Extraterrestrials: Hope or Threat

[jeffb]

for the individual, it will be as if they went to sleep in spacedock and woke up at the new world.

For the "person" waking up, yes. For the person going to sleep. . .not so much. They ain't wakin' up.

Ahh, but is the person who wakes up ever the same person who went to sleep? Were 'you' there while you were asleep or is waking up effectively "rebooting"?

 

[Tony Williams]

In Star Trek, it's a non-issue. If the transporter fouls up and makes *two* of the person being transported, both seem to be considered fully human, rights and all. This seems to me to be the best way to deal with it. Not just transporters, but AI and aliens: if they *seem* to be alive and sentient, then it's best to assume that they are and grant them full human rights.

Fully human, sure, but not the same human - any more than clones or identical twins are the same. If copies of you are made, are the copies entitled to share your life, your home, your wife and kids, on an equal basis to yourself?

If the scanning process leaves you unharmed, then your identity becomes a matter of provenance. It would obviously be helpful if copies were indelibly marked in some way to resolve any problems. If your body is destroyed, then any copies made will presumably be considered equal, which raises the problems in my previous paragraph.

 

[Tony Williams]

The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal in the room is of course the Fermi Paradox.

I previously posted a link to an article analysing the Fermi paradox and various possible answers, here: http://quarryhs.co.uk/Fermi.htm

If one foresees a glorious destiny for humanity among the stars as likely, then that begs the question of why hasn't the Earth or another planet in the solar system been 'xenoformed' by some very slightly quicker species as a kind of alien Disneyland imitation of their homeworld?

It's been happening for decades. The aliens love high temperatures, polluted air and lots of ruins.

 

[Tony Williams]

If you're happy with believing that a replica is the same as the original or any difference is meaningless

The difference may not be meaningless to the original, if they are destroyed. You can't ask the original if the process went well, because the answer would only come from a copy...

 

[steelpillow]

What is your identity? Modern neurology suggests that it is no more than the stream of thoughts passing through you, supported by your memories: your "self" is just a virtual construct to hang those memories and thoughts on. The Buddha, Lao Tzu and some Greek philosopher or other also taught this 2,500 years or so ago. If it is true then all of your identity gets transported along with all the other information about you. If there were to be a hiccup in a transporter and you ended up with two clones, their sense impressions and stream of thoughts would immediately become different and they would be two separate identities.
Larry Niven's two-headed Pearson Puppeteers claimed to have proved scientifically that they had no immortal soul, which was why they sought immortality at any cost and regarded any other course as insanity.
All this appears to contradict the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition of an immortal soul. However the intractable nature or qualities of subjective experience - the "redness" of red for example - has led philosophers to dub its relationship to objective brain function simply as "the hard problem". There is good reason for that title, but let it rest there. Chacun á son gout - each to their own.

 

[Foo Fighter]

The question for me is, "just how many 'big bangs' have there been"? No, not series/seasons of the sitcom, THE big bangs.....

 

[steelpillow]

The question for me is, "just how many 'big bangs' have there been"? No, not series/seasons of the sitcom, THE big bangs.....

According to the imaginary time model of Stephen Hawking there has in a way been none because it was not fundamentally a "beginning", more like observing that at the South Pole the diameter of the Earth is zero. As he said, "It may be that the boundary condition of the Universe is that it has no boundary" - and by that he meant boundaries in either space or time (i.e. spacetime).
OTOH according to the conformal cyclic universe theory of Roger Penrose (he of twistor theory fame), there has been an infinite series. Sadly, the survival of even one creature in the current universe prevents the cycle from repeating, so it is not possible to stay around for the next one.
Then again, if you accept the theory of eternal inflation and count other bubbles or branes in the multiverse then it depends on how big you think the multiverse is. One of the problems for an invasion-minded alien in one such bubble, or even in the parent multiverse itself, is how to get into a bubble which has different laws of physics and quite possibly a different number of dimensions.
Both the conformal cyclic and eternal inflation models swap the paradox of "before the beginning" for the paradoxes of infinity. Hawking neatly sidesteps both, at the expense of discarding our classical understanding of Time. Since our classical understandings of most things have been discarded over the last 120 years or so, I tend to agree with him that Time is overdue its visit to the doctor's surgery. (I should perhaps note that in this context "imaginary" is just mathematical jargon and has nothing to do with a lack of physical reality).

 

[Orionblamblam]

Fully human, sure, but not the same human - any more than clones or identical twins are the same. If copies of you are made, are the copies entitled to share your life, your home, your wife and kids, on an equal basis to yourself?

Probably. However, practical concerns pop up. "It's a Constitution, not a suicide pact" is the sort of realization that would come into play here.

