Is consciousness to be found in quantum processes in microtubules?

Goodbye!

Adult tantrums are the best..

Not even 15 minutes later....

Hello again!

You did not read the article, did you?

Babies are not programmed.

From the article you clearly did not bother to read:

Babies and children construct theories about the world around them using the same approach scientists use to construct scientific theories. They explore and test their environment and the people in it with a systematic and experimental effort that is crucial to learning.

Gopnik recently worked with a team of researchers to demonstrate how children as young as 15 months old can learn cause-effect relationships using statistical data better than older children. Babies and young children may be better learners because their brains are more flexible or “plastic”; they are less tainted by pre-existing knowledge, which allows them to be more open-minded. Brains are not unchanging, but rather modify with every learning experience.

By combining expertise from developmental psychologists and computational scientists, humans may be able to unlock how the brains of the best learners in the world work and translate that computational power into a machine. Currently, AI requires mass amounts of data to extract patterns and conclusions. But babies, who have comparatively little data about the world around them, use a statistical evaluation called Bayesian learning. That is, an interpretation isn't based on the known frequency of an outcome — information that babies don't have — but instead on inferring the probability based on current knowledge, which adjusts continually as new information is received.

“The amazing thing about babies is they can see something once or hear a new word for the first time and they already have a good idea of what that new word could mean and how they could use that new word,” says Gopnik. “So these kind of Bayesian approaches have been good in explaining why children are so good at learning even when they don’t even have much data.”

Babies use the probabilistic model to create a variety of hypotheses by combining probabilities and possibilities to draw conclusions. ​

No programming involved.

It's not what they learn or know that makes them so intelligent. It is how they learn.

Unlike an AI which has to have massive amounts of data input to allow them to come up with probabilities or even recognise simple patterns, babies do that without being taught to.

Oookaayyy...

This comes from where now?

Okay?

I think most people would understand what I meant without nitpicking semantics. But here we are.

Anywho...

And to do all of that, massive amounts of data input is involved.

A baby is able to do what no AI can do and do it quickly, with very little information.

Had you bothered to read the article I linked, you'd have seen this quite succinctly.

Your pet cat is smarter than any AI that has currently been designed.

As for Sophia, the answers it gave is simply because it was programmed to give those particular answers.

It's answers are similar to chat bots - go to some websites and a chat bot will ask if you have any questions or queries about a product or service. It's not AI or even close to it. It's just programmed to give fairly set responses for any scenario.

Microtubules aside, the answer is probably not.

 

You literally did not read the link, did you?

Once again.. Read and try to comprehend:

“The amazing thing about babies is they can see something once or hear a new word for the first time and they already have a good idea of what that new word could mean and how they could use that new word,” says Gopnik. “So these kind of Bayesian approaches have been good in explaining why children are so good at learning even when they don’t even have much data.”​

Can they deliver my pizza too?

And it needs to be programmed to do so. It needs to have the requisite software to be able to operate. It needs commands and instructions.

Maybe it's time for you to stop watching so much sci-fi and start dealing with reality a bit more.

If someone sticks a plug up your nose and starts programming your brain with various pre-set answers for you to give at specific questions, would you consider that "on the fly" programming?

Go to certain shopping cites that use a chatbot and then ask yourself if they are evolving when they respond to your queries. That is Sophia. A chatbot with a human styled face.

Where did I say 'they are born stupid'?

Far from it, I pointed out that the intelligence of babies is measured by how they learn, not what they learn. They are intelligent because of how they quickly and innately process information without being taught to do so. Understand now?

For example, a baby is able to learn sign language by the time they are 6 months and they can effectively communicate by sign language by 6 months.

Do you need me to copy you and put it into giant bold, coloured font for you to understand?

I see you have been making use of your single celled organism word of the day calendar..

Yes, because the little cleaner you take out of of the box is born when you turn it on and it learns as it goes, ignoring the fact that it is programmed to do it...

If you take a Roomba and wipe it's programming, it will sit there. And not "learn" when you turn it on. It cannot function without its programming and and very specific software.

 

Okay, I'll concede that Penrose is a physicist. He's a theoretical physicist. What that means is that some of his ideas are theoretical speculations and extrapolations, not empirically verified. Quantum data processing in microtubules is one of those ideas.

It's one thing to only consider the critics. It's another to only consider the people who support the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis.

A critical thinker retains an open mind on topics like this one. For myself, I can only say that I'm not at all convinced, at this stage, that any valuable data processing actually goes on in microtubules. Also, I'm not currently aware of any solid empirical evidence that microtubules do carry out quantum data processing of any kind. I'm also unaware of any plausible mechanism by which quantum events at the level of microtubules could possibly affect the functioning of nerves or brains on a more macroscopic level - i.e. the level at which the actual data processing in brains seems to occur.

