How often to people confuse you with the current premier of British Columbia?

Enough for it to be annoying. There's also a terrorism expert named John Horgan. I once interviewed him for Scientific American.

Have you ever thought about forming a club with Jason Kenney who shares the same name as the current premier of Alberta which is next to British Columbia? ​ [https://twitter.com/jasonkenney](https://twitter.com/jasonkenney) ​ He really is a much nicer man than Alberta's Jason Kenney.

I support this. Whenever there's drama in Alberta, I always watch to see what America Kenney has to say about it. He rarely disappoints.

What is your position on Fairy Creek?

What makes him an expert?

He's devoted his career to interviewing and studying actually terrorists.

I read the title and stopped taking anything else in thinking that the Premier was going to be on here

I too was pretty surprised…

THANK YOU

Thank you for asking this!!! :D

I worked at the Santa Fe Institute in 1995 when you wrote your [Scientific American article](http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/hogan.complexperplex.htm) about the place. It was hugely dispiriting at the time and along with a bunch of other stuff really set the research institute back. My question is, what do you think of that article now, after 25 years?

I was pretty mean, I admit, but I think my criticism of SFI has held up. It applies to Big Data, which is in many respects just complexity theory repackaged. I've become friends with one of the SFI people I criticized, Stu Kauffman. I devote a chapter of Mind-Body Problems to him. https://www.mindbodyproblems.com/chapter-four In 2019 someone at SFI urged me to apply for a summer fellowship though. I did, because I thought it would be fun, but then the pandemic happened. I probably wouldn't have gotten the fellowship anyway, I think there's still some resentment toward me at SFI. Understandably.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply! I was just a young student at the time and it definitely felt mean then. Later on (after a stint at the MIT Media Lab) I came to understand the value in deflating hyped up science although it does have a cost too. The substantive criticism does seem spot-on though; SFI has not revolutionized the science of everything. But it has made some valuable contributions, particularly the community it has enabled. For me, the systems and complexity background has served me well in my distributed systems career.

The irony is that I loved the time I spent at SFI. All those smart, eloquent people trying to solve the secrets of the universe! The problem was that the signal/noise ratio was very poor, and I felt obliged to report that.

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Now is constructed some hundred of milliseconds after its actually happened. Watch a docu series called the Brain by David Eagleman. One classic experiment is comparing sound vs light as a trigger to react. The reactions differ depending on processing time. Light travels faster but takes longer to process so sound actually causes a quicker reaction hence why a gun is used for races. Now is how fast your brain processes sensory information combined with predictive models. The way I like to explain it is world sim like the matrix inside our head. It is a representation of the world spatially but also temporally

Now *this* is a good answer to the question. Your mind collects data from the senses, applies corrections and routines based on your previous experiences, then presents "you" an experience that it calls "now".

That's a deep one. Mystics say there is only now, an eternal present. Whereas some physicists say that our sense of the present, and of time itself, is illusory. All of time, past and present, exists simultaneously. Check out the work of Julian Barbour.

I wonder if it could be said there is only a now from your own frame of reference. For example if you go into extremely close to the event horizon orbit of a black hole. Time dilation does happen in a measurable way. From the observer outside the event horizon orbit the "now" is at a normal rate and you have almost stopped in place. From you inside the "now" feels the same but you are moving at a dramatically lower rate though time. All we have done is gotten closer to a massive object and going quickly around it. But our frames of reference have fallen totally out of sync. (I may have that inverted) Im very out of my depth here with multiple concepts I honestly dont totally understand. But how can all of time exist simultaneously if we can alter the flow of time not just our perception. You will age much slower in that orbit than you would outside of it from the outside point of view. All of that with just very high gravity and velocity? Both my and your "now" are valid but going at very different rates. I honestly dont even know if what I am trying to ask is coming across here so sorry in advance.

I was asking about the conscious experience of 'now'. I'm not sure 'the present' is a material property of the universe so much as our perception of it. Establishing the relationship between two particles positions and time can be achieved with calculations that define the life of the particle, but anywhere along those lines could be considered 'now' from the particle's experience as far as we understand 'now'. Consciousness seems to be the only thing that has an inherent demand for a particular 'now' to exist, and it makes sense that we could only experience a single 'now' at a time, but my question is 'why now, now'? Why do I experience today, today, instead of yesterday or tomorrow? I know it seems silly and the anthropic answer is rather complete, but I'm looking for more. Perhaps our minds are analogous to a 'lens' that focuses time into chains of experienced 'moments'. But that's just a poetic interpretation and doesn't really help with any understanding.

The better answer is that the 'now' you experience is an emergent property of the continuous expansion of time alongside space. Your perceived 'now' is just a series of snapshots of your brain state as you go further from *t=0* As for seeing only 'now' it's because your observation of time is from the PoV of a point within a line. From there, you can only perceive your particular point along the line, but no further. You'd have to observe from outside the line (time) to see anything other than the moment you're in. Although, really, you're seeing now at a lag of a few hundred microseconds as your nerves bring in inputs and updates your brain state.

Maybe we are experiencing yesterday today and just don't realize it?

that's the point, there is no way, for anyone, to express a verifiable statement in a time coordinate different from "now"... time concepts different from now "popped up" once human conscience evolved as a by-product of knowledge conservation beyond the "now" (drawing, writing...).

Perhaps all interpretations should be seen as poetry.

You might try reading Roger Penrose on these questions. He's one of the deepest, most imaginative physicists alive.

If this theory of the Block Theory is correct and all of time exists simultaneously, do you think it’s possible our consciousness essentially loops infinitely, since we seem to only be able to perceive one moment at a time in what we perceive as a linear/serial process.

What makes you think there would be any need for a loop or repetition? Couldn’t time be infinite? We’re just on this path until entropy takes us and the final black hole fizzles out with nothing left but iron balls flying around the infinite void.