If the scanning process leaves you unharmed, then your identity becomes a matter of provenance.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If one foresees a glorious destiny for humanity among the stars as likely, then that begs the question of why hasn't the Earth or another planet in the solar system been 'xenoformed' by some very slightly quicker species as a kind of alien Disneyland imitation of their homeworld?

It's been happening for decades. The aliens love high temperatures, polluted air and lots of ruins.

Yup. But rather than going to the trouble of raising Earths temperature themselves, they've convinced the local humans to do it for them. Probably this is because the aliens arrived not in a massive armada or a huge mothership, but a small scout vessel several centuries in advance, or perhaps a tiny AI system that can operate solely through subtle influence. And so the aliens, rather than erecting giant solar mirrors to cook the surface, have convinced humans to abandon nuclear power, forcing them to further rely on fossil fuels; and they've convinced the "leaders," be they politicians or ignorant children, to focus not on the growing powers in the field of carbon emissions, but on the advanced nations who have stabilized their carbon emissions and who could, quite easily, reduce *everyones* emissions via thorium and breeder reactors. And so the likes of India and China spew out nearly an order of a magnitude more CO2 that the US, but who gets the blame, and where are the efforts devoted?

Quite devious, really.

 

[edwest4]

Fully human, sure, but not the same human - any more than clones or identical twins are the same. If copies of you are made, are the copies entitled to share your life, your home, your wife and kids, on an equal basis to yourself?

Probably. However, practical concerns pop up. "It's a Constitution, not a suicide pact" is the sort of realization that would come into play here.

If the scanning process leaves you unharmed, then your identity becomes a matter of provenance.

And that officially settles that. If some believe philosophy must be endless debate with no resolution, then they are not philosophers but serial arguers. I may have made up a word there.

 

[steelpillow]

If some believe philosophy must be endless debate with no resolution, then they are not philosophers but serial arguers. I may have made up a word there.

Amazingly enough, you have pretty much quoted from J W Dunne's book An Experiment with Time, in which he developed the theory he called Serialism.

Or, as John Cleese once said in a heated Monty Python sketch after checking his watch; "erm ... I'm sorry, but is this a five-minute argument or the full half-hour?"

 

[Fluff]

If the scanning process leaves you unharmed, then your identity becomes a matter of provenance. It would obviously be helpful if copies were indelibly marked in some way to resolve any problems.

Perhaps they could wear a little badge, maybe a star, in yellow, that wont cause any issues surely......

 

[galgot]

Ok… so far we’ve talked about potential physical travel (us or aliens), either by "teletransport" or by "saving" a brain or a consciousness and reinsert it into a physical body at the arrival. But this still involves moving some material to the destination, a teletransport "receiver", or the ship itself containing the saved consciousness.
I still find this very … archaic. It’s still physical travel, moving material huge distances.
What if there was a possibility of traveling from another dimension, where time doesn’t matter . That is without moving material. Without moving our body (or something transporting our body).

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies, ie matter, which is the problematic thing to move such distance and time in our dimension. Wouldn't it be more elegant ?..

I mean, the speed required to move our body to these huge distances in reasonable time is almost as unrealistic as finding a way to "project" our consciousness on another world.

Let me get a beer…

 

[Fluff]

Ok… so far we’ve talked about potential physical travel (us or aliens), either by "teletransport" or by "saving" a brain or a consciousness and reinsert it into a physical body at the arrival. But this still involves moving some material to the destination, a teletransport "receiver", or the ship itself containing the saved consciousness.
I still find this very … archaic. It’s still physical travel, moving material huge distances.
What if there was a possibility of traveling from another dimension, where time doesn’t matter . That is without moving material. Without moving our body (or something transporting our body).

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies, ie matter, which is the problematic thing to move such distance and time in our dimension.

I mean, the speed required to move our body to these huge distances in reasonable time is almost as unrealistic as finding a way to "project" our consciousness on another world.

Let me get a beer…

soooo, we are now 'moving' our soul?

I'm getting a feeling your in sales?

pretty soon your going to look earnestly into my eyes and ask me if I feel any different....

 

[galgot]

soooo, we are now 'moving' our soul?

Soooo I didn't used the word 'soul'... too religious. But consciousness.

I'm getting a feeling your in sales?

Sorry don't understand, english not my mother tongue. what mean "your in sales" ?

pretty soon your going to look earnestly into my eyes and ask me if I feel any different....

Hard to look into your eyes through an internet forum. But if you post a pict of you we can try.

 

[Tony Williams]

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies

We can do that - works fine until the psychoactive drug wears off...

 

[Tony Williams]

Perhaps they could wear a little badge, maybe a star, in yellow, that wont cause any issues surely......

