[Retric]

Yes in that when they something outside their field that’s ‘a little out there’ Nobel laureate’s aren’t as a group more useful than random noise. Similarly a crank can happen to say a true statement, but the issue is the process with which the statement is derived is flawed to the point of uselessness.

The derogatory aspect of calling someone a crank is obviously uncalled for, but as a shorthand it’s not unreasonable to use the term.

[sarchertech]

If a Nobel laureate says they have an interesting hypothesis that they’d like test and that idea isn’t obviously impossible, it’s probably best not to dismiss it as crank science.

Walter Alvarez is another Nobel laureate who proposed a theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. Many people thought that was crank science.

And it’s important to note he had another out there idea that there were hidden chambers in the pyramids of Egypt. That one turned out to be wrong.

What distinguished his theories from crank science is that he was open to the idea that they were wrong and was interested in actually using the scientific method to investigate them.

[Retric]

> it’s probably best not to dismiss it as crank science

Why? There’s a lot of Nobel laureates over time who collectively made many such claims, so you can easily pick examples in both directions.

My point is more such ideas aren’t accurate enough for anything beyond preliminary testing by actual scientific investigation which sometimes does validate them but also commonly disproves them. There’s zero reason for the average person to consider their validity.

Your example is a perfect demonstration of why most people ignoring such things is a good idea, these things don’t simply disappear without investigation.

[sarchertech]

I mean sure you shouldn’t go out and by vitamin C supplements because a Nobel Prize winning chemists tell you to.

But you also shouldn’t go around immediately dismissing any theories they have as crank science.

[Retric]

Ok if you believe that way what exactly do you gain by doing so?

Paying attention has a cost so what’s the payoff?

[sarchertech]

Who says you have to believe it or pay attention to it? What does an average person gain by paying attention to unproven theories in any discipline. If it interests you, pay attention, if it doesn’t, don’t.

I just said you shouldn’t dismiss it as crank science.

[Retric]

Ahh, I was agreeing with ignoring it / dismissal not the label.

[jibal]

No one did that. Penrose's theories have been dismissed as crank science for good reasons given.

[sarchertech]

He has good relationships and is respected by experts in many fields. If he was dismissed as a crank he couldn’t have found 3 incredibly respected scientists to debate his theories in one of his books.

Plenty of people think his theories are wrong or unlikely. The only people “dismissing them as crank science” are people in that have unwavering faith in the idea that consciousness arises from computable processes.

[Apocryphon]

Maybe it is, Nobel prize winners might be so hyper-specialized in their field that they have superficial at best understandings of others. Engineer’s Disease writ large.

[sarchertech]

He’s been writing on consciousness for 40 years now and he’s been studying the topic since undergrad. Also most of what he talks about is soundly within his field.

The only thing that’s really not is the microtuble thing and he collaborated with someone else on that.

That’s also the least interesting thing he says I think because he admits it’s just an interesting place to look for quantum effects and he has no idea if he’s right.

[jibal]

Nothing that Penrose has talked about in re consciousness is "soundly within his field" other than "the microtubule thing" and his collaborator, anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, is a crank among cranks.

Also, Penrose has not been "studying the topic since undergrad" ... he's been bothered by the notion that he is "just a computer" since then, but he didn't get into seriously addressing it until much later, and he's never studied it--he notoriously ignores the entirety of the literature of philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

> That’s also the least interesting thing he says I think because he admits it’s just an interesting place to look for quantum effects and he has no idea if he’s right.

This is simply not accurate.

And the fact is that Penrose is completely irrelevant to the subject of consciousness other than via an argument from invalid authority.

P.S. The response is disingenuous and discrediting ... I won't respond to that person again, especially after seeing this comment: "I’m in the Penrose camp that Turing machines can’t be conscious which is required for true AGI" --- this is pure ideology. TMs are clearly adequate for AGI even if somehow "TMs can't be conscious" ... c.f. Chalmers' philosophical zombies.

[jibal]

>Clearly TMs can be conscious

It's a lie to claim that I said or even implied this.

OTOH, the "camp that Turing machines can't be conscious" is pure ideology and is based on repeatedly proven logic errors--Lucas was known to be wrong about Godel before Penrose came along and embraced his errors. And it's very common for people in that camp to project their own unsubstantiated baseless faith "that Turing machines can't be conscious" (which for Penrose, like many others in the camp, was a consequence of a semi-religious metaphysical notion that he wasn't "just a computer") onto rational informed people, with rhetoric like "people in that have unwavering faith in the idea that consciousness arises from computable processes" -- it's the logically default position, a consequence of intelligence and knowledge, not faith. The hilarious thing is that "consciousness arises from quantum effects" doesn't get the no-TM faithers what they want--they're still "just" machines, even if the machines use qubits rather than bits.

[sarchertech]

Man you’re replying all over the place, I’m having a hard time keeping up. You’re also spending a lot of time on arguing with someone who has been discredited over a theory that has been discredited.

Penrose and Lucas’ argument may or may not be correct, but that still doesn’t imply that consciousness can arise from computable processes. There is no reason that it should. There is absolutely nothing to suggest this should be the default position.

The only way to get to this position is through faith. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong. But it’s not a falsifiable position since you can’t prove consciousness.

[sarchertech]

None of this is accurate.

P.S. this response was merely a condensed version of he response to my reply. Here’s a longer one.

>Nothing that Penrose has talked about in re consciousness is "soundly within his field"

Quantum gravity, physics, and mathematical logic are clearly within his field. He’s a physicist, mathematician, and logician

>Also, Penrose has not been "studying the topic since undergrad" ..

He says that he has.

>he notoriously ignores the entirety of the literature of philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

Disagreement with some members of a field isn’t the same as ignoring it.

>This is simply not accurate.

It is. I heard it from the horses mouth.

>And the fact is that Penrose is completely irrelevant to the subject of consciousness other than via an argument from invalid authority.

It’s a field that has never produced anything concrete or beneficial to anyone outside the field. I’m unsure what relevance even means there.

>P.S. The response is disingenuous and discrediting ... I won't respond to that person again,

Yet you did. I saw your edit.

>Clearly TMs can be conscious

I guess that’s that then.

[Retric]

> He’s a physicist, mathematician, and logician

You just placed biology and neuroscience firmly outside of his wheelhouse. Just the size of the structures involved, temperature, timescales, and distance between neurons alone is a serious problem with his theory here.

If he is approaching things from a purely hypothetical standpoint it’s an unlikely but reasonable idea, but it utterly fails as part of how a larger system we actually understand quite a bit about works. Which is always the hard part of science, you’re not just fitting a single curve but thousands of different datasets.