What I regularly see from you is (a) your regular injection of the topic of microtubules into unrelated discussions, like you're advertising or preaching the idea that has captured your imagination, regardless of its relevance, and (b) your rather wild extrapolation from what is known about microtubules to all sorts of macroscopic implications (vis. hive minds and the like). My impression is that your enthusiam for the idea tends to blind you to its probable shortcomings. You act like somebody who thinks he's discovered The Answer to consciousness and the like, and you've made yourself an evangelist for that Answer. I think you lack the cautious and skeptical approach of most scientists.

I am doubly suspicious of the ORCH OR hypothesis precisely because it so excites followers of people like Deepak Chopra and his fellow woovians. It seems to me that there's a kind of subculture around this - people who have taken what was initially put forward as pure speculation in Penrose's book The Emperor's New Mind and run away with it, drawing all kinds of conclusions that simply are not supported by real-world results.

I could turn out to be completely wrong, of course. Maybe this idea will pan out in the long run after all. But its proponents have a long way to go to make a convincing case to the general scientific community. I'm not about to get all enthused about what is, after all, a rather extraordinary claim, unless and until the requisite extraordinary evidence to back it up comes to light.

 

Write4U:

Here's an example of the sort of wild extrapolation that I take issue with:

Now, tell me what evidence you have that links brain damage in stressed children to "microtubular catastrophe", if you can.

You say this is your belief, so I assume it's based on something concrete, rather than just a wishful thought that it might have something to do with your pet topic.

 

No. It's pure speculation. You don't even get to first base in establishing that microtubules are responsible for processing information. The rest is then a flight of fancy.

Again, you haven't got to first base. I see no reason to make the assumption you want to make, and even if we did, there'd be a lot of steps between that and "microtubular catastrophy" being caused by a stressful home environment.

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There's very little point in this kind of speculation piled upon assumption piled upon wishful thinking.

To give you an analogy, take the person who believes UFOs are alien visitors. That person says "Aliens made the crop circle in my uncle's field!" So I ask "What evidence do you have that aliens caused the crop circle?" And the person replies "Well, if we assume that UFOs are alien spaceships, and that alien spaceships cause crop circles when they land, then it's logical that the crop circles were most likely made by aliens."

See any problems in that?

 

All neural activities? What happened to the neurotransmitters and the action potentials and the potassium and sodium ions and all that?

Most of the stuff you quote about microtubules emphasises one of two things: their structural role in supporting the cell, or their role in assisting cell division. A lot of what you quote doesn't even mention quantum effects in the microtubules, let alone information processing and the like.

The statement that "the human body runs on microtubules" strikes me as just more fanboy hyperbole from you.

 

So you know better than the scientists who are studying AI and what they have discovered about how children learn.

You still fail to note that it is the 'how', not the 'what'.

Understand now?

Babies are intelligent not because of what they learn, but how they learn.

You are quoting things without linking to them. I don't even know what you are quoting, nor its source or context or content for that matter.

A scroll down the page sees a link in a different and later response to James, which says absolutely nothing about what you are claiming.

You can believe whatever you want to believe. From where I am sitting you have proven diddly squat and you are peddling woo.

That's nice.

But I was not talking about GPS, maps or a delivery system. I was responding to your comment about something else entirely.

Why are you responding to my quote out of context like this?

How's that hive mind going?

This is not what Sohpia the robot was doing. The questions and answers were pre-programmed. Literally.

Because it had a female name. If it was named Bob, I'd have probably referred to it as he.

Is it really something to get one's panties in a twist over?

I also refer to my car as 'her', because she is a beast of a car and she's alright even when she's not.. But I have stopped short of naming her.

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Welp, the light really is dim..

I said, repeatedly and linked that article that also said ... The intelligence of babies stems from how they learn.

Not what they know or learn.

But how they view the world, how they extrapolate information, how they interpret that information and how they analyse the world around them.

What part of that is so hard for you to actually understand?

You claim to understand, but you keep repeating the same bullshit and frankly stupid argument that shows you clearly do not understand.

And by the way, that fawn is also smarter than any AI will ever be.

You also need to read up on some evolutionary biology. Pay particular attention to a mature brain, narrow pelvis and how the human brain evolved to be the size that it is.

And yet, it still cannot deliver my pizza.

The irony of your fit pitching at my referring to Sophia as "she" and "her" and you refer to a person as an "it" because of a lobotomy? Do you refer to people who suffer brain trauma, have brain tumors or have had brain tumors removed, have suffered severe strokes as "it" as well?

It depends on the lobotomy.

Because it is programmed to map the room or house.

It's not "learning". It's mapping the room or house.

I'll give you an example. Take a VR headset. Before you use most of them, you have to 'map' the room or the area. With my son's Rift, that entails holding the hand controllers and carefully walking around the area where he will be using it, so the sensors on the wall map that space. That VR system is not "learning". The Roomba and other such devices do the same thing as what my son is doing when he is mapping the area.

Because you keep bringing it up...

RIP bacteria....

You also stay away from scientific criticisms and studies that disprove it...

That is not what he asked.

Here is what he asked, specifically:

Nothing you have provided is actual evidence that brain damage in stress children is due to "microtubular catastrophe".

You are literally making stuff up.