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The Physics of Consciousness: There IS Such a Thing?

There are no really good theories of consciousness but some physicists, including Roger Penrose, make a good stab at it. Jordan Peterson listens
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Yes. Jordan Peterson talks to Roger Penrose about that:

Dr. Peterson recently traveled to the UK for a series of lectures at the highly esteemed Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This conversation was recorded during that period with Sir Roger Penrose, a British mathematical physicist who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for “discovering that black hole formation is a robust predictor of Einstein’s general relativity.” Moderated by Dr. Stephen Blackwood.

___________ Chapters ___________ [0:00]

Intro [1:00] Is Consciousness Computational?

[3:20] Turing Machines

[6:30] Determinism & the Arrow of Time

[12:15] Consciousness & Reductionism

[17:30] Emergent Randomness & Evolution

[23:00] The Tiling Problem, Computation, & AI

[29:30] Escher, Brains, Bach

[39:00] Pattern Recognition & Intuition

[45:30] Mathematical Representations & the Physical World

[54:00] Collapsing Schrodinger’s Equation

[1:00:00] Consciousness-Independent Reality

[1:07:00] Black Holes & Time Horizons

[1:15:00] Einstein’s Biggest Mistake

[1:27:00] Meaning & Consciousness

[1:39:00] Hawking Spots: Potential


You may also wish to read: What would head or partial brain transplants do to consciousness? Researchers had some success swapping rodent heads (though there’s a catch) but no luck with monkeys. And then animal lovers weighed in… About partial brain transplants, Michael Egnor asks, if he received bits of brain from many sources, “would there be a neighborhood in my skull?” A townhall?


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The Physics of Consciousness: There IS Such a Thing?