Fundamental or nearly fundamental energy and the origin of Intelligence?

[Dennis Tate]

I think this may explain.

'Philosophy as bloodsport' redux

https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/blood_sport.htm

This sport is quite prominent on this site. The above is an example.

p.s. I like your cognition of spontaneous self-assembly in nature. IMO, it is essential to the dynamics of evolutionary processes.

p.p.s. river
I never claimed that microtubules think. They process data at fundamental energy levels.
My claim is that consciousness emerges from MT (neural) networks and that this concept is supported and researched by many serious scientists, including Roger Penrose.

Yes...... microtubules would be processing information at fundamental energy levels!

I love that explanation.

Yes... Roger Penrose refers to these "microtubules" in this video!

Roger Penrose - Quantum Physics of Consciousness

 

[Write4U]

For the record, originally I voted "no" on the OP poll, because I assumed the question is based on a sentient intelligence.

But now that I think about it I have changed my vote on the premise of an inherent form of natural quasi-intelligence which universal mathematical functions provide when processing fundamental values and are usually identified as the universal constants, our mathematical equations symbolizing fundamental universal processes which I consider as a self-referential form of consciousness, the deterministic part of cause and effect. The EM field lies within that concept. It's properties fundamentally are guided by mathematical processes and therefore may qualify as a form of self-referential mathematical quasi-intelligence.

AFAIK, true conscious intelligence is acquired via fundamental EM processes in the brain.

I believe that is somewhere in the neighborhood of Penrose's thinking and he has the chops to defend that hypothesis.

 

[Dicart]

Yes...... microtubules would be processing information at fundamental energy levels!

I love that explanation.

Yes... Roger Penrose refers to these "microtubules" in this video!

Yes, microtubules was a promising way to explain the consciousness.
You could also say that ADN could be related to consciousness
But this has been refuted.

A better explaination could be found in water.
Yes, water is surely not what we know it is...
Look at the Sun, what do you see ?
Water...

 

[Write4U]

Yes, microtubules was a promising way to explain the consciousness.
You could also say that ADN could be related to consciousness
But this has been refuted.

A better explaination could be found in water.
Yes, water is surely not what we know it is...
Look at the Sun, what do you see ?
Water...

The sun is 91% hydrogen and 8.9% helium. No water. Hydrogen isn't wet.

Water is an emergent property of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen at a certain temperature

 

[Dicart]

The sun is 91% hydrogen and 8.9% helium. No water. Hydrogen isn't wet.

71% Hydrogen
1% Oxygen
https://www.space.com/17170-what-is-the-sun-made-of.html

So "technicaly", water.

Water is an emergent property of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen at a certain temperature

Yes, all here depend on temperature.

You could also say that water is some molecule, H2O here, like other molecure (CH4 etc), but no, not even is this "molecule" like the others.
In the sun you have a plasma... so technicaly water.

I remember my teacher (botanic but he was some specialist in water flow in plants) explaining that "technicaly" in the sea, there is only 1 molecule of water.
So yes, perhaps from some point of view, the Sun doesent contain 1 such molecule and from one other point of view the Sun contain only 1 molecule of water, but in a body, for sure, there is 1 molecule of water in the brain.

H2O, this tiny theoretical molecule doesent exists when in the liquid state, perhaps in vapor state or solid state, not sure.

Why do you think water is so important in the baptism ?
Because it is a special "thing".

 

[Write4U]

You could also say that water is some molecule, H2O here, like other molecure (CH4 etc), but no, not even is this "molecule" like the others.

No, you really cannot. A single molecule of H2O is not wet.

H2O, this tiny theoretical molecule doesent exists when in the liquid state, perhaps in vapor state or solid state, not sure.

No H2O is not a theoretical molecule and yes it can exist in three different states. One of them is water which is wet.
Max Tegmark explains the emergent property of "wetness" in this interesting lecture.

 

[Dicart]

No, you really cannot. A single molecule of H2O is not wet.

No problem, there is no H2O molecule in water...