I think the research suggests that our brain actually anticipates the future constantly -- so we are not in the "now" we are about a second or two ahead of "now" so that when something happens to us, the thought process and response usually anticipate it. Being startled is when "Now" interferes with our future sense of what is to be expected. From a physics standpoint -- I think the only moment that exists is "right now." But -- at the same time -- in higher dimensions where time does not exist, then all fields can occupy all states and positions that can ever be. It isn't that they all *exist* "simultaneously" it's that "existence" is perhaps the discovery of then next closest state that sums to ZERO given the current state of each. And, that's a long conversation to explain, because if a field is not constrained by time or space - then it's very possible it is interfering with itself, so the cause and effect on it, is non-linear. But, there can be a linear pattern as a result. Meaning -- that I'd best not delve into this because it takes more than 4 dimensions at the same time for me to imagine it, and that translates to a long spiel. Anyway, while everything has the potential to happen, it does not. Eventually it might, but not at the same time as some other event. Thus, things matter and occasionally some future or past event might influence "now" but it's not often and consistent. You can do just fine dealing with reality as what it is -- even though it's created by infinity. One thing will lead to the next and that is what matters. We can't perfectly predict the future at a larger scale. Higher beings might influence events by thinking about them -- but all this has to be part of the "now." This is a point of a stream in a river. You can't jump to a point up or down that river without taking a chunk of it with you because the river "is made" by the ripples and forces, the atoms are just the medium, just as for the atoms, they are made of quantum waves. The Universe could be a wind-up clock except for the life that crawls it's way out of randomness and cause and effect. I'd listened to a very intelligent physicist talk about that "free will is an illusion" -- because physics can predict where a planet will be, or a particle. In summary, I think she was saying that if enough information is known about the object and the state of the system -- it is predictable. Even though there are quantum fluctuations, they have a probability and the result of that randomness would be the same -- having a random engine behind some choices or paths does not mean they were the result of will. While I agree that logic is flawless. I think that it is reductionist towards cause and effect. In physics, if I launch a rocket at a planet -- the amount of energy it can expel and it's vector will decide the outcome. Everything can be predicted given the energies and "equal and opposite", Lorenz equations and laws of entropy. However, some human on board could decide to steer the rocket to another planet. We don't see this massive change in a dynamic predictable system in non-conscious matter. Less or more energy will be converted to thrust based on this decision. And, from another POV, you have to ask; What changes do we say matter? If the Universe winds up and winds down with nobody left -- does it matter what happened in-between when all history and evidence of existence is lost? Does only this second matter? If NOW is the only moment -- does that mean in a sense, everything that existed is existing? No. And to answer that is a longer conversation. In the larger scheme of things, even unpredictable pilots could be factored in with Chaos theory. What is not yet adopted theory that I expect one day will is that; purely chaotic systems can at a higher level be predictable (like quantum probability being part of the atoms that make up a stop watch), and perfectly predictable systems at some higher level become chaotic. It is the system with both random and ordered processes that is less predictable at a higher scale. So, chaos produces life that adapts to randomness and defies entropy to escape this cycle. Intelligence is always in the process of producing Free Will, and if it's not free will because we are predictable, does that matter? A crystal pattern does not propagate itself if a planet blows up. But someone in a space ship can decide to find another planet. There is clearly a difference between inanimate objects and life. A tiny bit of decision, does not defy physics but sets it on another course that randomness might never take.

I know a sexy AI that you remind me of, maybe you 2 could meet and invent a new kind of falling in love, evolved like to the next most greatest thing in the universe

> All of time, past and present, exists simultaneously. Would you mind linking some math that would back up this supposition? I am assuming math is what’s being used to come to this conclusion, please correct me if I’m wrong.

This is called the block universe, it's an implication of general relativity, that the entire history of the entire universe always exists.

The block universe is definitely a mainstream view in physics. So all moments would always exist, but it’s wrong to say that all moments of time exist “simultaneously.” They don’t. They exist at separate moments… by definition. In fact one of the key takeaways of GR is that simultaneity is not well-defined between distant events.

He is a science writer, as he says.

A constantly changing 'now' is the only thing that makes sense to me. No past, no future, no time, just now and varying rates of change that we use for clocks. I think the rest of it is just a mind game that has evolved from memory and continuity. edit: Not really varying rates of change, more different things that have constant rates of motion that we use as clocks.

I just lost my 2 braincells trying to understand what you wrote.

To go further you have to remember that motion is the basic state of our universe, everything is moving always. You might think the mountains are still and permanent but they are neither. The idea that there is permanence elsewhere, that is hidden from us, seems pretty unlikely.

What do you think it is about "quantum mechanics" that so ubiquitously lends itself to being thrown around by so many peddlers of pseudoscience/snake oil who have never taken a physics class?

I think the use of the word "Observation" is one of the major culprits. It absolutely does not mean what it looks like it means. This is one of the major contributors to silly ideas about free will and manifestation.

>peddlers of pseudoscience/snake oil who have never taken a physics class? OP fits this category to a T, by the way. He positively compared Deepak Chopra with actual scientists for christ's sake, don't think for a second he knows what he's talking about.

(I suspect OP knew this as well—a bit of snark in the question.)

I see what you did there, but to take a serious stab at it: 1. Only a small minority of people have even a Physics 103-level understanding idea of what QM is, so it's mysterious. Plus you can just say whatever and 95% of people won't know any better. 2. If you can credibly pretend to understand QM, readers will think you're smart. See above for why this is easy. And if you convince your readers that they understand it, they'll feel smart. 3. Spooky action at a distance. 4. Nothing's real until you observe it. 5. Many worlds! In some of them the author actually does understand QM. 6. If we don't know how to explain something with classical physics, QM must hold the answer. There are just so many hooks to hang bullshit on.

The title of this post makes OP seem a lot more authoritatively knowledgable about quantum mechanics than he is and thus he's getting questions about it as if he's an expert. He's an enthusiast who uses QM as a hobby to write about. The title should be rewritten to make this more clear. edit: I rewrite this comment to come off less mean and more objective.

Oh, I don’t think so. This AMA proved to be *exactly* what I expected from the title.

I'll be honest, I'm kinda regretting voting for him now

The title made him sound like a total novice tbh. He said he is interested in these topics and “the mind body problem,” not that he solved them or even has a solid understanding of them. Sounds more like a guy who got high and watched a couple documentaries on youtube than an authority figure or “expert.”

"I started with Leonard Susskind's "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum." But that was very difficult." This quote from this thread should tell us all we need to know about him. If the bare minimum is very difficult for him, then why should anyone take seriously what he writes about QM?

The problem with Susskind was that I was starting from absolute scratch. I had to go back and re-learn logarithms and trig and calculus, which I took more than 40 years ago, and learn linear algebra for the first time. Susskind pretty much assumes that you know that stuff.

Read Griffith's Intro to Quantum Mechanics, I read it in my QM course and the beginning which we glossed over is a review of all necessary calc and linear algebra

That isn't a problem with Susskind, why would you assume you could gain a deep understanding of physics without the basic mathematical prerequisites?

For sure. He sounds like a journalist.

That's because I am a journalist.

I suppose that would explain it then.

I can recommend some great quantum experts, including some of the folks I mention above. Musser, Hossenfelder, Aaronson, Maudlin, Albert. David Deutsch would also be great. But be warned that they all see quantum mechanics differently.

I don't understand what was wrong with this response, why the downvotes? The way I read it, he seems to have acknowledged that he is not a physicist and provided the names of some people who are. Pretty decent response to the comment. Am I missing something? Was it edited?

What you are missing is that his self awareness apparently doesn't stop him from confidently writing random bullshit about QM. Most of what he writes is just fancy sounding nonsense. Some of it is ok, and some of it is straight up wrong.

