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Quantum computing is the key to consciousness

We understand things because of quantum mechanics

7th March 2023
| Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. He has written a popular science book The Primacy of Doubt (Oxford University Press, 2022) on the science of uncertainty.
2,701 words
Read time: approx. 14 mins

With the rapid development of chatbots and other AI systems, questions about whether they will ever gain true understanding, become conscious, or even develop a feeling agency have become more pressing. When it comes to making sense of these qualities in humans, our ability for counterfactual thinking is key. The existence of alternative worlds where things happen differently, however, is not just an exercise in imagination – it’s a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Perhaps our brains are able to ponder how things could have been because in essence they are quantum computers, accessing information from alternative worlds, argues Tim Palmer.   

 

Ask a chatbot “How many prime numbers are there?"[i] and it will surely tell you that there are an infinite number. Ask the chatbot “How do we know?” and it will reply that there are many ways to show this, the original going back to the mathematician Euclid of ancient Greece. Ask the chatbot to describe Euclid’s proof and it will answer correctly [ii]. [ii

Tim Palmer
7th March 2023

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Edwin Conmy 18 April 2023

You are not entirely independent from the books on the shelf if you have read them. Since then they have infiltrated and merged with your consciousness. The book you wrote is a portion of your consciousness in written form. While you feel apart from the physical copy, the symbolic copy is you. Our universe is full of different quantum meanings depending on the type and angle of observation, be it physical or semantic. The book you wrote was a set of such observations labeled with your meaning. The stuff of the universe is amorphous and unresolved until we observe it. When we do our consciousness creates meaning. All meaning is related and stems from the same source. Our Aha! moments occur when consciousness finds new meaning without having to trace a path of logic through every intervening meaning. These "leaps of faith" occur because our consciousness intuitively feels the open path of logic, that was computed in counterfactual universes.

The universe needs consciousness to resolve its meanings. A universe without meaning is empty -- no meaning, no matter. Consciousness needs the universe to do its primary job -- find all the meanings. If consciousness is fundamental then the universe was derived to give consciousness itself, meaning. Consciousness is the moment billions of years of preparation crystalize into mere decades of physical potential. In a sense we are our own big bangs. Our parents are portals to the infinite past. Our physical lives are a pupal form of consciousness which expands with meanings we resolve over time. We constantly exchange meanings by merging our consciousness to others with language. Above all else, marriage is intended as a merger of two consciousness. Love expands consciousness to include your lovers. Sex is two consciousnesses sharing emotions, sometimes with intent to reproduce themselves. Death is conscious energy discarding its booster rocket body as it merges with the universe's vast unseen sea of consciousness and meanings. Life is the opportunity to find physical meaning and learn how to share the semantic. Which we can do by stubbing a toe or writing a book of meanings or even making a short comment.

Brian Flanagan 1 10 March 2023

Given the union of space and time, it seems quite plausible that the universe is, in some sense, nontemporal as well as nonlocal.