Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
Crystals and animats don’t have Quantum Mind, do they?
I describe how the process of evolution has been mimicked by computer scientists in
the disciplines known as genetic algorithms and artificial life. And I explain why these
methods don’t actually work for practical problems.
Chapter 4: The Mind
Perhaps our greatest hope about computation is that we might be able to make
immortal copies of ourselves. And perhaps the greatest fear about computation is that some
computational process such as rogue robots or biotechnology might destroy us all.
The biggest problem in representing everything as a computation is the human mind.
It’s not clear that the kinds of computation we work with can ever behave at all like a mind.
Quantum computation may hold out a possibility of true AI.
But, as I’ll explain, my feeling is that the human mind as one immediately
experiences it is quite unlike the working of a standard digital machine. As Nick Herbert
puts it in his essay, “Holistic Physics, or, An Introduction to Quantum Tantra”
Nick Herbert is one of the more colorful characters in Silicon Valley. He started as a
physicist designing hard drives, and now he’s become a guru teaching a doctrine of
“Quantum Tantra.” Beneath the California surface, he’s quite serious, with some remarkable
insights about the meaning of quantum computation. You might put it like this: if you stop
talking, your mind gets wider.
By the high standards of explanation we have come to demand in physics and other
sciences, we do not even possess a bad theory of consciousness, let alone a good one.
Speculations concerning the origin of inner experience in humans and other beings
have been few vague and superficial. They include the notion that mind is an "emergent
property" of active neuronal nets, or that mind is the "software" that manages the brain's
unconscious "hardware"...
Half-baked attempts to explain consciousness, such as mind-as-software or mind-asemergent-property
do not take themselves seriously enough to confront the experimental
facts, our most intimate data base, namely how mind itself feels from the inside.
With Herbert, I am inclined to believe in the so-called “quantum mind” thesis, which
holds that there is a quantum mechanical aspect to the human mind and that this aspect lies
quite outside the behavior of ordinary computations. We’ll return to this topic in the last
chapter of the book.
But, as I’ll explain, my feeling is that the human mind as one immediately
experiences it is quite unlike the working of a standard digital machine. As Nick Herbert
puts it in his essay, “Holistic Physics, or, An Introduction to Quantum Tantra”
Nick Herbert is one of the more colorful characters in Silicon Valley. He started as a
physicist designing hard drives, and now he’s become a guru teaching a doctrine of
“Quantum Tantra.” Beneath the California surface, he’s quite serious, with some remarkable
insights about the meaning of quantum computation. You might put it like this: if you stop
talking, your mind gets wider.
By the high standards of explanation we have come to demand in physics and other
sciences, we do not even possess a bad theory of consciousness, let alone a good one.
p. 17