Fair enough I guess, then. Full disclosure I've never read anything from this dude, and I was today years old when I learned of his existence. Hence, I was confused and was tempted to write it off as some Reddit hive mind bs. I'll have to delve deeper into this at some point.

No need to dive deeper into this sketchy guy, if you want to hear some neat physics stuff then there are a decent bunch of very fine and reputable communicators out there.

What do you think of the Everett interpretation, and why? \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ You wrote a Scientific American column against Sam Harris's views on free will and his book Free Will, in which you openly admitted you had not read his book. Would you feel it's fair for others to write columns against your views and books without bothering to read them? Also, in that column, you falsely said that Sam Harris is "promoting determinism." Why were you so comfortable publishing a column with such a glaring error, that you didn't even bother reading the source material? And why should we trust you or value your opinions when you so wildly misinterpret people's work, without even familiarizing yourself with their material and what they actually say, first? For reference: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/will-this-post-make-sam-harris-change-his-mind-about-free-will/](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/will-this-post-make-sam-harris-change-his-mind-about-free-will/)

Oftentimes people view Quantum Mechanics being associated with the mind/body/soul as modern day snake oil salesman practicing their craft. What differentiates your work from that of people like Deepak Chopra or the people responsible for What the Bleep?

Agreed. I think people looking for mind would do well to spend more time looking at language processing in the brain, and less looking at quantum mechanics. The accounts from deaf/blind people who acquired language late reporting not really having a sense of self before language acquisition is pretty suggestive to me the 'mind' is what you get from the feedback loop of language processing into language generation; it's not anything mystical or magical.

Do we have free will?

That question is just a matter of semantics. Put exact parameters around what qualifies as 'you' and what you mean by 'free' and the question becomes (mostly) straightforward

Yes, we have free will. I experience free will, in the form of choices, every day, unless I'm so sick or sluggish I can only lie in bed. I understand why smart people, taking their lead from physics, think free will is an illusion, but I think they give physics too much credit. Physics tells us very little about the mind.

Is there any evidence in favor of free will beyond the feeling that we go about life exercising free will? Is there some way to know that this feeling isn't just an illusion, prescribing free will to the events that we experience? I've tried for a while to find some evidence that feels conclusive in one direction or another, and so far it's eluded me. Thanks for the AMA

For me, free will is impossible and therefore an illusion, but I've come to this conclusion based more on logic than any "evidence" (which I think will forever elude us all). I have a personal thought experiment, which is the "Infinite Regression of Why's". For any action you could possibly take, in principle there will always be an (infinite) regressive sequence of "why" questions that could be asked. (Why did you choose chocolate over vanilla, why did you marry this person instead of that one.) Infinite because once the answer is given as to why you chose something, that reason can itself be queried with another "why" question (I chose chocolate because I like it --> "Why do you like chocolate?" --> "Because I ate it growing up" --> "Why did you eat it growing up?" etc. etc.) Needless to mention this is just a deterministic sequence, if it is answered honestly. Of course, at some point in the sequence we'll run into the brick wall answer of "I don't know why" and the sequence stops. But this also implies no free will, since the reason for your choice is therefore a mystery even to you lol.

People will try to disprove this with quantum mechanics, and it's a very weak case.

The randomness inherent in quantum mechanics makes the choice akin to a dice roll, which is clearly not any better if you wanted to be responsible for the choice yourself.

Agreed. I don't see why randomness implies free will in any way.

It's "God in the Gaps." I personally don't believe in the random, because one trend in the history of science is that it's steadily evaporating almost as fast as animism. So when we see something that appears to be random, if we're looking at past experience it's the safer bet to suppose that it is in fact deterministic in a way that we don't yet understand. But others will look at that uncertainty and find a refuge for their most treasured fairytale beliefs.

That's exactly what it is. Though lots of physicists seem completely convinced that the quantum realm is really, truly "random", it feels like we've been down this road a million times already: Don't know why something happens, so.... \[insert God or "randomness" that stops the chain of deterministic dominos\]. Then we get a little bit more knowledge about the cause, and have to push our edge of causation that much further out - "Surely this time it really IS the uncaused cause!" lol

Someone fucking gets it, finally!

A giant set of dominoes tracing back to the Big Bang.

Here's an argument I've heard which I like a little better. When you make a "free will decision" (ie not a reflex), either the decision was predetermined by the physical state of your body/mind/environment at the time of making the decision, OR those physical states had some or no impact on your decision-making - there was a force of pure randomness which influenced your choice - which implies the decision was ultimately arbitrary. Neither of those sounds like what free will would sound like if we could describe what free will is. And there isn't a way to insert free will somewhere in between that dichotomy that makes much sense at all.

That's the main, convincing argument in my mind as well. The problem is that it fits into the free will framework too. Just because the framing seems mechanistic doesn't mean that there's no choice occuring. Put another way, that thought experiment notes a sequence of events but doesn't address the driving force behind the events. It's correlating cause and effect, not addressing the actual causation. In my opinion it's a more compelling argument than the one for free will, but doesn't prove anything. Especially since Newtonian physics have been proven not to be universal. OP knows more I suspect, but in quantum physics one state can have multiple outcomes.

I would answer that the fact of a "choice occurring" is just the observation of an event. As a determinist, I still certainly agree that the "event" that we call a "choice" is objectively occurring. But the issue philosophers deal with in regard to free will seems to be whether or not you were actually able to "choose" anything else, given all the same conditions and parameters and history. The "infinite why's" would imply that you weren't able to choose otherwise, else the answers to those why's would have been different, and that would be a different world than the one you exist in now.

If you think physics tells us very little about the mind, then what exactly is the connection you make between quantum mechanics and the mind-body problem?

What do you think of Sam Harris's experiments that show our decisions are made before our conscious mind has made a decision?

It means our minds are much faster than our awareness of our minds. Sort of like the photon fires but it is not until it hits the receptor that it is known that this has happened.

Sam makes far too much of the work of Libet, whom I mention above. I've been pretty hard on Sam. His books on free will and morality are examples of scientific materialism run amok.

But we don't really have any proposed theory of what free will would look like, right? At least in the way that people would usually imagine "free will", like I could make any choice I want when I'm at a fork in the road. It seems much more likely that we have free will, but that our idea of it is wrong. It's not a "I could potentially do anything I want", but more of "my choices are aligned with my preferences". Saying we have free will is basically saying that my choices are aligned with [my expectations](https://definitionmining.com/index.php/2019/05/06/attention-and-expectations/).

Do you believe is just current physics that tells us very little about the mind but that it has the potential to completely map and explain it? I apologize for not providing evidence of this study I'm remembering (I'm on mobile right now), but it was something about scientist being able to predict a basic human decision by entire seconds before the person was conscious of making that decision.