No H2O is not a theoretical molecule and yes it can exist in three different states. One of them is water which is wet.

Water is wet, ok, capilarity etc.
But H2O molecule (in water) is virtual, or theoritical, like you prefer, water is composed of H30+ and OH- and if you "assemble them virtualy" you could say you have 2 molecules of virtual H2O.

H3O+ change to OH- and OH- change to H3O+, these molecules are the real molecules in water.
There is no H2O in water (correction... let be precise, yes there can be also vapor H2O in water, like at his surface if any).
Therefore, the water is much like a mesh or a network constantly changing and echanging protons.

 

[Write4U]

No problem, there is no H2O molecule in water...

Water

"Water" is the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard ambient temperature and pressure. It forms precipitation in the form of rain and aerosols in the form of fog. Clouds are formed from suspended droplets of water and ice, its solid state.

When finely divided, crystalline ice may precipitate in the form of snow. The gaseous state of water is steam or water vapor. Water moves continually through the water cycle of evaporation, transpiration (evapotranspiration), condensation, precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

 

[Dicart]

Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Water
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water

 

[Write4U]

Water
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water

Yes, I read that. Hydronium is not water.

Watch the Tegmark video.

 

[Dennis Tate]

For the record, originally I voted "no" on the OP poll, because I assumed the question is based on a sentient intelligence.

But now that I think about it I have changed my vote on the premise of an inherent form of natural quasi-intelligence which universal mathematical functions provide when processing fundamental values and are usually identified as the universal constants, our mathematical equations symbolizing fundamental universal processes which I consider as a self-referential form of consciousness, the deterministic part of cause and effect. The EM field lies within that concept. It's properties fundamentally are guided by mathematical processes and therefore may qualify as a form of self-referential mathematical quasi-intelligence.

AFAIK, true conscious intelligence is acquired via fundamental EM processes in the brain.

I believe that is somewhere in the neighborhood of Penrose's thinking and he has the chops to defend that hypothesis.

My impression from the off the scale type of energies that would exist in fundamental or nearly fundamental energy it would be almost impossible for some form of
computer like circuitry to not come into existence???

"The real burden in the next three centuries will not be the development of fancy mathematics, but the experimental testing of these ambitious theories. All current thinking about total unification assumes that the effects of linking all the forces and particles together will only become manifest at energies that are some trillion times greater than those currently attainable in particle accelerators. Probably we shall never reach such energies directly" ( A Theory of Everything" Volume 21 of "The World ofScience)

 

[James R]

Dennis Tate:

I asked you a lot of very specific questions about two of your posts. You have skipped over them - essentially ignored them - and then gone on your merry way almost as if I never posted anything. Why is that? Were my questions too difficult for you to address? Or is it that you'd prefer not to confront those kinds of things? Are you so comfortable in your beliefs about near death experiences and the like that any suggestion that they aren't good evidence for God or the supernatural just goes in one ear and out the other? Or what?

Should I write you off as a person I should simply ignore, then? Somebody who isn't worth listening to, because you just ramble on regardless of what anybody else says to you?

When it comes to fundamental energy or energies we know that electromagnetism, gravity, weak and strong nuclear force ARE NOT FUNDAMENTAL ENERGIES....... but instead are complex energies somehow made up of less and less complex forms of energy or energies that operate at RELATIVELY LOW LEVEL energies in comparison to truly fundamental energy as explained by String Theory!

Gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces are not "energies" - or at least not in the vague sort of way you seem to be using that term. They are best described as "fundamental interactions" that describe how the fundamental particles in the universe (that we know of) all interact with one another.

Probably you are thinking of theories that "combine" the four "fundamental interactions" into a single "super force" at very high energies. So I guess there's a hint of actual physics in what you're talking about, but it sounds like you don't understand it very well - or more that you understand it from a sort of "popular science" perspective, which tends to use words to explain things rather than mathematics and quantitative theory.

