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Can We Feel What It’s Like to Be Quantum?
Underground experiments in the heart of the Italian mountains are testing the links between consciousness and collapse theories of quantum physics.
Blogger Johannes Kleiner wrote on Jul. 3, 2020 @ 11:52 GMT
Abstract: Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by Giulio Tononi and collaborators, has emerged as one of the leading scientific theories of consciousness. At the heart of IIT is an algorithm which, based on the level of integration of the internal causal relationships of a physical system in a given state, claims to determine the intensity and quality of its conscious experience. However, IIT is known to possess several technical problems, and is only applicable to simple classical physical systems. To be treated as fundamental, it should ideally be extended to more general physical theories.
In this work, we investigate the formal structure of IIT, and define a notion of generalised integrated information theory in order to address these problems. Formally such a theory specifies a mapping from a given theory of physics to one of conscious experience, each satisfying minimal conditions needed for the IIT algorithm.
In particular we show how a generalisation of IIT may be constructed from any suitable physical process theory, as described mathematically by a symmetric monoidal category. Specialising to classical processes yields IIT as usually defined, while restricting to quantum processes yields the recently proposed Quantum IIT of Zanardi et al. as a special case.
Being a passionate follower of the existing practices of the Integrated Information Theory I wanted to present my dearest compliments for all the work you have been doing so far on this area. I find IIT as the most promising and exciting work on the field of consciousness and constantly follow all the published work of Giulio Tononi and his team.
Currently we are building a new scientific discovery center in our property in Germany and would love to have you as a guest in our new laboratory. We would love to work together with you and consultate about our researches.
Best regards
this post has been edited by the author since its original submission
Jason Mark Wolfe replied on Jul. 9, 2020 @ 17:34 GMT
It would be nice to imagine that the Germans are working on gravity propulsion technology in some secret laboratory. In some secret unerground facility, you are entangling photons, blueshifting/redshifting them in a way that causes the quantum states of entanglements to align linearly, in a non random pattern.
Jason Mark Wolfe wrote on Jul. 9, 2020 @ 19:53 GMT
In all honesty, I'm not even sure what intelligent and educated people think about consciousness anymore. There are those who have abandoned the best explanation we had, that a Creator-God set the stage, the big bang, created life. As near as I can tell, the smartest people we have who continue this way, stare into the chaos and entropy of mathematics, and continue to see nothing that explains the world we live in. If the smartest people we know can't give us answers without help from the divine, then maybe the atheists were wrong.