I did some background-checking on @Meerkat_SK5âs citation #11, âThe finer scale of consciousness: quantum theoryâ, which he quotes from in his latest post.
It was not in fact published by nih.gov, as can be seen from the boiler-plate at the end of the linked page that states: âArticles from Annals of Translational Medicine are provided here courtesy of AME Publicationsâ
As that boiler plate notes it was published in Annals of Translational Medicine which is published by AME Publications.
AME Publications is on Beallâs List, a prominent list of âPotential predatory scholarly openâaccess publishersâ.
This suspicion is further confirmed by the fact that the paperâs topic appears to have nothing to do with the journalâs stated topic of Translational medicine.
This does not of course automatically falsify the paperâs claims. It does however mean that they should be viewed with a healthy level of skepticism, particularly as they are venturing opinions on what is already a âcontroversial hypothesisâ.
Thereâs nothing of substance in that claim. Youâre just mixing quantum jargon to make it sound sophisticated.
Suffice to say that âquantumâ behavior only affects at extremely small scales, this can be proved mathematically using the de Broglie equation. You wonât see any significant wave-like behavior in anything bigger than an atom, let alone in DNA.
But since those models are mutually contradictory unless viruses and/or bacteria travelled back in time, your hypothesis was doomed before you even began. You havenât mentioned this.
Strike 1.
Those experiments show no such thing, for the same reason that transporting butterflies from Canada to Mexico by DC-10 would not show they could not make the same journey unaided. You are committing the fallacy of âaffirming a disjunctâ.
Strike 2.
This first of those references is about the impact of mapping the human genome; the second is about varying mutation rates across the E coli genome.
Both articles are about a single species; neither article discusses development of life from simple to complex, and neither mentions guidance from an external agent.
You are either still misrepresenting your sources, or still citing articles you havenât read.
Strike 3.
Back to the bunker for you.
There are other fatal flaws too, but since you wonât fix these ones, I donât need to point them out. The answer to your question:
No, I mean the cut-off date in which an article is deemed considered outdated and obsolete. What is your cut-off date?
This is not what the article suggestsâŚ
âEven more exciting, with the emergence of new drugs, new research methods, and new quantum technologies, this theory is constantly being enriched and perfected. Especially in the research of anesthesiology (96-100), memory (71), cognition (42,101-103), neural synchrony (104) and vision (49), mounting results and evidence indicated the Orch-OR theory could be self-explanatory and could be invoked to many different conscious backgrounds. More recently, Li et al . found that xenonâs (one kind of anesthetic) nuclear spin could impair its own anesthetic power, which involves a neural quantum process (105). Thus, the quantum theory of consciousness is increasingly gaining more supporters.â
No, it is not healthy skepticism you are displaying here. Instead, it is paranoia and personal bias. The article was cited by multiple other articles that obviously saw nothing wrong with the 2019 article:
There are 4 explanations as to why the Orch-OR theory lacks acceptance from the scientific consensus. Two out of the four are based on subjective reasons. Here is my analysis:
The first explanation is that the Orch-OR theory was falsified or the authors failed to address a major flaw(s).
The criticisms raised on their theory have all been adequately addressed in their 2014 peer-reviewed article that was published in a highly prestigious journal. It is highly unlikely that such a high impact journal like Physics of life reviews would publish their article if those objections were fatal or relevant.
For instance, although there are fraudulent articles that can and do get passed peer-review even in highly prestigious journals, Physics of life review has a special feature where additional experts can make up to 5 replies each after an article is published in which the editor informally reads those comments. In this particular case, the editor extended it to 7 replies from various outside sources and experts in which Penrose and Hammeroff adequately addressed all with replies of their own.
I say âadequatelyâ because the editor informally peer-reviews it himself. They also have been bringing their theory in front of skeptics in conferences and publish subsequent articles afterwards to be scrutinized even more:
Lastly, I just gave you a recent review article on their work that does not suggest there is a criticism or objection they failed to adequately address. Thus, unless there is a new peer-reviewed criticism of their article after 2019, this explanation must be ruled out until further noticed.