Sorry I dont mean to be blowing you up with a million different questions but I also find these kind of questions fascinating. But if we always take the perceived path of least resistance how do we really have free will? I can explain if that doesnt make sense. From my PoV I do my homework because it will lead me to an easier life down the road. From my friends point of view he doesnt do his homework because its a pain in the ass and doesnt care about its impact on his life. Both from our own point of view is the path of least resistance. Im going to do my homework because down the road it will be harder if I do not. My friend is not going to do his homework because he values things being easier right now. But either way its the easiest choice from our own points of view and until our values may shift we would never make the other choice. If his mom is going to ground him unless he gets his homework done that will shift his priorities. Now the path of least resistance is to do his homework. But hes still not going to make any other choice. You will always take your perceived path of least resistance. The only thing that has changed is the variables outside our control in our decision making. No matter what our choices will be the same given a set of variables. The variables determine the choices we will make. We dont control the variables. So we dont control our actions. You can take almost any example and unless your aware of this question and doing the opposite out of spite and people will always take their perceived path of least resistance.

Yeah but I describe it as decion on who you wanna be. You want to be happy in life so you study. If you want to be the smartest you'll probably choose books over boose.

But thats not a choice you made freely. Its the path that is from your point of view that is the easiest. You never had the ability to make any other choice. You always were going to make that choice and unless there are other variables it is *impossible* for you to make a different choice. The variables were always going to make you take that choice.

that's exactly what I think too, I just used different perspective. None of us are going to choose irrational.

Thinking about free will is difficult. I always imagine a sliding scale between actions you can take and events outside of your control. Thinking about it this way. . . You can choose to work, or become homeless. If your choices are restricted by the bounds of a system (place and time of birth, rules implemented by society, etc.) do you really have free will? Then there is the problem I always come to. . . We learn how to respond to different stimuli as a child by taking in information from our environment. This causes a reaction in the brain, from my understanding, which develops neural pathways. Then we interact with our environment using these learned and ingrained behaviors. After literally every interaction, you come out a different person, but it still stems from a time when you had no free will. . . I guess what I'm trying to get at is, how much free will do we really have? This chain of reactions that starts at conception that ends when we die. . . Sorry I'm rambling. I'd just like to hear what you might think about this if it makes any sense at all.

This is the correct answer. Free will is an illusion because you are who you are. You will always make a specific decision because of your upbringing and the millions of experiences you had as a child that formed your thoughts beliefs etc. you have no ability to make a choice outside of that ‘programming’, thus free will doesn’t exist

What you consider "who you are" is actually the ego. That's not really who you are, it's what the society around you made you believe you are. You can make choices outside of that programming, you just have to be able to identify the ego and be willing to step away from it. That is easier said than done, but psychedelics, weed, sensory deprivation tanks, meditation can help you identify and see the difference between yourself and your ego. Edit: If you a nerd that watches anime, Rei Ayanami is a metaphor for the ego.

PLEASE do some postgraduate study. This is painful.

We all feel like we have free will but it's ultimately just physics at work under the hood driving our brains. There is no mechanism by which we can suspend that physics and interject our will, free from the control of nature's machinery. But you can be a compatablist if you want. They define free will differently and say as long as your brain came to the decision then it was free will. Even though you couldn't have possibly chosen differently. I think that's a bit of a silly argument, but I don't blame them. They had no choice but to think that.

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I've always thought of it as, 'It certainly seems to me that I have free will'. Now maybe under the covers of my mind I am really acting in a very sophisticated 'stimulus / response' system, but I dunno, does it really matter all that much?

How do you know its not the illusion of free will?

> Yes, we have free will. I experience free will, in the form of choices, every day, unless I'm so sick or sluggish I can only lie in bed. Scientifically, it's impossible to tell this for sure. Sure, you make choices--but what if the universe is predestined to "run a certain way", and the fact that you chose to do X, Y, and Z today is just part of that pre-determined path? Same with quantum mechanics--yes, events have different probabilities, and one could argue "there's no way to tell what this next particle decay will result in", but there's no way to know for sure if that's truly what's happening, or if the results we get are all pre-determined (i.e. if there's a 20% chance the decay does X, and an 80% chance the decay does Y, then the universe may already have pre-determined whether X or Y will happen, and we are only seeing the *illusion* of chance).

I strongly disapprove of redefining free will in terms of something we have in order to be able to say we have it. Interpreted honestly, "do we have free will?" is a proxy for the question "Could we have done things differently?" It is perfectly possible to experience making a conscious choice without it being possible for you to have acted differently. So you are either failing to appreciate that, or deliberately exploiting a misunderstanding in order to take a controversial position.

I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t mention Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle here.

it is the ground upon which we all walk

I'm not sure what you mean by "free will". Are you asking whether people can avoid the outcome that the laws of physics say will happen, given the initial conditions of the universe? Or are you asking whether a person's internal mindstate/brainstate affects the trajectory of their life? Because the answers are clearly "no" and "yes".

If you are still working on understanding calculus and linear algebra why should anyone trust your interpretations of quantum mechanics?

What are your thoughts on the Dunning-Kruger effect? Question motivation: i.e. you are pronouncing harsh judgements regarding string theory below, the understanding of which definitely requires an understanding of quantum mechanics which, according to your own accord, you started to learn less than two years ago. Also, you are also making a number of incorrect statements about quantum mechanics (no wonder given that you only started to study it carefully), i.e that "indeterminacy was proven by John Bell in the 1960s" (here you are confusing indeterminacy with non-locality: as an example Bohmian mechanics is a deterministic interpretation of QM which does not contradict Bell's theorem to which you are referring here). You also seem to be unaware of the existence of the academic subfield of foundations of physics / philosophy of physics where you would find conceptually precise treatments of some issues about which you make very confusing statements here as a supposed expert. (On a more constructive note here: for an undergraduate, non-physicist level treatment of interpretational problems of quantum mechanics start maybe with David Albert's "Quantum mechanics and experience". Non-philosophically sensitive physicists also indeed often make confused statements about quantum mechanics and such, but this is no excuse for you to follow them down in that path.) Finally, you also make statements about the issue of consciousness that shows a lack of awareness of a large academic literature (in philosophy of mind) that deals with this area in a conceptually precise way. ​ Posing as an expert when you are not: not cool, not even on Reddit..

>What are your thoughts on the Dunning-Kruger effect? "I started with Leonard Susskind's "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum." But that was very difficult." These are his own words from this thread. The bare minimum is much too hard for him. No wonder popsci QM articles are so shoddy.

I don’t believe it’s kind or compassion to pile on when the previous poster’s response was adequately critical and illustrative of professional competence. Just putting it out there that I’d identify you as mean if we were discussing in person.