Probably not..... There was an SF movie which had clones identified by markings on their ears, or something. However, I think that a hidden solution would be better - something like an RF tag buried deep inside a bone, say, so it needs a high-tech medical facility to insert or remove, and a scanner to identify.

 

[steelpillow]

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies, ie matter, which is the problematic thing to move such distance and time in our dimension. Wouldn't it be more elegant ?..

None other than JRR Tolkien began a tale built around this idea. He had made a pact with CS Lewis (of Narnia fame) that Lewis would write a space travel story (which became the Perelandra trilogy) and Tolkien one on time travel. Tolkien's first attempt was built around telepathic time travel, reaching back to the mind of some ancestor in the distant past, but he never finished it. In his second equally unfinished attempt "The Notion Club Papers" the traveller ranged more broadly over space as well as time, I give an extract here. But even he was not the first. Taking your mind back to occupy someone else's body goes back at least to Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men ca 1932, followed by HG Wells' The Shape of Things to Come ca. 1934. I have also come across the spatial projection idea in at least one more recent writer's work but cannot recall whose.

 

[Fluff]

----...no hablo Iglesias---- but your not denying it....

 

[Fluff]

Perhaps they could wear a little badge, maybe a star, in yellow, that wont cause any issues surely......

Probably not..... There was an SF movie which had clones identified by markings on their ears, or something. However, I think that a hidden solution would be better - something like an RF tag buried deep inside a bone, say, so it needs a high-tech medical facility to insert or remove, and a scanner to identify.

This could work....

 

[galgot]

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies

We can do that - works fine until the psychoactive drug wears off...

We clearly can't do that, even on beer and it doesn't work...
But... What if there was a way that an alien civ had found.
Even thinking of aliens as advanced Octopus like creatures, we still think they would think like us. Like if they would wonder how to move their fishtanks (Octopustanks in that case) from planet A to planet B. Maybe (surely) they think in a completely different way that have opened to them very different ways of doing thing, and that might as well include traveling.

 

[CiTrus90]

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies, ie matter, which is the problematic thing to move such distance and time in our dimension. Wouldn't it be more elegant ?..

Ever seen K-Pax?

 

[steelpillow]

Octopus like creatures, we still think they would think like us. Like if they would wonder how to move their fishtanks (Octopustanks in that case) from planet A to planet B. Maybe (surely) they think in a completely different way that have opened to them very different ways of doing thing.

The convergent evolution seen in the higher cortical structures of bird, mammal (from human to dolphin) and cephalopod alike suggests that at least some fundamental aspects of intelligent thought are universal. The fact that we all like to watch TV supports that idea. However when it comes to say choosing what channel to watch, finding a home or fighting off a small shark, all bets are off.

 

[Fluff]

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies

We can do that - works fine until the psychoactive drug wears off...

We clearly can't do that, even on beer and it doesn't work...
But... What if there was a way that an alien civ had found.
Even thinking of aliens as advanced Octopus like creatures, we still think they would think like us. Like if they would wonder how to move their fishtanks (Octopustanks in that case) from planet A to planet B. Maybe (surely) they think in a completely different way that have opened to them very different ways of doing thing, and that might as well include traveling.

They may, and I'll admit you will throw a few million years at me, but whats the difference between sailing the atlantic, then walking/riding a few thousand miles, and now we jump on a plane and are there in 10 hours. Fundamentally the mode of transport has changed, but travelling hasn't, other than becoming easier. We still leave place A and arrive at place B. And lets face it, while it could be a mutation, its bloody useful in terms of not having the whole tribe wiped out, and for finding resources, new hunting grounds, whatever.

While we think about exotic modes of transport, or moving the soul/ consciousness, I really think we could be disappointed, I mean to steal another point from Douglas Adams, it could be the phone sanitizers and the lawyers that arrive. I mean I don't think Polish transport vans in the UK, are driven by polish professors….

Assuming they have immersive AR, plus the universal dispenser, anything you want, and the culture's no money economy, why would they want to leave that, to go die on some alien planet, where you can catch digit-rot and watch it drop off. They don't need resources, (on their scale we don't have any).

We don't see Californians jumping in rubber boats to sail to 'Vietnam' do we. Londoners aren't buying rubber dingies to get to the good times in Calais.....

 

[Foo Fighter]

"Let me get a beer"…

You read my mind already. One thing off the tech list at least.......

 

[Orionblamblam]

Taking your mind back to occupy someone else's body goes back at least to Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men ca 1932.