The second explanation is that the evidence is not convincing enough to warrant 51% acceptance or more.
Although only 6 out of 20 predictions have been confirmed for a quantum mind, most of the 14 other predictions survived falsification from testing. According to Karl Popperâs falsifiability principle, a theory is truly tested when it has survived falsification. More importantly, materialism in general has been officially disproven and there is a consensus on this as well, which means materialistic assumptions do not have preferred status but violate Occamâs razor. Thus, we can rule this out as well until further noticed.
"The third explanation is that not enough of the old school paradigm of scientists have died off. "
According to Max Planck, the founder of quantum physcists:
âA new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.â
This principle, which was famously laid out by German theoretical physicist Max Planck in 1950 along with Thomas Kuhn, has actually been confirmed according to a new study:
For example, In regards to String Theory status as a Theory of Everything, Physicist Frank Close is blunt: â[M]any physicists have developed theories of great mathematical elegance, but which are beyond the reach of empirical falsification, even in principle. The uncomfortable question that arises is whether they can still be regarded as science.â Well, not by traditional standards, to be sure.
But string theorists offer a number of defences. They seek to change the rules, to allow ânon-empirical theory confirmation,â or otherwise loosen the standards for science. At Nature, we learned in 2015 that feuding physicists were turning to philosophy for help, in âa debate over the integrity of the scientific method itself.â
At Smithsonian, theoretical physicist Brian Greene admits, âEvidence that the universe is made of strings has been elusive for 30 years, but the theoryâs mathematical insights continue to have an alluring pull.â He adds, âI now hold only modest hope that the theory will confront data during my lifetime.â
Nevertheless, Evidence or no, string theory remains popular. Skeptical Columbia mathematician Peter Woit wonders why: âThe result of tens of thousands of papers and more than 30 years of work is that all the evidence is that if you can get something this way that looks at all like the Standard Model, you can get anything. Normally when that happens you simply acknowledge the problem and give up, but for some reason that hasnât happened.â In any event, string theorists have grown comfortable with their lack of evidence.
âThe fourth explanation is that its just philosophical/religious bias.â
A study was conducted by the Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund reported in 2005 that surveyed over 1,600 faculty members at elite research universities. What Ecklund discovered was that the beliefs of scientists in God or not are typically formed before they chose their career path to go into science. It was when they were adolescents or younger, and then they chose to go into a particular field of study. She says their unbelief is for the reasons that typically attend adolescent unbelief.
For instance, â they were not raised in a religious home; they have had bad experiences with religion; they disapprove of God or see God as too changeable.â Her research shows that this idea that science and the study of science produces unbelief is, in fact, a sociological myth. Elaine Howard Ecklund, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). p. 17.
Despite no evidence, failed predictions, lack of falsifiability, and inability to explain the cosmological constant, String theory is still considered a theory of everything and the most popular quantum theory of gravity. On the other hand, the Orch-theory has a lot of evidence supporting it from many different fields, several predictions confirmed, and the rest have not been refuted after testing. Most importantly, its touted to explain the cosmological constant, which is one of the biggest problems in physics. Despite all this, it is not even mentioned as a potential candidate for a quantum theory of gravity or theory of everything among many others.
In conclusion, the lack of consensus for the Orch-theory does not create a reasonable doubt as to whether the theory is true or not because the overwhelming evidence clearly shows that the Orch-theoryâs lack of scientific consensus is based on subjective reasons. In fact, this 3 min youtube video actually provides solid proof of this reality:
No, the theory is there to link the observer effect in quantum physics with consciousness, which is all that is needed to also link it to evolution in regards to origin of life experiments and beyond.
No, the quantum erasure experiment are intended to prove the conscious observer plays a fundamental role. Itâs called âIt from bitâ. Please read this article to help you understand the Participatory Universe interpretation of quantum mechanics and how those experiments confirm it:
I actually did not reference that source for that reason but whatever. Here is a source that does seem to be more consistent with those claims according to your liking:
Again, if this is not the case, then nevermind. I will change the questions to âHow many basic types are there?â and leave out the âgroupsâ.