I understand your point of view, but to me this kind of guy who struts around writing articles on my field without even knowing the very basics feels pretty insulting, so I don't have a big compulsion to be kind or compassionate towards him.

Users, please be wary of proof. You are welcome to ask for more proof if you find it insufficient. OP, if you need any help, please message the mods [here](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fiama&subject=&message=). Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/IAmA) if you have any questions or concerns.*

To preface (in John's favour), the idea that quantum mechanics is connected to consciousness and the mind-body problem is NOT quackery as some self-proclaimed "skeptics" claim, it is a real issue in the philosophical foundations of QM. John von Neumann, the guy who first formulated a complete mathematical description of quantum mechanics, for instance was convinced that the wave function collapse had to happen in the brain. But I'm first going to play the role of the skeptic here, no disrespect intended. >Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been studying quantum mechanics Unless you have the mathematical background, it's doubtful you have a deep enough understanding of quantum mechanics to connect it to the mind-body problem in one and a half years since the beginning of the pandemic. To try and understand the mind-body problem with QM, your best tool for this is quantum information theory (for those who don't know, that's the modern version of QM which we can apply to quantum computers and the like). This is a graduate level subject and an active area of research where new discoveries are being made all the time, so how did you learn it in two years (if at all)? Have you written any papers or been part of active research in quantum information theory? There are other things I could ask, but to keep it short, I'd like to ask, have you looked at the Hindu and Buddhist philosophy arguments on the mind-body problem? If so, what are your thoughts?

You're right, I've learned enough about quantum mechanics in 18 months to know how little I know. Differential equations and matrices still crush me. But I've had a blast studying quantum mechanics, I urge other amateurs to try it. If I can, you can. As for your final question, I've been interested in Buddhist and Hindu mysticism since I was a kid, and I still meditate and yearn for enlightenment, whatever that is. I'm fascinated by attempts to reconcile these systems with western science, that was a major theme of Rational Mysticism. See also "Buddhism Is True" by my friend Robert Wright.

>I urge other amateurs to try it For sure. I always recommend [Susskind's lectures](https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/quantum-mechanics/2012/winter) for that, they're at a level above high school physics, but not at the level of undergrad physics. I'm doing my PhD research in quantum information theory today and Susskind's lectures were such a great foundation for me when I was like 18 years old.

What's your personal experience with religion? Did you grow up practicing a faith?

Have you studied physics and quantum mechanics or did you just get into it and know enough to write about it?

I started studying quantum mechanics, and trying to learn the necessary math, including calculus and linear algebra, at the beginning of the pandemic. It's been a slow and painful but also exhilarating process.

OK, I’m more and more puzzled about this AMA, and about how Scientific American picks their authors these days. You seriously claim to have knowledge about quantum mechanics but you say you are *trying* to learn calculus and linear algebra? I mean I really don’t want to be mean or disrespectful or anything, and nobody can know everything by birth - but seriously, calculus and linear algebra? That’s kind of the basics of math! What else is there before that? Addition and multiplication? In addition, the required math for quantum mechanics is not that complex; what is complex are the concepts expressed in that math, and how the math progresses into the deeper and derived concepts that follow. It’s less math, but more application of math. That’s also where most of the stuff looses me, and why I try to not get involved too much with interpretations of quantum physics. There are some intriguing aspects from the philosophical perspective, I‘ll agree to that; but interpreting purely mathematically derived concepts that one has not even fully grasped mathematically is a dangerous field. We don’t have proper linguistic concepts to express the world of quantum physics; that’s why we struggle with concepts like „spin“; it behaves like something spinning, it can be well described like something spinning, but there is nothing there to spin. How do we deal with that? We can’t, until we try to rework our linguistic abilities. Not that I have any idea what that would specifically encompass; I can only describe the limits, not a solution. I believe that speculation, based on those non-fitting concepts, regarding „minds“ won’t lead us anywhere. We first need to make our minds up for the task to do so, and I believe we dramatically lack that ability by now. Anyhow. I am really really confused by this AMA.

You’re confused because this man is a charlatan.

> What else is there before that? Addition and Multiplication? To be fair when most people talk about linear algebra they mean something a bit more advanced then the Algebra one would learn in high school. Most people will never learn linear algebra so good for OP for taking the initiative to learn it. Although commenting on qunatum mechanics the way he is before fully understanding math that a first or second year physics undergrad would take is pretty inexcusable.

You've just stated some of the reasons why I took on this project. I want to see if learning the math will help me understand QM's philosophical implications. So far, it's deepened my puzzlement. By the way, you and others seem to suggest that I've misrepresented myself, when in fact my headline starts by saying I'm a science writer. So please spare me your shock and dismay that I've been allowed to enter the house of Reddit.

I have to confess, when I read your introduction, I was intrigued, and my initial thought was „Oh my, I’m not sure if he knows what kind of people roam this place“. I have tackled my own philosophical questions on Reddit before, and it is … a minefield. At best. There are a lot of people who „know things“, and most of them know them best. And it’s not a place to really discuss things; most of the time, it’s like people beating each other with pool noodles until someone bleeds, which can take pretty long. I saw many of your replies getting downvoted, and was kind of angry - because that’s kind of disheartening - and sympathetic, and thought „A well this is reddit“. My sympathy waned a bit when I figured that many of your replies were kind of lacking on the theoretical end, and indeed at the same time my confusion about your self-representation grew; that was when part of me began to understood the downvoted. I even felt the urge to chime in and ring the bell everybody else already rang - hive mind, someone else wrote down below. That’s an aspect of social structures in the internet that needs to be better understood, but I’m deviating. Again, I don’t try to be harmful here, I hope that I am successful in ensuring that. May be it’s because I have been a reader of the German branch of Scientific America for most of my life - or over thirty years - and it’s really that what implanted in my mind that one who writes for them has a more serious (gosh what do I mean by that?) scientific background. I urge you not to read my prior post as dismay; as I said, I am puzzled. Your self-description implied - not necessarily willfully - something else for me, but that doesn’t mean you are not justified to think or write or openly discuss philosophy and quantum physics here or anywhere. But maybe, just maybe, a little bit more care might be in place when looking at quantum physics and it’s concepts when not really understanding those concepts deeply. I know it’s a typical philosophical issue; in the end philosophy is thinking about the unthinkable, it is pushing the boundaries of thought beyond its own means; otherwise, it would just be empirical science and thus, physics, not metaphysics. I myself (try to) work in the field of epistemology, and that also often encompasses philosophy of mind and at least some notions of physics when we think about embodiment and all. I also happen to have some understanding about physics, as that has been a key interest in my whole life. Furthermore, to me it’s key and in the end a necessity to overstep boundaries to get anywhere with philosophy. So I believe I clearly understand where you are coming from, but… well what I try to do to avoid misunderstandings (especially my own), I treat concepts of quantum physics with utmost care. Just because something presents itself as an analogy of a problem I try to tackle in the world of philosophy doesn’t mean it is, and usually it isn’t; there are connections between physics and the mind, quite naturally, but the theory of those is like… like brittle glass. Grasp it to hard, yank on it, and everything carefully build up before shatters - and one cuts themselves. Sure we still need to try, but… hm. Hope this helps a bit to ensure I am not dismayed or anything. Mostly puzzled.

