural" advent of the self-conscious soul.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wright/evolution.htm

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl ... n&ct=title

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Originally ‘metaphysics’ merely designated the placement of the written material given that name after physics (then the study of most of nature) in compilations of Aristotle’s works. Metaphysics did not designate material intellectually ‘beyond’ or ‘transcending’ science. Nevertheless, this is what metaphysics came to mean, and it is a good starting point for defining how the word will be used here

It focuses attention on metaphysics’ relation to science rather than on the subject matter under its domain. This is appropriate because this domain was reduced as part of the creation of physics. Thus, prior to Newton, a physical theory was considered unacceptable if it was metaphysically unacceptable. In contrast, most physicists would maintain that now, even though hypotheses based at least in part on metaphysical preconceptions necessarily enter into any physical theory, metaphysics is never decisive; it never determines a theory’s ultimate acceptance. I would maintain that this is true not only as an ideal but, since Newton, as an historical fact.

Many historians and philosophers of science, however, contend that this is merely an "historical fact", that this nearly universal belief of the physics community is merely a fiction. Their rationale will be touched upon later in this article but the existence of this divergence of beliefs is what is most important here. For one thing, it suffices to show that the issue is not something most non-science students can be expected to solve on their own. It is not enough to just teach students the facts of physics and assume that the physicists’ view of the matter (or the philosophers view for that matter) will automatically reveal itself to them. They must be led to it, and that job, as the divergence of beliefs also demonstrates, is difficult, and one which physicists must do themselves.

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http://physics.wm.edu/~remler/PPP.html