HGT from viruses does not just create similarities between organisms but it also potentially masquerades as nested hierarchies according to studies.
Experiments in quantum physics have confirmed that â the classical Newtonian laws emerge out of the quantum laws .â In other words, the classical world is the same as the quantum world where what happens at the quantum world would directly affect the classical world. http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR07/Event/57254
In fact, a team of scientists have even succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving. â These experiments show that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as atomic-scale particles â. Thus, you cannot separate the two realms because quantum mechanics is ultimately fundamental.
This is not much of an improvement. If you know nothing about the subject, how can you even speculate as to how many basic types there are? You have no criteria for identifying them and no knowledge of the diversity of life.
This is only true if the HGT is happening in a context of common descent, as the simulation of nested hierarchy happens because transfer is most likely between closely related species. Youâre still pontificating on subjects you know nothing about.
If a journal on translation medicine is publishing on the underlying philosophy of consciousness, the editorial practice is so shoddy so as to render all publications suspect. You can dislike that all you want, thatâs just how it is.
A few articles citing a clearly suspect paper makes me suspicious of the few articles, not less suspicious of the clearly suspect paper.
Who said there is a single, sharp-edged, cut-off date? Some fields move faster than others. But citing a scientist who started his career seventy-odd years ago and died five years ago probably isnât the brightest idea. Nor is failing to check that later papers that cite a paper you cite donât take a completely contrary viewpoint.
@Meerkat_SK5, I really donât give a ratâs posterior on what a paper published in a journal purportedly focused on an unrelated topic, by a predatory publisher said. The chances that it received adequate peer review are negligible.
Oh dear, you really are completely at sea arenât you? Yes, it received a handful of citations. I hate to tell you this, but even withdrawn papers continue to receive citations (there was a big stink over this recently). Receiving a few citations is really no evidence whatsoever of quality.
@Meerkat_SK5, given that you have shown no understanding whatsoever about the scientific endeavor, I likewise donât give a ratâs posterior about your âanalysisâ.
The only thing that this is âsolid proofâ of is that @Meerkat_SK5 is either unable to read, or unable to learn from, criticism:
Balderdash.
How do know that âthe quantum erasure experiment are intended to prove the conscious observer plays a fundamental roleâ when the paper âmakes any mention of âmindâ, âconscious observerâ or anything similarâ? Are you perhaps reading the authorsâ minds?
Your claim is therefore nothing more than unsubstantiated assertion (a pigeonhole that your entire output on this forum could comfortably fit).
In other words it is, as I previously said, balderdash.
No @Meerkat_SK5. I am sick and tired of trawling through a Gish Gallop of not-particularly-relevant papers to prove to my satisfaction that they do not in fact substantiate your benighted Quantum Woo.
Does this pop-science article explicitly link quantum phenomena to evolution, the development of life, or anything similar? No it does not.
Does it offer any substantiation at all for the half-baked idea that a purported disembodied Quantum Consciousness could be responsible for the ex nihilo creation of life on Earth? No it does not.
As such, it is utterly irrelevant to your argument.
Unless and until you either:
find a legitimate, peer-reviewed article that explicitly links Quantum Consciousness to evolution; or
manage to convince one or more of the physicists or neuroscientists on this forum that you have presented sufficient evidence that collectively demonstrates you have a solid argument to make for the link âŚ
⌠I have no interest whatsoever in further engaging your claims on this topic (including your claims that this paper or that in some way supports your position).
Given that this article starts off âIs life physicochemically unique? No.â it is hardly an endorsement of your original Yockey quote-mine. But then, it was never clear what you actually thought that quote-mine actually proved. Neither the Yockey quote-mine nor this paper seem even remotely relevant to your still unsubstantiated claim that âthe first life on earth must have been created by a common designer that is transcendent.â
No, it does not mean what you are saying it means.
