Comment by bawolff
6 hours ago
I'm disagreeing with the notion that someone "who won the Nobel Prize knows more than us". History suggests otherwise.
Surely you must appreciate the irony when your primary argument is an appeal to authority, while on the other hand you dismiss everyone who is unconvinced as "dogmatic".
As for Penrose's specific ideas, i'm not familiar enough with them or the field to make an informed judgement. Hence i would defer to other experts in that field, who as far as i understand are unconvinced. However, the fact he previously won a nobel does not lead me to give him any more credence than i would anyone else. If anything its a negative signal.
That said, if i was going to bite:
> Penrose’s main argument is that consciousness can not be computational. If you can’t argue against an idea with reason
The onus is on Penrose to show consciousness is non-computational. Preferably with some sort of experiment (or are we in the realm of pure philosophy here? Arguing how many angels are dancing on the pin). Science is about creating hypotheses and testing them. Admiteddly im not super well-read on this topic, but i don't think this theory has yielded testable predictions not explainable by other theories that have been verified.
> Hence i would defer to other experts in that field, who as far as i understand are unconvinced.
This is also an appeal to authority.
Plus I’m not arguing that Penrose is correct, I’m arguing that it’s unscientific to call a theory bullshit because it sounds “woo” or “new age.” It should be debated on its merits, and yes I did make an appeal to authority for the same reasons you did: it’s a useful heuristic if we don’t have the capacity to evaluate every idea on its merits.
> However, the fact he previously won a nobel does not lead me to give him any more credence than i would anyone else. If anything it’s a negative signal.
So you’re saying that being a Nobel laureate is a counter signal for scientific credibility?
> The onus is on Penrose to show consciousness is non-computational. Preferably with some sort of experiment (or are we in the realm of pure philosophy here? Arguing how many angels are dancing on the pin).
I mean there’s the whole field of mathematics and most of modern physics that use mathematical proofs instead of experiments, including the main article this thread is on. I don’t disagree that an experiment would be ideal, but again, my point was not to argue that Penrose is correct but that it’s unscientific and akin to religious dogma to call his theory bullshit because it sounds like a “new age” idea.
> So you’re saying that being a Nobel laureate is a counter signal for scientific credibility?
A very mild one, but yes. Particularly for things outside the field they got the nobel for. I think this applies to fame in general.
> I mean there’s the whole field of mathematics and most of modern physics that use mathematical proofs instead of experiments, including the main article this thread is on
Math is not science. It does not deal with things that depend on the real world. Consciousness is a phenomenon that allegedly actually exists in the real world. It is not a polynomial.
I dont see the relavence. Penrose didn't provide a mathamatical proof. In fact from first principles it seems like any pure math proof of properties of conciousness would be impossible.
> I’m arguing that it’s unscientific to call a theory bullshit because it sounds “woo” or “new age.”
Taken literally, sure i would agree with you. However usually when people make claims like this, what they are really saying is that its not a scientific theory so there is nothing to discuss.
What does penrose's theory predict? Is it testable? Has anyone tested it? If the answer is no then there is no merits to debate.