Today's Times of India (as seen in Pune, India) contains a good interview with Roger Penrose, available at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=35802218.
Roger Penrose is a top-tier physicist, and has written books such as 'Emperor's New Mind', 'Shadows of the Mind'. The main theme of his thinking is that Artificial Intelligence is impossible because we can't have a machine that simulates our brain. Why not? (Especially if you think that brain is just a series of chemical processes, and so it is in-theory possible to simulate these processes using a computer.) Roger says that the processes within brain are quantum-mechanical, and can't be simulated on any computer.
Quantuam mechanical effects are very strange. In classical mechanics (of everyday life), the cause and effect are interlinked through time, and the experiential world moves from state to state such that you can't go back in time. Also, a new state (=combination of specific scheme of things around us) is only one of many possible states. I could point my finger this way or that way, but not both simultaneously. More importantly, the meaning of 'being in control' is not very clear. I could control my hand, but not other happenings around me. For that matter, I am not even sure if I control my hand. For all you know, there may not be a free will at all: The source of free-will could ultimately be two ways: Either complete randomness within the heart of the laws of physics, or complete determinism - i.e. everything that is supposed to happen is already fixed by initial conditions. (And chaos theory would say that you can't predict the system even though it is deterministic ...)
In quantum world however, things are very different. Multiple states are simultaneously existent. The state that dice can take is directly related to what observer wants to observe. The specific outcome (i.e. how the system will evolve in time) is normally supposed to be independent of observer (and observation setup). But reality is not so. In quantum world (currently observed at atomic level), the dice can be taken to a particular state by the observer, without any type of 'known' interference in the system.
And there is no known limitation that applies to quantum mechanisms that says that they can only operate at atomic levels. Roger explains the gap between the classical world and quantum world through his books: The thermodynamics and statics bound processes lie in middle plane that hinder the connections between the two worlds.
So let us all wait for his new book - Road to Reality.
Roger Penrose is a top-tier physicist, and has written books such as 'Emperor's New Mind', 'Shadows of the Mind'. The main theme of his thinking is that Artificial Intelligence is impossible because we can't have a machine that simulates our brain. Why not? (Especially if you think that brain is just a series of chemical processes, and so it is in-theory possible to simulate these processes using a computer.) Roger says that the processes within brain are quantum-mechanical, and can't be simulated on any computer.
Quantuam mechanical effects are very strange. In classical mechanics (of everyday life), the cause and effect are interlinked through time, and the experiential world moves from state to state such that you can't go back in time. Also, a new state (=combination of specific scheme of things around us) is only one of many possible states. I could point my finger this way or that way, but not both simultaneously. More importantly, the meaning of 'being in control' is not very clear. I could control my hand, but not other happenings around me. For that matter, I am not even sure if I control my hand. For all you know, there may not be a free will at all: The source of free-will could ultimately be two ways: Either complete randomness within the heart of the laws of physics, or complete determinism - i.e. everything that is supposed to happen is already fixed by initial conditions. (And chaos theory would say that you can't predict the system even though it is deterministic ...)
In quantum world however, things are very different. Multiple states are simultaneously existent. The state that dice can take is directly related to what observer wants to observe. The specific outcome (i.e. how the system will evolve in time) is normally supposed to be independent of observer (and observation setup). But reality is not so. In quantum world (currently observed at atomic level), the dice can be taken to a particular state by the observer, without any type of 'known' interference in the system.
And there is no known limitation that applies to quantum mechanisms that says that they can only operate at atomic levels. Roger explains the gap between the classical world and quantum world through his books: The thermodynamics and statics bound processes lie in middle plane that hinder the connections between the two worlds.
So let us all wait for his new book - Road to Reality.
posted by Vinod Kulkarni at 8:47 PM