In that article that I gave a couple of quotations on String Theory from it was mentioned that Stephen Hawking Ph. D. was having difficulty with gravity......
gravity would not fully fit in mathematically with ONE ORIGINAL SUPERFORCE in merely ten dimensions of space and time so as of the time of that article
M-Theory postulated eleven dimensions of space and time to make full unity into one force possible.

Bosonic String Theory works with twenty six dimensions of space and time and I ran into evidence in parapsychology or pseudoscience that would imply that Bosonic String Theory is probably going to win out over M-Theory over the long term.

Okay. You were doing well right up until you mentioned "evidence in parapsychology or pseudoscience". What does parapsychology have to do with string theory or fundamental forces? And what is the "evidence" you're referring to?

You know that "pseudoscience" is "fake science" - nonsense dressed up to look like science, essentially? It has the trappings of science without bothering about any actual evidence collection or methodological rigour, or critical thinking - those kinds of things that we find in real science.

My guess is that there may be TWO fundamental energies.... one based on Super Strings which I assume correspond to light.....
the other perhaps based on Super Waves that may be the primary component of GRAVITY that Dr. Hawking was having trouble
fitting into the mathematics for full unification. But that is just a guess.

Well, there's a difference between a wild guess and an educated guess. Which is yours?

Are you educated in the physics necessary to understand string theory properly? Are you able to read Hawking's original scientific papers and understand them? If so, then your "guess" might be worth something. If, on the other hand, you've just read "A brief history of time", without really understanding the last half of the book, and a few other pop-science articles on string theory that contain no mathematics, then your "guess" is unlikely to point us towards fruitful avenues for future research.

What is a far worse sign is that you appear to be putting as much, or more, emphasis on information you believe you have from pseudoscientific ideas (parapsychology and near death experiences, for instance) as you do on information from real scientific sources, like Hawking. That suggests to me that you're not very good at telling the difference between science and pseudoscience, yet.

As far as a test to prove this to be untrue.....
One of the most productive ways to disprove this basic idea would be of course connected to
attempting to disprove Energy from Quantum Vacuum.

Why does energy somehow go off the scale in larger and larger particle accelerators or massive vacuum chambers?

I don't know what you're referring to when you say "energy somehow goes off the scale". Can you refer me to a specific source that makes that claim? That is, a reputable scientific source (even a pop-science one will do), not a crank pseudoscientific source?

In which experiment(s) did "energy somehow go off the scale"? In what way? With what measurement? The energy of what? I want some details.

There is a facility being built in Europe that will probably soon have the answer but......

Which facility? What kind of facility?

Energy from Quantum Vacuum could compete with the oil industry so........

Maybe, if it could be harnessed. And so...?

don't hold your breath waiting for information on what is being found out there to be released to the general public.

You think there's a conspiracy to hide important science from the public, concerning limitless sources of energy, or similar? Got evidence of that?

Actually having already read chapter thirteen of Stephen Hawking's Universe before I read Mellen Benedict's near death experience I was actually kind of shocked at the many similarities between what Mellen Benedict reported being shown about the history of the
universe before the Big Bang...... with the speculations from an Agnostic angle that Dr. Stephen Hawking wrote out in that chapter that
is entitled The Anthropic Principle.

Did Mellen Benedict already read that book before his NDE??????

My impression is that Mellen Benedict's near death experience occurred in the 1982 but..... "Stephen Hawking's Universe "was not published until 1989.

Can you list a few of the similarities? Maybe five of them, say, for starters? How specific are they?

Are you claiming that this Mellen Benedict person gained access to special knowledge about physics as a result of a near death experience? Is there any other evidence of that?

 

[Dicart]

Yes, I read that. Hydronium is not water.

That is why we can (i think) consider that liquid "water" is some of "3 form" mix.

For analogy you can use a spining coin; there is head, there is tail and there is edge.
Woud you say the coin is head ? tail ? or edge ?
No, but using plenty of coins, you can say that some form are present "in average", but the real physical forms are changing.

