How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero | Quanta Magazine
Yasemin Saplakogluquantamagazine.org
How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero | Quanta Magazine
Our brains are remarkably adept at learning new ways of thinking—and our neural connections are remarkably flexible, even into old age.
Maria Konnikova • Mastermind
Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att
... See moreChristof Koch • Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It
When we examine consciousness up close, it starts to look a bit like the quantum realm. Memories pop in and out of our minds like subatomic particles. Images and sounds tunnel through our senses. Perception, we find, is suffused throughout with uncertainties that would make Heisenberg blush. There's no denying that the brain is up to some pretty sl
... See moreAlex Stone • Fooling Houdini
The first citation given concerns the “uniqueness problem,” which emphasizes a result long known by those of us who worked on IIT: that in systems that have mathematically perfectly symmetric interactions (the specifics are complicated, but just imagine this like a geometric shape), IIT gives conflicting answers as to the boundaries of the consciou... See more
Erik Hoel • Ambitious theories of consciousness are not "scientific misinformation"
Over the past several years, Roger Penrose, a noted physicist and philosopher, has suggested that fine structures in the neurons called tubules perform an exotic form of computation called “quantum computing.” Quantum computing is computing using what are called “qu bits” which take on all possible combinations of solutions simultaneously. Just bec... See more
Ray Kurzweil • The Law of Accelerating Returns « the Kurzweil Library + collections
The brain remains the single most sophisticated object in the known universe—by a staggering margin—even in an era of mobile devices, spacecraft, and particle accelerators. It outpaces our most powerful supercomputers, all within a volume measured in cubic inches, powered by nothing more than a fraction of the calories we consume each day. The stor
... See more