Comment by bccdee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bccdee | Hacker News Reader

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> We can't come up with anything better, and have ruled out everything we reasonably can at this point in our inquiry, so therefore the findings support the only remaining plausible mechanism.

No, quite the opposite. As the top-level comment pointed out, this is god-of-the-gaps reasoning. If you fail to find discrete evidence of consciousness anywhere in the brain, the natural conclusion is not "it must be an inscrutable quantum phenomenon that we have been unable to investigate thus far." The natural conclusion is that consciousness is simply not a discrete phenomenon.

We have zero scientific evidence that a mechanism for consciousness is hiding in some part of the brain, waiting to be found. Rather, there exists a popular intuitive dualism that suggests our own consciousness must be more than an emergent neurological phenomenon—that it must be a discrete thing caused by an exotic mechanism with non-computable properties. Ideas like quantum microtubule consciousness (or "orchestrated objective reduction") are the product of motivated reasoning: They exist only to keep dualism on life support, in the face of adverse evidence.

I don't have a methodological problem with this study in particular. If we take quantum microtubule consciousness seriously, it's a perfectly good study. But we shouldn't take it seriously—it's a ridiculous ad-hoc hypothesis that mashes together various cutting-edge fields of science with a hefty dose of quantum mysticism in order inject doubt and escape the potentially upsetting conclusion that consciousness is not a "real" phenomenon in the way that we perceive it to be.

I do have methodological issues with the study, but that's not the issue at hand, I guess. It is that the study does nothing to support a microtubule/quantum theory of consciousness, because there is no reason why boring cell biology stuff (vesicle transport on tubules, electrical conductivity, etc.) couldn't explain anything here. The paper doesn't present any mechanism or theory. So it's irresponsible to say that it "supports" anything other than a possible effect of a drug known to stabilize microtubules interfering with gas anesthesia.

Methodologically, it is curious that the 2 rats that got 2 doses of epoB during the study had no effect and the 6 rats that had 1 dose had effects varying from not much to a lot, but not every time. No control rats per se, it was self-controlled, by testing them for a period of time before the first or only dose.

Often I think about the subtext when I read a paper. Where is the benchtop research before going to animal model? Why this choice of rat and not inbred mice, for example? Why have 4 pairs F, G, H, and I but only 1 pair (I1 and I2) have any difference mentioned in the methods section and then they don't talk about the surprising result for I1 and I2 in their results section? Why do they have a chart that shows each individual test but they don't connect the dots to show you which rat is which? It's really not a great paper.

> Rather, there exists a popular intuitive dualism that suggests our own consciousness must be more than an emergent neurological phenomenon

I don't get a challenge of consciousness as something else than an emergent neurological phenomenon. The problem is by what mechanism does it emerge. Animals without language show sign of consciousness (even if more limited form), and conversely high level computation does not especially in the light of the capabilities of LLMs (computers are crushing numbers identically no matter if the matrix multiplications are for rendering a scene or LLM inference, otherwise it would mean that some arbitrary sequences of numbers lead to consciousness like magic formulas). That leaves only something physical/biological to explain the emerging phenomenon, which is what the research is trying to do.

Why does high level computation not show signs of consciousness? I'm not sure what crushing numbers identically has to do with anything.

Once again, you've converted "this supports [alternate theory]" into "it must be [alternate theory]." At least address the argument being made instead of a strawman.

Suppose I wrote a paper about how the low oxygen content on Mars means that Martian leprechauns, should they exist, must have extra-large lungs in order to thrive on the surface. Is this a sensible scientific publication? It's not wrong. It doesn't assume Martian leprechaun theory is true—it merely seeks to establish its parameters more clearly. I would not call it serious science, though. It's farcical. Any discussion of the paper should primarily regard the fact that leprechauns almost certainly do not live on Mars and so the question of their lung size is entirely moot. In fact, discussing Martian leprechauns as if they're at all a serious subject is itself a form of deceptive rhetoric.

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