Now, why talking about water ?
Same question with microtubules, and same interesting answer : Because if we look for consciousness, we try to find some exotic behaviour that could better explain the exotic behaviour of consciousness (at most it is what we think).
So water is a good candidate, because like microtubules it has quantum behaviour (3 forms with covalent/non covalent switching and at large scale (more than 1 "molecule")).
And better than for microtubules, this quantic behaviour works at standard temperature (298K° around).

Adding to this, we can, using hard science, list more than 20 unexplained anomalies (not explained with actual fundamental science of matter).
No other molecule is so mysterious (or "exotic") as "water".

 

[exchemist]

No problem, there is no H2O molecule in water...



Water is wet, ok, capilarity etc.
But H2O molecule (in water) is virtual, or theoritical, like you prefer, water is composed of H30+ and OH- and if you "assemble them virtualy" you could say you have 2 molecules of virtual H2O.

H3O+ change to OH- and OH- change to H3O+, these molecules are the real molecules in water.
There is no H2O in water (correction... let be precise, yes there can be also vapor H2O in water, like at his surface if any).
Therefore, the water is much like a mesh or a network constantly changing and echanging protons.

This is not the case. The equilibrium constant for the dissociation of H2O into H3O+ and OH- : [H3O+][OH-]/[H2O] = 10⁻¹⁴.

In other words, water is barely dissociated at all. It is almost all in the form of H-O-H molecules.

 

[Write4U]

No other molecule is so mysterious (or "exotic") as "water".

On the contrary, H2O is one of the simplest molecules in nature. It's very simplicity gives it the ability (potential) of the 3 states in which H2O may become expressed in reality.

Water can occur in three states: solid (ice), liquid, or gas (vapor).

• Solid water—ice is frozen water. When water freezes, its molecules move farther apart, making ice less dense than water. ...
• Liquid water is wet and fluid. ... (its molecular density making it so)
• Water as a gas—vapor is always present in the air around us. (it's molecular density is at its lowest form)

http://www.summitwater.org/story_of_water/html/3forms.htm

Each state consists of exactly the same molecules at different densities and temperatures.

Molecular basis for the Volume Increase of Ice:
As the temperature decreases, the density increases as the molecules become more closely packed. This pattern does not hold true for ice as the exact opposite occurs. In liquid water each molecule is hydrogen bonded to approximately 3.4 other water molecules.

Interestingly, liquid water is the densest form of H2O molecules.

Ice floats on water

The most energetically favorable configuration of H2O molecules is one in which each molecule is hydrogen-bonded to four neighboring molecules. Owing to the thermal motions described above, this ideal is never achieved in the liquid, but when water freezes to ice, the molecules settle into exactly this kind of an arrangement in the ice crystal. This arrangement requires that the molecules be somewhat farther apart then would otherwise be the case; as a consequence, ice, in which hydrogen bonding is at its maximum, has a more open structure, and thus a lower density than water.

Here are three-dimensional views of a typical local structure of water (left) and ice (right.)

Notice the greater openness of the ice structure which is necessary to ensure the strongest degree of hydrogen bonding in a uniform, extended crystal lattice. The more crowded and jumbled arrangement in liquid water can be sustained only by the greater amount of thermal energy available above the freezing point.

https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshe...and_Liquids/7.03:_Hydrogen-Bonding_and_Water#

 

[Write4U]

For analogy you can use a spining coin; there is head, there is tail and there is edge.

That is a false equivalency. More correct is saying that in all three states the coin retains the exact same metal molecular components.

 

[Dennis Tate]

Dennis Tate:

I asked you a lot of very specific questions about two of your posts. You have skipped over them - essentially ignored them - and then gone on your merry way almost as if I never posted anything. Why is that? Were my questions too difficult for you to address? Or is it that you'd prefer not to confront those kinds of things? Are you so comfortable in your beliefs about near death experiences and the like that any suggestion that they aren't good evidence for God or the supernatural just goes in one ear and out the other? Or what?

Should I write you off as a person I should simply ignore, then? Somebody who isn't worth listening to, because you just ramble on regardless of what anybody else says to you?

Gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces are not "energies" - or at least not in the vague sort of way you seem to be using that term. They are best described as "fundamental interactions" that describe how the fundamental particles in the universe (that we know of) all interact with one another.

Probably you are thinking of theories that "combine" the four "fundamental interactions" into a single "super force" at very high energies. So I guess there's a hint of actual physics in what you're talking about, but it sounds like you don't understand it very well - or more that you understand it from a sort of "popular science" perspective, which tends to use words to explain things rather than mathematics and quantitative theory.


Okay. You were doing well right up until you mentioned "evidence in parapsychology or pseudoscience". What does parapsychology have to do with string theory or fundamental forces? And what is the "evidence" you're referring to?

You know that "pseudoscience" is "fake science" - nonsense dressed up to look like science, essentially? It has the trappings of science without bothering about any actual evidence collection or methodological rigour, or critical thinking - those kinds of things that we find in real science.


Well, there's a difference between a wild guess and an educated guess. Which is yours?

Are you educated in the physics necessary to understand string theory properly? Are you able to read Hawking's original scientific papers and understand them? If so, then your "guess" might be worth something. If, on the other hand, you've just read "A brief history of time", without really understanding the last half of the book, and a few other pop-science articles on string theory that contain no mathematics, then your "guess" is unlikely to point us towards fruitful avenues for future research.

What is a far worse sign is that you appear to be putting as much, or more, emphasis on information you believe you have from pseudoscientific ideas (parapsychology and near death experiences, for instance) as you do on information from real scientific sources, like Hawking. That suggests to me that you're not very good at telling the difference between science and pseudoscience, yet.


I don't know what you're referring to when you say "energy somehow goes off the scale". Can you refer me to a specific source that makes that claim? That is, a reputable scientific source (even a pop-science one will do), not a crank pseudoscientific source?

In which experiment(s) did "energy somehow go off the scale"? In what way? With what measurement? The energy of what? I want some details.

Which facility? What kind of facility?


Maybe, if it could be harnessed. And so...?


You think there's a conspiracy to hide important science from the public, concerning limitless sources of energy, or similar? Got evidence of that?

Can you list a few of the similarities? Maybe five of them, say, for starters? How specific are they?

Are you claiming that this Mellen Benedict person gained access to special knowledge about physics as a result of a near death experience? Is there any other evidence of that?

Mostly because I work full time as a janitor plus......
I picked up my wife after her visit to our children and grand dchildren on Saturday morning.

 

[Dennis Tate]

Dennis:

Okay. And what tests might conceivably prove that belief to be incorrect? Are there any? If not, then the belief is probably not a scientific one.


Can you please define "fundamental energy"? I don't know what that means.


Maybe I do. How do you propose to measure intelligence? What would be the most important difference between the "first intelligence" and whatever came just before that?


What makes you think that forms of energy can predate the big bang, in the first place?
And then, what makes it "obvious" to you that "intelligence" would originate in that form of energy?
What form would that pre-big bang Intelligence have taken?

None of this is at all "obvious" to me, and so far you've provided no reason why I should accept any of it.

Why do you think that "near death experiences" are a real experience of "higher invisible dimensions", as opposed to merely being the imaginative experiences that an oxygen-deprived brain might have, for example?


That seems like a total non sequitur to anything you said before that. What has plant fear got to do with fundamental energies, the big bang, or near death experiences? You're all over the place.


What makes you suspect that animists may have access to special knowledge? Why animists, in particular?


Since there's no good evidence that any such thing actually happens, is it really worth wasting time speculating on how it might work, if it was real? Surely the first step is to confirm that "out of body experiences" actually occur.


What convinced you?


That would tend to refute your belief that "out of body experiences" aren't the product of the brain, would it not?


Nerve conduction in the human body and in the brain also uses electricity. Does that help?


I don't know what you mean by that. String theory only references the usual fields that physicists already know about, the electromagnetic field being one of them.


What do you mean by a "higher level truth"? How many levels of truth are there? How do you know?


You have a quote mark at the start of this. Whom are you quoting?