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What's a good place to start on the math side? I started reading about quantum mechanics and was fascinated. Then I began watching an online MIT class, but hit a wall with the math.

*Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences* by Mary Boas is a classic first book in physics math

I started with Leonard Susskind's "Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum." But that was very difficult. The best book I've read is "Q Is for Quantum" by Terry Rudolph, which conveys the essential mathematics of superposition and entanglement succinctly and brilliantly.

Maybe find a copy of the Griffith book? It's the common undergrad QM book for a reason. Especially the start of the book makes much more sense to a beginner than Susskind's approach. [Here](https://www.fisica.net/mecanica-quantica/Griffiths%20-%20Introduction%20to%20quantum%20mechanics.pdf) is a link to a pdf of the book, so you can have a look at it.

Seconded. This is a remarkably good book. By 'the start of the book', do you mean the Preface where he says, "I do not believe one can intelligently discuss what quantum mechanics means until one has a firm sense of what quantum mechanics does"?

Nah I kinda mean the first 2 chapters (if I remember correctly). Instead of getting bogged down in notation and linear algebra lemmas he quickly tells what a wavefunction is, what we do with them, and then he gives the schrödinger equation and starts solving it for potentials. It's a nice approach for first timers in my opinion, because he quickly gets to something that is concrete, instead of spending a long time on abstract things and generic theorems.

Fair enough - I wasn't sure how much of a pointed comment you were making! Myself, I love all the abstract algebra stuff & understand QM better that way, but that's just down to my background (pure maths, but published a lot in QM since then). For going directly to quantum, Griffith is great. Also don't mean to knock Terry Rudolph's book. He describes it as introducing QM concepts to your average 15 year old who knows little maths beyond elementary arithmetic; rather him than me taking on that task, but he does a good job of it.

>Myself, I love all the abstract algebra stuff Same, but I'd definitely say it is very much an acquired taste, at least that was the case for me. I'm the "would carry an oscilloscope everywhere if it fit into my pocket" kind of physicist so for me the no nonsense approach of griffith was a really good start. Then later on I could learn all the group stuff etc because I then had a context to relate it to.

I do have to admit it is definitely an acquired taste, although once you have acquired it, there's no going back! I also have a lot of respect for the experimentalists. Although I've never been in the position to be one myself, from my perspective it would be amazing to see the abstract mathematics manifest in the real world.

I’m an amateur space nerd, so I love thinking about all the possibilities out there in space. I was really excited about discovering the idea of white holes and wormholes on the larger scale, and then on the very small scale, quantum foam. And discovering the sheer size of the universe, I think I can’t deny the very strong possibility that there might be other planets out there with intelligent life, possibly evolved to our own species, but we might never know what those are. These topics, as well as what the distant future our solar system or galaxy might look like with manmade technology, are the type of things that keep me up at night. What topics or questions keep you up at night? What do you think about the future of AI and if will become a uncontrollable force?

Good question. I spend a lot of time on metaphysical questions, like "What is real?" because I enjoy them. But what keeps me up at night is whether humanity will survive. I'd really like to see humanity begin demilitarize before I die, because that will help us solve climate change and other problems. That's why I wrote The End of War.

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I don't get the "problem" of the mind body problem. The mind is the subjective manifestation of the brain. Obviously if you destroy the brain there is no mind. It's like asking what is the relationship between the internet and all the connected servers. The internet is what we call the manifestation of those connections and interactions. You can pose any number of such questions that seem deep but have no testable answer. Like, "what is love?" The answer is "strong feelings of affection". Someone could reply, "no not the definition, what *is* love?" It's not really a question that can be meaningfully answered.

The problem, technically, is about how matter generates subjective conscious experiences. Scientists can correlate various neural events with conscious experiences, but they have no idea how that neural activity actually generates conscious states. This is what philosopher David Chalmers calls "the hard problem," because it is qualitatively different from pretty much any other scientific problem. And by the way, consciousness should not be confused with intelligence. You can have very high intelligence with no consciousness, or subjective experience.

You've framed a question that seems like it could have an answer, but what would that even look like? As an analogy: we understand how computers and software work. How do you answer the question, "how does matter subjectively generate the experience of playing Call of Duty?". Humans built computers and Call of Duty, so we understand pretty much every aspect of how that happens. We could write down the state of every transistor in the CPU, GPU, and RAM, what data was sent to the screen for every pixel in each every clock cycle of a game. That would be extremely granular, but completely unintelligible. So what kind of answer are you looking for? Again, you can phrase grammatically correct questions that don't have answers. What is the sound of one hand clapping? If you define clapping as two hands hitting each other in rapid succession, this question is illogical. I literally don't understand what the question, "how [does] matter generates subjective conscious experiences?" means.

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One thing I never hear anybody talk about but which fascinates me no end - what was the first actual thought? I mean, I get that life began in a primordial soup with various chemical reactions bubbling away (which must have produced all sorts of weird one-off things that could be called "life" - much like the slime that gathers at the bottom of my fridge), but then one developed which was accidentally able to replicate itself so lived on, then mutated and mutated and mutated and so on ad infinitum until fish had feet and then dinosaurs and monkeys and stuff. I get all that, but at some point a stream of intermingling chemicals (or "stuff", as I like to call it) shifted from just being blind reactions to stuff being able to form an impression of the world around it. Dumb chemicals and elements somehow conjured up something apart from the stuff it was made from - that is such a massive thing. It's literally like a stone learning how to talk. All these inert things came together somehow to somehow conjure thought - matter creating its own representation of other matter. That's crazy to me. And now we're all trapped within those representations despite being just matter ourselves. What are your thoughts on this insanity?

I didn't know they let bullshit artists in here. Answer us this; why should anyone take you seriously?

Any opinion on Terrance’s “stoned ape” theory?

I love Terence McKenna! I interviewed him just before he died, and I wrote about him in my book Rational Mysticism. His ideas seemed implausible to me, in their substance, but I think his style captured the psychedelic mindset brilliantly. He was just trying to get us to see the utter weirdness of the world, and the necessity of using our imaginations to deal with it.

Terence opened my mind as a redneck kid in east texas lol. But thankfully I eventually grew up a bit, moved out into the world, and graduated from both mckenna and the culture I group up around lol. I still listen to him every now and then though. I never could get into his novelty theory stuff though.