â These experiments show that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as atomic-scale particles â.
The researchers also note in your article that this cannot be applied in the way you say. They used a 30 micrometer object, far from âeveryday objectsâ. The quantum effect vanishes the more it interacts with itâs environment. Organisms and their genomes are far from the sterile, isolated, lab-condition objects used in this experiment. This is what they say.
So if trillions of atoms can be put into a quantum state, why donât we see double-decker buses simultaneously stopping and going? Cleland says he believes size does matter: the larger an object, the easier it is for outside forces to disrupt its quantum state.
âThe environment is this huge, complex thing,â says Cleland. âItâs that interaction with this incredibly complex system that makes the quantum coherence vanish.â
'The question that intrigued the great American quantum physicist John Archibald Wheeler in the last decades of his life was: âAre life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it?â Wheeler originated the notion of a âparticipatory,â conscious universe, a cosmos in which all of us are embedded as co-creators, replacing the accepted universe âout there,â which is separate from us.
Wheeler suggested that reality is created by observers and that: âno phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.â He coined the term âParticipatory Anthropic Principleâ (PAP) from the Greek âanthroposâ, or human. He went further to suggest that âwe are participants in bringing into being not only the near and here, but the far away and long ago.â
This claim was considered rather outlandish until his thought experiment, known as the âdelayed-choice experiment,â was tested in a laboratory in 1984. This experiment was a variation on the famous âdouble-slit experimentâ in which the dual nature of light was exposed (depending on how the experiment was measured and observed, the light behaved like a particle (a photon) or like a wave).
The results of this experiment, as well as another conducted in 2007, proved what Wheeler had always suspected â observersâ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence. This means that a pre-life Earth would have existed in an undetermined state, and a pre-life universe could only exist retroactively."
I donât know any neuroscientists or quantum physicists on this site other than @Jordan and supposedly @dga471. So if you are out there reading this, please come join the conversation or peer-review my case for others.
Until then, I will try to satisfy your first conditionâŚ
Universal Common Designer theory
Quantum Consciousness is the vital mechanism that causes life on earth to change over time [1]
This inference was based on 5 lines of evidence:
(A) Consciousness and digital information are non-local (I.e. Transcendent) [1A][2]
(B) Lifeâs existence is fundamentally dependent on agent causality (I.e. Designer) [3]
(C) Life is fundamentally digital information and resembles natural language (I.e. Common) [4]
[D] Origin of life experiments require human intervention [5]
Definition of Quantum Consciousness: causally disconnected or non-local choice to create and move particles [6][7]
As you go up in size, the probability wave gets smaller and smaller and eventually converges on a classical limit. This is why we donât see cars quantum tunneling into garage doors, but this does not mean the system is not in superposition or interfering with itself and thus non-realistic. Instead, it would just be so negligible that quantum phenomena would go unnoticed.
Here is the latest study showing how quantum mechanics goes much further than what you think:
Why @Meerkat_SK5, do you think I would be convinced by an article in an AME-published journal, that all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, AME is not a predatory publisher?
Do I seem stupid to you? If not, then why are you insulting my intelligence?
The paper, on the controversial hypothesis of Quantum Consciousness was published in a journal whose stated topic is wholly unrelated to Quantum Mechanics or Neuroscience.
This, in itself, is grounds for a high degree of skepticism.
I would point out that this point was also made by @CrisprCAS9here.
Or, instead of reading this blog post, I could instead take a quick look at the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and find that there is at least some evidence that at least some physicists appear to dispute Wheelerâs interpretation of this experiment. I am not in a position to adjudicate this issue, but I would most certainly not take the word of some random apologist, who seems to base their claims upon (i) the claims of other apologists, and (ii) pervasive misinterpretation of the scientific record.
This is why I am unwilling to accept any of your claims about Quantum Consciousness until they have been vetted by people with genuine expertise in the subject (either a peer-reviewed paper that explicitly addresses your claims, or the opinions of experts on this forum).
