“This retroactive idea. It has to be that,” says Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, reflecting on a problem about the building blocks of reality that has dogged physics for nearly a century. “Any sensible physicist wouldn’t be perturbed by this,” he adds. “However, I’m not a sensible physicist.”
If Penrose isn’t a sensible physicist it’s because the laws of physics aren’t making sense, at least not on the subatomic level where the smallest things in the universe play by different rules than everything we see around us. He has reason to believe this disconnect involves a fissure that divides two different kinds of reality. He also has reason to believe that the physical process that bridges these realities will unlock answers to the physics of consciousness: the mystery of our own existence.
…
When scientists measure a particle, it seems to collapse to one fixed state. Yet no one can be sure what’s causing collapse, also called reduction of the state. Some scientists and philosophers even think that wave function collapse is an elaborate illusion. This debate is called the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
The measurement problem has led many physicists and philosophers to believe that a conscious observer is somehow acting on quantum particles. One proposal is that a conscious observer causes collapse. Another theory is that a conscious observer causes the universe to split apart, spiraling out alternate realities. These worlds would be parallel yet inaccessible to us so that we only ever see things in one single state in whatever possible world we’re stuck in. This is the Multiverse or Many Worlds theory. “The point of view that it is consciousness that reduces the state is really an absurdity,” says Penrose, adding that a belief in Many Worlds is a phase that every physicist, including himself, eventually outgrows. “I shouldn’t be so blunt because very distinguished people seem to have taken that view.” Penrose demurs. He politely but unequivocally waves off the idea that a conscious observer collapses wave functions by looking at them. Likewise, he dismisses the view that a conscious observer spins off near infinite universes with a glance. “That’s making consciousness do the job of collapsing the wave function without having a theory of consciousness,” says Penrose. “I’m turning it around and I’m saying whatever consciousness is, for quite different reasons, I think it does depend on the collapse of the wave function. On that physical process.”
…
Penrose takes a hard pass on Many Worlds or ideas about conscious ghosts in the quantum machine as a way to bridge this gap. His bridge is neither an illusion nor a ghost. For Penrose, wave function collapse is a real, physical, objective phenomenon: a gravitational field can’t tolerate being in a quantum superposition, eventually collapsing the particle’s wave function. According to Penrose, gravity-induced wave function collapse involves a process that jumps the particle back in time, retroactively killing off possible quantum realities in under a second. This reality-annihilating backward-jumping makes it as though only one, fixed classical reality ever existed.
Sorry multiverses. But the death of multiverses allows for the birth of consciousness. Penrose’s theory proposes that each gravity-induced collapse causes a little blip of proto-consciousness: micro-events that get organized by biological structures called microtubules inside our brains into full-bodied awareness. A conscious observer doesn’t cause wave function collapse. A conscious observer is caused by wave function collapse.
There’s a lot there and I may need to dust off my sturdiest thinking trousers before I tackle stuff like this:
The alternative theory Hoffman proposes is that conscious entities are fundamental entities that exist beyond spacetime. These entities are us. And we are also avatars of a single conscious entity that Hoffman calls the “conscious aleph infinity agent.” We interact with each other via an interface whose format is spacetime. For Hoffman, what’s really going on outside of conscious awareness is so complex, involving non-spacetime dimensions numbering in the trillions or quadrillions. Our simple human minds created an ultra-compressed version of reality stripped of details that would break our brains—if we actually thought with our brains, which Hoffman sees no convincing evidence for.
…
Hoffman’s math leads him to conclude that we are avatars of a superconscious or arch-conscious agent. The arch-conscious agent puts us avatars through the paces of an infinite number of experiences, no matter how joyous or horrific, so that the arch-conscious agent can experience everything. Hoffman also warns against overidentifying with our self, because the self is an avatar. What’s more: “You are not any particular experience. You are the potential in which those experiences arise and disappear. That’s what you really are in your essence. You transcend any particular experience because you are that potential,” says Hoffman.
Hoffman’s theory of consciousness resonates with many spiritual narratives, suggesting a unifying force exploring all of its potential. Because of this, it confronts significant ethical questions, grappling with notions like whether we, at the most fundamental level, are a powerful conscious force willingly subjecting ourselves and others to the most painful, terrifying and tragic experiences just to satiate a gluttonous drive for experience.
Really good article.
And this would be the most human thing ever:
Because of this, it confronts significant ethical questions, grappling with notions like whether we, at the most fundamental level, are a powerful conscious force willingly subjecting ourselves and others to the most painful, terrifying and tragic experiences just to satiate a gluttonous drive for experience.
But it’s weird they talked about ACB reordering and didn’t get into the split brain experiments where the brain half with a language center would retroactively make up reasons for the other half’s actions.
Technically those experiments are non-repeatable, but that’s only because we’re not cutting people’s brains in half anymore. People with split hemispheres since birth develop language centers on both sides so we can’t do it with them.
But our brains are just real fucking good at pretending there’s a reason for everything because we’re just pattern recognition at our base level. So yeah, a person will watch an ACB and claim it was ABC, just because that’s the only rationale way it would have happened.
I’m curious how different that is for other groups tho. Like do one with age cohorts, one with people who grew up with modern computer animation where anything can happen, one by psychedelic drug use… Any group where theyre used to believing the unbelievable
We’d know so much more about this stuff if there was any money or power from figuring it out.