Energy isn't "stuff". It's essentially an accounting system. How could anything be "composed of energy"?

Can you name anything that is "composed of energy"?

Also, you keep saying that lots of things "seem obvious" to you. Based on what? Your overactive imagination?


There are lots of ifs and assumptions in that sentence.

I don't know what "fundamental energy" is; maybe you'll explain.

On what basis do you "assume" that Stephen Hawking shared your belief in "fundamental energy"?

As for evolution: we already know it's possible. It happens. That's an established fact. We don't need infinite time for that.


It sounds to me like you don't have the first clue about what "evolution" means, or what the "theory of evolution" is about.


Again, what makes you think that "near death experiencers" have special access to knowledge - or access to special knowledge?


Do you understand what Hawking is talking about? He is speculating that there might be a multiverse consisting of a large number of "island universes" which have different values for their fundamental physical constants (the ones that determine the relative strengths of fundamental physical forces and so on). But Hawking always explicitly stated that this is speculation. It is not verified in any way.

Chapter thirteen of "Stephen Hawking's Universe" that was entitled "The Anthropic Principle" goes into an Atheistic or Agnostic version of The Cyclic Model of the Universe that fits with the idea of their being an essentially infinite number of "Unsuccessful Universes" out there somewhere in which there is no life due to electromagnetism, gravity, weak and strong nuclear force, in those unsuccessful universes...... not being properly tuned to produce life and / or intelligence as we would tend to think of either life or intelligence.


To at least some degree the Extremely High Energies postulated in fundamental or nearly fundamental energies by String Theory should, I would think, tend to produce a greater level of mental activity...... than the much lower energetic level electromagnetism that we can observe here in the four dimensional space - time continuum.

"The real burden in the next three centuries will not be the development of fancy mathematics, but the experimental testing of these ambitious theories. All current thinking about total unification assumes that the effects of linking all the forces and particles together will only become manifest at energies that are some trillion times greater than those currently attainable in particle accelerators. Probably we shall never reach such energies directly" ( A Theory of Everything" Volume 21 of "The World ofScience)

I listened to several youtube lectures by Mr. Roger Penrose yesterday and I heard him refer to temperatures of several trillion degrees being generated within particle accelerators in Europe as certain types of collisions took place between subatomic particles. This fact tends to verify basic String Theory as it was worded even two or three decades ago.

I also plead guilty to being somewhat affected by the character on Star Trek named "Q" whose off the scale capabilities fitted with what String Theory, as it was worded in that version of the article on it that I quoted from in the first or second post on page one, would tend to indicate might be possible. The writer who created the character "Q" was probably aware of basic String Theory.

 

[Dennis Tate]

Evolution of what? Remember that this universe evolved from a state of pure energetic chaos, some 13.8 billion years ago. Whatever was before the BB no longer exists, at least to us.

Is 13 billion years not long enough for you? You have seen what 4.5 billion years can do to an average planet. Abiogenesis from pure chemistry to sentient life, remarkable but true...

p.s. I have a problem unpacking this question.

"Would Intelligence begin in fundamental or nearly fundamental energy?"

That's an ambiguous question. It assumes that intelligence began with energy, which IMO is misleading.
Perhaps a better question might be "Would mathematical functions begin in fundamental energy"? To that question we can safely say "Yes".

But as the question stands, didn't everything begin in fundamental energy, i.e Chaos?

https://www.space.com/9255-big-bang-moment-pure-chaos-study-finds.html#

I plead guilty....... I have been assuming for more than twenty years that Intelligence / intelligence would begin in fundamental or nearly fundamental energy....... and then go through a process that in some ways might even resemble how computing memory storage has rapidly increased over the last three decades.

I have also assumed that Intelligence / intelligence = life or Life???!!!

 

[Dennis Tate]

13.72 billion years is roughly equal to infinity when compared to Planck time. It's relative......

For the record......
I really do not quite comprehend this question..... sorry... .but I thank you for adding this because there are others in this discussion who will know what you mean by this.