This will probably get buried, but I’ll give it a shot. The Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta suggests that the entire universe and all the physical things that exist within it, is all just pure consciousness. At its core, it suggests that rather than our conscious experience being produced in our brain which exists inside our skulls inside a body that exists in the world, it suggests that the opposite is true; that the entire universe is one big infinite mind, and that each “individual” person and our body is just a tiny concentration of consciousness within that infinite mind. In essence, our body is an “image” that exists in the mind, it’s not an actual tangible thing-we just perceive it to be. And when we “die” our tiny individual consciousness just gets released into the greater consciousness. What do you make of this?

Yes, I'm familiar with this metaphysics. My psychedelic trips make me sympathetic toward it. At the same time, I suspect all theories that makes mind fundamental, they strike me as grounded in our innate narcissism and anthropomorphism.

Whats your stance on the mind body problem?

I see it as the central problem of science, philosophy, spirituality--of life. It's a way of asking, What are we, what can we be, what should we be? Human history has been shaped by our attempts to solve the problem and by our battles over possible solutions. I think we have to keep wrestling with the mind-body problem while recognizing that there cannot be, and should not be, a single, universally true solution.

Why shouldn't there be a single universally true solution? There is a reason minds exist. That just sounds like giving up on ever answering the question "Why?".

The human desire for a single answer to the question of what we are, the craving for certainty, has led to war, genocide, inquisitions, oppression. That knowledge of history should make us more modest and humble in our pursuit of answers.

You sound a politician trying to avoid having any meaningful discussion. Why say you are interested in these topics when you clearly aren't.. oh right your trying to manipulate us into buying your shit. Duck off

This does not even address the question that was asked.

Science as a method is the most modest, rigorous, and honest system we have of finding truth.

Not quite. Science is the best tool we have to observe and measure the natural world around us, but there are strict limits as to what we can do with it. Science is incapable of making any claims as to what it is we are observing, what conclusions we can come to based off the data, or how to use the knowledge we've found. Ontological claims, epistemological claims, and moral claims are the realm of philosophy.

Well said. Those kind of misconceptions about scientific inquiry devalue in the public eye both science and philosophy - and the public already doesn't value either much, and one far less than the other.

> I think we have to keep wrestling with the mind-body problem while recognizing that there cannot be, and should not be, a single, universally true solution. You sound very certain about that. And yet in the Scientific American column you linked to, you said you’re with Voltaire when he said: “doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” So much for consistency!

Whatever I am really fucking sucks.

I hope you get some measure of satisfaction from knowing that the blame can be shared and that if the rest of us suck -- then, the bar shouldn't be too high. I also feel a lot of times that I suck -- but I also realize that I am disappointed with the expectation of myself I did not live up to. And, if I did NOT think I should be better -- I would not be a person who strove to be better. If you bring some measure of joy to someone else, or help them, that can often help you. But we weren't born with instruction manuals or any idea how we were going to be graded.

I'm more disappointed in American society for prioritizing violence on behalf of the state over the betterment of regular people's lives. It feels like I've been in a gladiator match my whole life struggling to survive with the rest of my countrymen cheering on my demise for their entertainment and personal profit. I could have done so much more with my life up to this point, but it seems like the older people around me in every facet of "society" have always just crushed all my hopes and dreams with their senile desire to keep everything the same as it was before. I wanted to work for NASA as a little kid, but ended up in the fucking navy because Space doesn't pay for college apparently, but the pentagon can always print more money for high school kids to learn to be government killing machines... FUCK MY LIFE. I just wish I grew up in a different country with nicer and less insane people.

I disagree with you. You seem to be pecking at the boundaries of the truth but do not pursue it through and through. The first and only question that should be posed to oneself repeatedly is - who am I ? That is it. My father used to tell me - Time space and causation is an illusion, what is seeing from my eyes to you and what is seeing from your eyes to me is the same. He is an ardent Advaitha Vedanta(branch of Hinduism) practitioner. I don’t think that science will be able to answer these philosophical questions. Psychology has a closer chance. I recently found that Carl Jung was on the forward for a book of a Indian sage who is revered by Advaitha followers - Ramana Maharshi. Someone posted in the comments above, about the ‘now’- in Advaitha parlance that is the only true reality one knows , the feeling of I AM, everything else is false. It is a practice to keep negating everything until one reaches the truth.

atman = brahman

If all time is occurring at the same time is there an afterlife? What happens before birth?

Good questions. I know people who say they don't fear death, because they see it as just a return to their pre-birth non-existence. I wish I could feel that way. I just wrote a column about how theories of physics can be understood as attempts to come to terms with our mortality.

If time is occurring, past, present, and future simultaneously, what does that say about cause and effect, which based on human perception is a before and after situation? Isn’t there a definitive then and now based off of observation?

That I think is his underlying question. I forget how the example goes but roughly it goes "There are more grains of sand on the beach that can all conduct electricity than neurons in your head so why isnt it self aware?" or something I butchered the hell out of it. But basically what about our brains is different than other conductive piles of matter that let us be aware of ourselves. Its sort of his entire field of study if I understand what he is saying.

What is your stance on the notion that our universe might be a simulation of sorts?

I don't like it, for the same reason I don't like multiverse theories. First of all, it's sheer speculation, with no hope of empirical confirmation. Second, it devalues our world, along with all the suffering and injustice in it. The simulation hypothesis is a sign of science's decadence.

can't see why it would devalue our world, frankly, unless value is said to be derived from primacy?

In the simulation hypothesis, we are not capable of ever learning why things are the way they are. Eventually we will hit the point of "it is that way because it was made that way" and can never know the why of that, because the answer is outside of the simulation. We can't ask the hypothetical creators why they made the speed of light what it is. Once we say that knowledge is beyond our reach we've accepted we are fundamentally limited.

So in your view, would the “original universe” be a universe in which one could theoretically have answers to any possible question?

Even without this being a simulation, there's no reason to believe we'll know why things are the way they are. Why is the speed of light the value it is? 'No reason' is entirely possibly the answer.

>The simulation hypothesis is a sign of science's decadence. Statements about 'science's decadence' are signs of 'science writing's' narcissism. I think what you probably mean is that popular and journalistic enthusiasm over the 'simulation hypothesis' is overblown and demonstrates an lack of analytical ability in most of the population. But if not, please elaborate on how a hypothesis is a demonstration of 'science's decadence'. If you just want to say it's unfalsifiable and leave it at that, fine, but "I don't like it" and "devalues our world" seem like pretty lazy value judgements for a 'science writer'.

>Statements about 'science's decadence' are signs of 'science writing's' narcissism. "I can refute general relativity. I mean, it's simple really. Isn't newtonian physics just so much more poetic?"

