this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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The given link contains exactly zero evidence in favor of Orchestrated Objective Reduction — "something interesting observed in vitro using UV spectroscopy" is a far cry from anything having biological relevance, let alone significance for understanding consciousness. And it's not like Orch-OR deserves the lofty label of theory, anyway; it's an ill-defined, under-specified, ad hoc proposal to throw out quantum mechanics and replace it with something else.
The fact that programs built to do spicy autocomplete turn out to do spicy autocomplete has, as far as I can tell, zero implications for any theory of consciousness one way or the other.
Bro the main objection to Orch-OR is that the brain is too warm for Quatnum stuff to happen there, and then they found Quantum stuff in the brain.... So... not sure how it's not suggestive of the reality of Orch-OR
Edit: Btw, I don't know where you're getting the idea that Orch-OR is "Trying to throw out Quantum Mechanics and replace it with something else", considering that it's dependent upon Quantum Mechanics, and we have demonstrated that "Quantum Biology" is a thing in plants - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-it-comes-to-photosynthesis-plants-perform-quantum-computation/ and in birds - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01725-1
So why not the brain?
Kludging an "objective reduction" process into the dynamics is throwing out quantum mechanics and replacing it with something else. And because Orch-OR is not quantum mechanics, every observation that a quantum effect might be biologically important somewhere is irrelevant. Orch-OR isn't "quantum biology", it's pixie-dust biology.