The Consciousness Revolution
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” Erwin Schrödinger [1]
The overwhelming majority of people are sure that they think with their brain. In order to doubt this, you need to be the founder of the Institute of the Human Brain Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva, who believed that the brain is a receiver of thoughts, not their source. [2] Or you have to be the outstanding microbiologist Michael Levin, who sees every day in his experiments that a person thinks with his whole body, with every cell. [3] And with every mitochondria, another outstanding microbiologist (mitochondrial psychobiologist as he defines his area of research) Martin Picard, who uses sociology to study life inside a cell, would add. [4] Levin achieved that a simple sorting algorithm began to demonstrate the traits of intelligent behavior in a very simple way: (1) he launched not one, but several similar algorithms to work with the same sequence of numbers, (2) made it so that some random numbers refused to move from their cells, (3) visualized the process. [5]
In Levin’s algorithms there are no mechanisms for thinking or even for computations to enable any complex behavior. An algorithm can only sort numbers to get them into the correct sequence. How can such an algorithm figure out how to bypass a broken number that refuses to move? No way. But it does. It remembers moves, makes decisions, looks for an alternative way to reach the goal. The way that is not written in its code. Is it a miracle? [5]
In my opinion, this is cooler than the notorious black box of artificial neural networks. There we can at least suspect hidden complexity. But here everything is in plain sight. Levin specifically set up the experiment in such a way as to exclude suspicions of internal complexity. Everything is transparent and you can watch the code being executed line by line.
The concept of simple thinking algorithms is difficult to swallow. But accepting the idea that it is not we who are thinking thoughts, but they who are thinking us, is by many orders of magnitude harder to accept. What about the idea that any physical object, any particle, any atom is just a set of beliefs, expectations, statements — Karl Friston, Erwin Schrödinger and Anton Zeilinger [6,7,8] use different words to name the same thing — a thought.
The Nobel laureate for the discovery of quantum electrodynamics Richard Feynman is famous for his statement that no one understands quantum mechanics. [9] In principle, he was right because when he said this, the creators of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg, were no longer alive.
“I cannot understand what I cannot create” — this is also Feynman. From these words it follows that the creators of the theory most likely understood it. At least, they understood it better than anyone else. Therefore, it seems absolutely logical to me to seek an understanding of quantum mechanics by studying their works, and not all sorts of subsequent interpretations.
Both Heisenberg and Schrödinger [10,11] were absolutely sure that quantum mechanics deals not with physical objects, but with knowledge. And this knowledge can take a variety of forms, including the form of a physical object. In Levin’s work today, in his own words, “…the ancient questions on the relationship of mind and matter are not philosophical but of immense practical urgency.” [4] What is at stake? “At stake are truly transformative applications ranging from the repair of birth defects and injury, to cancer reprogramming, bioengineered organs, and the freedom of embodiment offered by effective rational control over growth and form.” [4] I am not fantasizing, but taking this list from one of his latest manuscripts.
Are you ready to give up everything that Levin offers for the sake of preserving the way of thinking that is comfortable to your mind? Personally, I am not ready. Besides Levin’s list, there are other similarly fantastic lists of potential discoveries in other areas of science. The only obstacle to their implementation is inertia of thought. And this is the most terrible obstacle, believe me. Einstein’s speed limit for the universe is nothing compared to it. However, if even a small breach is made in this dam of dogma, the liberated thought will rush through it and wash away the entire dam almost instantly. So here I am standing with a hammer and a chisel at the base of a concrete dam that rises up into the sky. I put a chisel into a tiny crack and hit it with a hammer, knock-knock, knock-knock.
Almost nobody pays any attention. Some people laugh and twirl their fingers at their temples. Some say that we will all be washed away and drown if the dam breaks. That’s not true. The stream of thoughts that will break free will not wash us away, but will lift us to a dizzying height and carry us forward. For this, it is worth living and hitting with a hammer. Knock-knock!
PS: “If Schrödinger was right, we have some rethinking to do across the life sciences”, wrote Martin Picard on X a couple of days ago in respect of Schrödinger’s quote with which I began this post. Indeed, some rethinking has to be done but across all sciences.
PS2: just in case you don’t know: Karl Friston is the most cited neuroscientist in the world. Anton Zeilinger is the 2022 Nobel laureate for experiments proving the existence of quantum entanglement.
References:
- Moore, Walter J. , A Life of Erwin Schrödinger, 1994, Cambridge University Press, page 181
- In Russian: Мозг мысли не производит! Ученые так и не знают, как в мозговых извилинах рождаются гениальные идеи https://www.kp.ru/daily/23060/4613
- Levin, Michael. “The Multiscale Wisdom of the Body: Collective Intelligence as a Tractable Interface for Next-generation Biomedicine.” OSF Preprints, 14 Aug. 2024. Web.
- Picard, Martin, and Carmen Sandi. “The social nature of mitochondria: Implications for human health.” Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews vol. 120 (2021): 595–610. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.04.017
- Zhang, Taining, et al. “Classical Sorting Algorithms as a Model of Morphogenesis: Self-sorting Arrays Reveal Unexpected Competencies in a Minimal Model of Basal Intelligence.” OSF Preprints, 17 Dec. 2023. Web.
- Maxwell J D Ramstead, Dalton A R Sakthivadivel, and Karl J Friston, An approach to non-equilibrium statistical physics using variational Bayesian inference, June 2024 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11630
- Schrödinger, Erwin, The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics, Die Naturwissenschaften 1935. Volume 23, Issue 48.
- Zeilinger, Anton. A foundational principle for quantum mechanics 1999 Found. Phys. 29 631–43
- Feynman, Richard P. Probability and Uncertainty: the quantum mechanical view of nature, Messenger Lectures, 1964, MIT
- Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy — The Revolution in Modern Science. 1958. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York.
- Schrödinger, Erwin, The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics, Die Naturwissenschaften 1935. Volume 23, Issue 48.
- Post: https://x.com/MitoPsychoBio/status/1853830675696103556
