On Information Processing Styles
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/06
There can be a qualitative analysis of information processing through the computer systems pervasive around us. Whether through the communication theory presentation of sender, noise, receiver, or the processing of information internal to a computer mainframe, data pervades us.
It’s not only the medium of conveyance of information. It’s the ideational present. It’s the zeitgeist. The information processing view dominates cognitive neuroscience. It dominates psychology. It dominates the simulations of the universe, of phenomena, of artificial and non-existent fantasy realms.
Computation is the world now. Information processing can be seen as happening within the universe through the computer-based systems, digital systems. As well, we conduct information processes, albeit of a different natural kind. That’s a common view in academe.
A genus of information processing unmatched so far. We do not know the principles of human cognition. Although, many seem to pretend as if we do. It could be microtubules, pretending to know as such. I recall working on this kind of quantum biology remotely with Dr. Manahel Thabet years ago when she introduced this to me.
I don’t remember the formula off the top, as it was almost a decade ago. However, the formula for Penrose’s argument wasn’t that complicated in terms of the size or magnitude in spacetime required for collapse of the function. It was a mix of incomputability and indeterminacy, or simply non-algorithmic ‘processing.’ This, he argued, was against a reductionist idea of mind, of human computation.
That’s fair enough. Many fear the reduction of human consciousness to something on the order of other animals, hence the argument for a Creation Story. There have been quite a lot of them. Also, hence, the reason for the imposition of the concept of a soul in humans and then the lack of this divine substance in animals.
So, Penrose argued that this non-algorithm form of computation was due to a quantum superposition collapse. As far as expert friends tell me, quantum theory is the most evidenced theory ever. So, until we get a more unifying theory, or if we get one, then quantum theory is the foundation of reality. Reality is quantum — like or love, or hate, it. It’s reality saying, “I’m quantum, get used to it.”
Quantum superposition collapse, at the aforementioned scaling, would be around the size of microtubules inside of neurons because the size of neurons would be too big. Penrose — and his collaborator in this one, Stuart Hameroff — view this as an orchestrated happenstance, which is the reason for the Orch-OR or Orchestrated Objective Reduction title.
An objective reduction at a recognized scale coordinated amongst microtubules in the brain for a non-algorithmic form of processing. It’s not a prominent theory, but not a falsified theory so far. The evidence is thin. Yet, even if this idea came to the fore or became the central idea, we can argue for evolution using quantum effects.
Nature uses quantum effects for photosynthesis. So, nature does use quantum processes to function in some known places, maybe many places. The leap is from that to the environment housed in the human skull. The issue wouldn’t be arguing for a why of consciousness, why an evolution of it, or a how it came to be, but merely providing the evidence of this as a reality.
Once done, and on the premise of this as a possibility, a natural process constructed a non-algorithmic information system at one scale, microtubule orchestration, and algorithmic information system at another scale, neural networks and gross brain anatomy. So, even if there is a non-algorithmic component to human consciousness, which cannot be dismissed as ‘magic,’ then, in principle, this could be deconstructed, engineered in a different substrate, and then reproduced.
Our created intelligences, or non-evolved ‘artificial intelligences,’ would, in fact, and this should follow naturally from the premises, be capable of both non-algorithmic forms of ‘processing.’ They would still outstrip us in many domains and several increasing areas in algorithmic information processing while having non-algorithmic processing to boot.
Even in psychology, information processing would be the dominant school of psychology with the idea of human psychology as fundamentally a form of information processing. Chemical exchange and electrical impulse scattered and integrated neural networks dynamically fluctuating structure may mirror digital computation.
While, the combination of structure and function, of hardware and software, is important in that evolved function. Also, nature evolved human brains; human beings, some of the smart ones, constructed digital intelligences. That funnels right back into the prior argument. We cannot escape the construction of other natural but unevolved intelligences.
Certainly, our intelligence on average is merely a reflection of the total set and combination of those elements in that set of environmental and internal pressures. It’s a good-enough cognitive system given the evolutionary history. Is that good enough, though?
Also, of course, it is truism or superfluous. It is akin to making the argument religion or linguistic capacities are the result of evolution. That doesn’t help much, inasmuch as we know every biological system developed via evolution from natural selective pressures. It is better than saying a supernatural order or entity created every living thing.
Whether the algorithmic evolved intelligence acknowledged, or the algorithmic information processing engineered and observed, or the non-algorithmic intelligence hypothesized, information processing is the current state of thought about the world because of its ubiquitous and incessant puncturing of our self-importance and influence on our everyday convenience.
It’s here to stay.
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