[Melchior]

Originally Posted by joelr

It's better to drop parsimony (less is better) when dealing with the physical universe because through experience the logic is not sound. It's regarded as an ok rule of thumb when constructing models but final theories often do not follow that pattern. In fact it slowed the progress of many discoveries, even DNA.

Don't worry, I know. Current theories must always conform to experimental data whether or not prior theory does. Doing otherwise would be ignoring the world for what it is (This is one of the reasons why I don't have too many qualms with quantum mechanics, unlike most of the texts I've read attempting to describe it as confusing or weird. It's not weird, that's just how the world is. To say otherwise would be weird. ) That said though, in the realm of the up to date theories, phenomenologically, the 'simplest' explanation that fully explains the phenomena is generally regarded as the 'best' one, that rule of thumb you mention. In other words, I don't care about out of date theories (well, except for using them out of convenience at times ).

Even an emergent property has no reason to possess the creation
abilities that consciousness holds. If a computer holds information about the position and momentum of a piece of reality (any sub-atomic particle and even now some much larger macroscopic objects containing billions of atoms) nothing changes about it's existence. It is a non-physical piece of potential information. Once consciousness contains the knowledge/thought of this same information the object will become a physical object. Even if the knowledge is gained far into the future, the past event will change to reflect the conscious recognition of this information.

The Newtonian mechanistic era did not call for this, it regarded everything as a seperate machine-like object and these old deterministic beliefs are still in the majority today. They give out the idea that consciousness is just another complex machine.

The LOA implies we send out some type of subtle energy which in turn somehow shapes how events and things happen to us. We can clearly see the possibility of this energy at work in these experiments.

The physicist R. Rhodes gives a great explanation of those findings here:

The Reality Program

He starts out with some background first but you may already know all or some of this stuff? If so then it's a matter of incorporating the results into a statement about consciousness rather than, as many physicists do, just look at it as a strange curiosity not to be pondered on and in turn ridiculed by peers.

Why did Fred Alan Wolf suddenly stop supporting LOA after the media got ahold of it and it became similar to ufos or ghosts in credibility? He was getting too much flack from his contemporaries.

What was interesting for me was that during the time I was reading through that set of explanations, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had come across something like it in the past, if not this one specifically, then something quite similar, down to the comparison with a computer, but that is a common comparison I take it. But yeah, as for the background, I did pretty much already know all of it already, including the violation of Bell's inequalities, quantum tunneling, 'identical' wavicles (those particle-wave electrons), speed of light 'limit', and then some.

The problem I have with putting these statements to consciousness is that we don't really know what this consciousness thing is. When we study the brain, per say, all we see are the 'same' things that we observe in the laboratory for a double slit experiment. Also of note, because the equipment we use to measure the experiments are not classical in nature either, but also obey the same laws as the stuff that they are measuring (i'm sure you would agree with this statement, especially if those toasters brought up in the example by the notes were replaced by electron detectors), it's not that far of a stretch to apply the same rules to ourselves. I mean, if you look at the eye, it is an example of a detector, our brain, the 'computer' that analyzes the incoming information of that detector (such as the one that they recorded information on in an experiment, but destroyed the data before/after looking at the results of the interference so that they couldn't tell either way). It pretty then boils down to the question of: what makes us so special? Well, I don't think too much. Although, if i were to make a comparison, we would be akin to the spaceships in Conway's Game of Life.

Another point I'd have to make is that the analogy with the computer while a good one is also 'incomplete'. for a computer, it's not just the program that is there. there has to be the hardware for the software to run on (I think I mentioned this somewhere, if not here, then probably one of my other posts... >.>). In any case, I'll bring back that one quote here as well: "It's all hardware". Because if you think about a computer, even the computer program is a result of the underlying hardware performing the instructions. The 'information' of a program, by itself does nothing. It has nothing to operate on, no substance in of itself either. Of course, the computer is just an analogy and analogies tend to break down at times. What I do want to get across here is that information existing on its own doesn't really explain our universe as well as the idea that the information actually comes from somewhere, namely something 'real' as opposed to 'imaginary'. Also, I think if you look at the mathematics of the 'rules' which are also 'information' (information about what? I say it's about the physical universe, and not just an information one), they tend to find real answers (as opposed to imaginary ones, mathematically that is...), at least in QM they give 'real' probabilities that can be measured empirically.

Speaking of computers, I think the 'notes' are also a bit outdated (2002 for the most part) in saying that computers are sequential machines. There are plenty of applications these days (particularly in the field of graphics) that use the parallel computing capabilities of a graphics processor to complete similar tasks simultaneously. Granted, each individual processor is sequential, but then again, so is each individual neuron in your brain.
**EDIT: Nevermind, it seems that this bit about parallel computing was mentioned in the Endnotes of Ch. 5. However, the comparison of a processor to a neuron still stands. Here's another thought while i'm here: the simplest processor could be a wavicle.

So in an entirely physical world, the emergent consciousness doesn't really possess the creation abilities that it holds because all parts of the world hold the exact same qualities. I think that it is the interaction between the real that cause for what seem to be the individual realities of the real. and it's these interactions that would then in turn serve as the basis for consciousness.

This isn't to say that I don't believe in LoA at all. Just that if it exists, and I've experienced 'evidence' myself that might support it, it would exist as a result of physical laws as well, ones that we might not have yet discovered (although, if i had to choose one out of the current pool of ideas that I know of, it would be due to some sort of quantum entanglement )

One more thing, in the 'paradox' of Zeno's of the runner, I just want to comment that due to the uncertainty principle, when you try to locate the person at an infinitesimally small distance (i.e. at the end), you find out that you can't because you already know his 'exact' momentum, and he could have at that time existed past the point of the finish line. (at least, that is my naive answer to it anyway)