What follows is not âa legitimate, peer-reviewed article that explicitly links Quantum Consciousness to evolutionâ, so is in no way relevant.
What follows is in fact yet more of exactly the sort of unsubstantiated blather that I was trying to avoid.
None of your four new âlines of evidenceâ are in fact substantiated by your citations.
I actually think Wheeler raises an interesting question. But I donât think it has anything at all to do with quantum consciousness.
My own view â reality is not created by observers. However, perceived reality is created by observers. Perception is a highly creative process. As I see it, we need to be clear on the distinction between perceived reality and actual reality.
Mildly curious: what did Wheeler actually say about this? Was that an actual quote? If so, Iâm forced to conclude that we have another example of a fine scientist in his decline, to go with Linus Pauling and vitamin C, etc.
It appears to be a widely-used paraphrase (which I have not seen cited to a specific work by Wheeler). I tracked down the following in his chapter âWorld as System Self-Synthesized by Quantum Networkingâ, in Probability in the Sciences (1988):
Are life and mind indeed unimportant in the workings of existence? Is life never to inherit the vastness of space because today its dominion is so small? Or is not rather life destined to take possession of all the out-there because the time available for conquest is so large? How easy it is to be overimpressed by the remoteness of the quasars; how tempting to discount as anthropocentric any purported place for life and mind in the construction of the world. Is it not even more anthropocentric to take man's migration by foot and ferry in fifty thousand years as the gauge of where life will get in fifty billion years?
The fight against here-centeredness began with the 1543 De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of Copernicus. The time- bridging power of the elementary quantum phenomenon warns us today to battle against now-centeredness.
Life and mind: for how much can they be conceived to count in the scheme of existence? Nothing, say the billions of light years of space that lie around us. Everything, say the billions of years of time that lie ahead of us.
It cannot matter that man in time to come will have been supplanted by, or will have evolved into, intelligent life of quite other forms. What counts - in the idea view being explored in this paper - is the rate of asking questions and obtaining answers by elementary quantum phenomena, acts of observers-participancy, exchanges of information. If space is closed, if - following on the present phase of expansion - the system of galaxies contracts, if temperatures rise, all in line with the best known Friedmann cosmology, and if life wins all, then the number of bits of information being exchanged per second can be expected to rise enormously compared to that number rate today. The total count of bits: how great will it be before the counting has to cease because space is within a Planck time of total crunch? And how great must that future total be - tally as it is of times past - to furnish enough iron posts of observation to bear the smooth plaster which we of today call existence?
Bits needed. Bits available. Calculate each. Compare. This double undertaking, if and when it becomes feasible, will mark the passage from clues about existence to testable theory of existence.
He apparently said something similar in his book At Home in the Universe, New York Institute of Physics, 1994.
I must apologise, on further investigation, it does seem to be a direct quote, but from further back in Wheelerâs career:
The brain is small; the universe is large. In what way, if any* is the universe, the observed, affected by man, the observer? Is the universe deprived of all meaningful existence in the absence of mind? Is it governed in its structure by the requirement that it give birth to life and consciousness? Or is man merely an unimportant speck of dust in a remote corner of space? In brief, are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe --or are they central to it? Lack of conclusive evidence on so cosmic an issue suggests that something is still to be learned about how the universe came into being.
Wheeler, J. A., âThe Universe as Home for Man.â In The Nature of Scientific Discovery, ed. O. Gingerich, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975, pp. 261-96.
My previous quote would appear to be merely Wheelerâs (somewhat verbose) expansion on this idea.
This is where your personal bias is inherently manifested. As the author pointed out, The Beall lists are inaccurate (9), which means the basis for Beallâs call for a ban (10) was deeply flawed because of the lack of clearly defined and quantifiable criteria for each entry in those lists, making calls by others (11) to formalize âpredatoryâ journals in curriculum vitae dangerously unscholarly and discriminatory, and leading to considerable criticism on PubPeer (12).
