Dr. Bob

Thanks Petah.

Is there a spelling mistake?

My last job had close to that range. There is a hiring range is typically 50-70% of the maximum. Below 50% is the developmental range for laddering underqualified internal hires. Over 70% is for very experienced, overqualified candidates. Generally employers won’t go more than 85% of max because they need a couple years of cushion for salary increases. If they hire at max they know the candidate is going to be back on the market in a year.

We have a saying in science; science advances one funeral at a time. It’s a pithy summation of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. So yes, I know how hard it can be to change people’s minds. Most scientists do.

I partially trained in a psychology department, so I haven’t even started down the path of operationalizing “consciousness”. I note that neither Penrose or Hameroff are trained in the discipline either. So if you think the concept is self evident, it ain’t.

I’m not throwing out the concept, but the evidence is far from overwhelming, and there are strong critiques from people like Christof Koch that can’t simply be dismissed out of hand. I compared it temperature, which can also produce anesthesia and loss of consciousness. But no one would step up and say that consciousness is temperature. Or maybe they would?

I’m aware of both. Hameroff has been banging on about that stuff since the 90s. The views of neither are mainstream in neuroscience.

The fact that superposition may exist in the brain does not mean it’s causal in “consciousness” (cf. temperature in the regulation of cognition). And the construct of “consciousness” is far from isomorphic with “intelligence” which is where the conversation started.

I appreciate that you’re enthusiastic about the approach, but I would urge you to temper your enthusiasm with due consideration of alternatives.

I’m a neuroscientist. I have no idea how you definitively know that.