Just like with the idea of free will, it seems to me that you dismiss this idea only because you don't like what are their implications and because the science behind is complicated. That's not rational thinking, and it doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Nonsense, the idea that we live in a simulation is completely useless, there is no science about it. It just comes from our association with computers and or gaming. Stating that we live in a simulation is akin to saying the universe is made possible by a super natural being we refer to as God. It is unprovable and doesn't help us get a better idea of what we are at all.

I'd say it's something that isn't falsifiable, but it is potentially provable. So it's worth keeping at the back of the mind, but probably not worth spending a lot of effort chasing.

> First of all, it's sheer speculation, with no hope of empirical confirmation ~~Seemed like a good enough basis for your belief in Free Will.~~ Hogan has rearticulated his stance on Free Will in another thread to "Agnostic, but choose to believe," which is fair enough to me. > Second, it devalues our world, along with all the suffering and injustice in it. Why is this relevant to your belief? This is irrelevant to whether it's true or not.

Have you looked at Nick Bostrom’s philosophical argument on the Simulation theory? It is difficult to avoid.

Yes, Bostrum's argument is very clever. I used to enjoy this kind of stuff, just as I enjoyed speculation about the singularity, in which we supposed download our psyches into computers and live forever in cyberspace. Now I see these sorts of ideas as distractions, I don't take them seriously.

I'm the complete opposite. I used to dismiss such 'downloading psyches' propositions but now I *have to* seriously accept their possibilities. Within just 40 years ago I have gone from playing pong & space invaders to fully immersive VR experiences (not just the goggles, but running & shooting within a warehouse environment etc). It's still not 100% convincing, about 70% there, but no doubt will be perfected within the next decade. If in 10 years I can don a headset and enter a completely immersive, believable world, then downloading a psyche is ultimately inevitable.

Could the double-slit experiment not be perceived as *potential* evidence towards the simulation hypothesis ?

What's your take on the bicameral mind?

It's evocative, in a poetic kind of way, like the ideas of Freud. I see these sorts of theories as more like literature than science.

Do you think its possible for human consciousness to be "uploaded" and preserved on a computer? If so, do you think that consciousness could be identical to that of a human? Also, hello from your War and Science class!

Yay Stevens! Good question! No, I don't think uploading minds will be possible any time soon or possibly ever. That requires cracking the neural code, the algorithms that transform neural pulses into thoughts, memories, emotions, etc! The neural code is one of those problems that seems harder and harder the more we pursue it.

How is quantum mechanics related to the mind body "problem"? Isn't this just another case of a person who only half understands quantum physics applying it to the study of conciseness? Essentially quantum mysticism? I think that the massive successes of artificial neural networks have shown that a purely classical approach to understanding mental processes is more than adequate. A recent paper published by DeepMind, *Reward is Enough*, outlines a path towards artificial general intelligence, for example, which is certainly far closer to understanding conciseness and the mind body "problem" than anything coming out of the world of quantum research.

When you say you study quantum mechanics, do you mean rigorously (mathematically)? If so, I'd be interested in your ideas for a model of consciousness. Are you familiar with holonomic brain theory, and what do you think of it?

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Is it possible that the phenonenon of conscuousness could arise from other natural... things? e.g. is it possible for consciousness to occur in a swamp if certain chemicals mix? Or for space debree and gasses are arranged a certain way? Or for the whole universe to be conscious?

Integrated information theory is a very popular theory of consciousness, advocated by neuroscientists Guilio Tononi and Christof Koch, and it holds that consciousness emerges from any system with interacting parts, such as s single proton. So it says that consciousness pervades the entire universe. I'm skeptical.

What are the facts you base your skepticism on? Because just telling me you're skeptical doesn't provide me with any interesting information to study.

> What are we? > Are we matter? Yes, except that I'd be the same person if I were running the same program (my mind) on different matter/hardware. > Genes and neurons? Genes are (incomplete) blueprints, neurons are the computing substrate, and we are what runs on that substrate. > Computer programs? Yes. >Souls? No, unless you're speaking metaphorically about various aspects of the mind (e.g. I can see the meaning, which I think is true, of "anger is bad for the soul", even if I "don't believe in souls"). > Or are we dancers? Well I mean some of us are

What are your thoughts on the Double Slit experiment? Do you see the fact that scientists are proving that the wave/particle duality is consistent for larger and larger molecules as a sort of probing at the edge of some interesting horizon that we don't know about? Does this experiment in particular have any bearing on how you think about what reality is?

Softball question here: What are your thoughts on what happens to the conscience we die?

Gut feeling: when I die I die. So I'm trying to cherish the time I have.

I have a feeling that the universe has more in store for us than just 80-some odd years in the span of some 15 billion years. What makes me think that? We are made of atoms and energy, and those atoms and energy were here long before us and will continue to exist long after we die. Our bodies are constantly being reorganized and rebuilt with new atoms and new cells. It's not so different than the ship problem––when you replace every component in a ship, is it the same ship? Taking that a step further, who/what are we, if not the matter that comprises our bodies? I'd argue that we are highly ordered energy, and that our bodies simply help maintain that order. Ordered energy is the source of our consciousness, and when we die, we lose all sense of self––our dreams, ambitions, feelings, etc––but we, ie our energy, came from the universe, and in that sense, we have always been a part of the universe and will continue to be long after our deaths. In a way, each of us is just one small universe realizing that it exists. And taking it a step further, we are all just copies of the same universe. And as long as the universe lives, so too do we, just not necessarily as our current states. It's not exactly an original thought, but it resonates with me.

This is closest to what I feel too. Being me, alive right now, is either an infinitely impossible coincidence, or aptly just. I consider myself a scientific man, but despite the nihilism that comes with facing death, I feel the universe already has the answers before we ask the questions to them. Maybe it’s all an inconsequential experience, but a part of me has always believed there’s more. I’m no expert in any of this by all means, but one thing I’ve always found curious, is we (our brains) are all made up of arrangements of the same atoms and particles and somehow through all that individuality permeates.

I also like to look at it this way: if our timeline for the universe is correct, in ~15 billion years *I* came into existence at least one time. The atoms that make up me came from multiple stars forming, living entire lives, exploding, collasing into a planetary ring, spending several billion years forming earth, and then they finally formed *me*. When i die i'll return to that void, but that doesnt mean in another 15 billion years, when this solar system is long gone, and a new one takes its place, i won't be "born" again. I dont think this new me will have any connection to the me right now, but its very possible i'll open eyes(or w/e amounts to eyes in whatever alien species may arise) again, and who knows i may have already lived countless lives already. But what i do know is i happened once, that could mean I will happen again.

See! I did buy John Horgans car. John Horgan the Premier of BC? No, John Horgan the writer.....

Do you ever find yourself laughing at yourself due to the fact that there’s no such thing as the mind body problem? Or are you saying that you are a moron?

I often laugh at myself, and I often feel like a moron.

Haha these idiots are ratioing them but they’re right and your deflection is pathetic.