âThe final nail in the coffin of Beallâs blog was Beallâs lax use of the term âpredatoryâ. Initially, Beall had coined the term exclusively for OA journals and publishers, as exemplified by his lists (6), but in some of his latest publications, Beall conveniently, or purposefully, eliminated the limited characterization of OA, simply referring to them more broadly as âpredatoryâ journals or âpredatoryâ publishers (17), and in essence invalidating his own lists.â
Despite all this, you still consider Beallâs unreliable, non-peer reviewed, unmitigated list that has since been deactivated 4 years ago, a legit source in order to reject that article. This is a very desperate attempt to refute an article and theory.
How do you know that?
My bad on that article. At first glance, it looked like it was relevant until I read it again carefully. This article is the right one:
"âŚIndeed, Orch OR may also help explain other mysteries including how anesthesia works, the origin and evolution of life, free will, the flow of time, memory, dreams, and how general relativity relates to quantum mechanics.
âŚSpanning disciplines and scale, with high explanatory power, Orch OR is the most complete theory of consciousness."
(A) Consciousness and digital information are non-local (I.e. Transcendent mind)
"(B) Consciousness is a separate quality, distinct from physical actions and not controlled by physical laws, that has always been in the universe. Descartesâ âdualismâ, religious viewpoints, and other spiritual approaches assume consciousness has been in the universe all along, e.g. as the âground of beingâ, âcreatorâ or component of an omnipresent âGodâ âŚâŚ
ââŚNonetheless, in the Orch OR scheme, these events are taken to have a rudimentary subjective experience, which is undifferentiated and lacking in cognition, perhaps providing the constitutive ingredients of what philosophers call qualia. We term such un-orchestrated, ubiquitous OR events, lacking information and cognition, âproto-consciousâ. In this regard, Orch OR has some points in common with the viewpoint (B) of Section 1, which incorporates spiritualist, idealist and panpsychist elements, these being argued to be essential precursors of consciousness that are intrinsic to the universe .â [emphasis added]
(B) Lifeâs existence is fundamentally dependent on agent causality (I.e. Designer)
Look in section âchoice-contingent causation and controlâ of this article for this quote:
âCCCC steers events toward pragmatic results that are valued by agents. CCCC is a true primary cause leading to very real effects, particularly the effect of useful work rather than mere physicodynamic constraint. CCCC can generate extraordinary degrees of unique functionality that have never been observed to arise from randomness or law-described necessity. Neither physicodynamics nor evolution can pursue potential utility (e.g., the programming of computational success prior to its realization). CCCC does. CCCC is the only known cause and governor of formalisms.â
C) Life is fundamentally digital information and resembles natural language (I.e. Common)
From the conclusions section of this article:
"The repetitive non-coding RNA sequences resemble that of a natural everyday language, i.e., the essential tool to coordinate and organize common behavior. "
From the conclusions of the âIs Life Uniqueâ article:
'What is the ingredient missing from inanimate physicodynamics that makes life possible? The answer is formal control mechanisms. This âregulation,â as it most often appears in the literature, is instructed by Prescriptive Information (PI) and its algorithmic processingâboth elements being uniquely produced by life. In addition, both elements seem to have been inherent in life at the subcellular level in its earliest and simplest formsâŚ
âŚAll of these phenomena are as nonphysical and formal as mathematics; and unique to life.â
[D] Origin of life experiments require human intervention
âFor experiments aimed at demonstrating chemically more complex processes, such as multistep syntheses mimicking biochemical pathways or genetic replication, repeated interventions by the experimentalist have been necessary.â
âAlthough observed rates of acquisition of horizontally transferred genes in eukaryotes are generally lower than in prokaryotes, it appears that, far from being a rare occurrence, HGT has contributed to the evolution of many, perhaps all, animals and that the process is ongoing in most lineages. Between tens and hundreds of foreign genes are expressed in all the animals we surveyed, including humans. The majority of these genes are concerned with metabolism, suggesting that HGT contributes to biochemical diversification during animal evolution.â