It used to be a fairly common sort of trope... someone would fall asleep, or get drugged, bonked on the head, struck by lightning, touch a magical object, etc. and project forward or back in time, sometimes to occupy another person, or bodily. And of course there has long been the "Astral projection" nonsense. The idea kinda faded with the rise of "time machines," but it still hung on for a while. Lovecrafts "The Shadow out of Time" involved whole races that would project themselves across millions of years and between the stars to usurp the bodies of whole other races. Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court" had a guy get whomped upside the noggin and woke up in the dark ages; the "Barsoom" novels had John Carter traveling to Mars via something like psychic teleportation or astral projection.

Basically, this sort of thing was common in fantastical fiction up until more technological means - time machines, cryogenic suspension, spaceships, etc. - became understood.

 

[edwest4]

If some believe philosophy must be endless debate with no resolution, then they are not philosophers but serial arguers. I may have made up a word there.

Amazingly enough, you have pretty much quoted from J W Dunne's book An Experiment with Time, in which he developed the theory he called Serialism.

Or, as John Cleese once said in a heated Monty Python sketch after checking his watch; "erm ... I'm sorry, but is this a five-minute argument or the full half-hour?"

I have read or debated this with others. The only possible answers are (1) We don't know and (2) We don't know yet. There has been an attempt to popularize transhumanism, which is about being anti-human. One idea is that the original body could be left behind while the consciousness travels to a new body that could be light years away, is very bad on a number of levels. The body left behind could be put in stasis or allowed to die. This has already been written about. Sorry, but I can't recall where I read it.

 

[sferrin]

how is a Boltzmann brain ridiculous but the idea of an entire universe spontaneously generating out of nothing acceptable?

Boltzmann brains were, like Schroedinger's cat and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, brewed up to expose logical absurdities in certain, ah, over-enthusiastic theories. Despite the best efforts of Douglas Adams to make a joke out of it, the entire universe spontaneously generating out of nothing acknowledges a longstanding paradox (philosophically the problem is known as that of the First Cause. Scientifically, the problem is where did all the mass and energy in the Universe come from?) and seeks a positive way out of it. So the one is deliberately crafted as ridiculous rubbish in order to expose faulty logic such as yours (but don't worry, as you point out you are in good company), while the other is a serious proposal working towards a testable hypothesis and resolution of a known paradox. My view is that until we better understand the nature of Time and of Universal expansion (the cosmological "constant"), we will be unable to understand what the "beginning" of the universe might imply.

Well said. At the moment of the Big Bang, what was there and where did it go? Into zero electromagnetic energy and zero space? I view the Big Bang as a placeholder for "we don't know yet."

What if an alien civilisation had found a way to move their consciousness without moving their bodies

We can do that - works fine until the psychoactive drug wears off...

Somebody contact Joe Rogan.

 

[galgot]

Octopus like creatures, we still think they would think like us. Like if they would wonder how to move their fishtanks (Octopustanks in that case) from planet A to planet B. Maybe (surely) they think in a completely different way that have opened to them very different ways of doing thing.

The convergent evolution seen in the higher cortical structures of bird, mammal (from human to dolphin) and cephalopod alike suggests that at least some fundamental aspects of intelligent thought are universal. The fact that we all like to watch TV supports that idea. However when it comes to say choosing what channel to watch, finding a home or fighting off a small shark, all bets are off.

Agree.
But let’s imagine an Octopus civilisation had appeared on earth instead of us, on the same environment. To the point of being very advanced, technologically dunno, but at least they would have reached a high level of consciousness or intelligence.
Wouldn’t their history ,culture, living, philosophy, be very different from us ?
Just from the fact that an Octopus just doesn’t move like us, that would have made their civilisation way of thinking very different from us.
So many different ways of thinking, motives, interests, among humans that we can’t understand.
So imagine an advance Octopus civilisation…

 

[Desertfox]

"Astral projection" kind off already exists in the form of quantum entanglement...

 

[galgot]

They may, and I'll admit you will throw a few million years at me, but whats the difference between sailing the atlantic, then walking/riding a few thousand miles, and now we jump on a plane and are there in 10 hours. Fundamentally the mode of transport has changed, but travelling hasn't, other than becoming easier. We still leave place A and arrive at place B. And lets face it, while it could be a mutation, its bloody useful in terms of not having the whole tribe wiped out, and for finding resources, new hunting grounds, whatever.

Yes it works and its good. For the time being at least…
But it works on the comparative small dimension of our planet. Thinking of traveling the same way in the galaxy as we could take a plane (either cloned, teletransported or else exotic ways) is as unrealistic as thinking of a way to make our consciousness traveling without our body. That was my point.

Assuming they have immersive AR, plus the universal dispenser, anything you want, and the culture's no money economy, why would they want to leave that, to go die on some alien planet, where you can catch digit-rot and watch it drop off. They don't need resources, (on their scale we don't have any).
...

Mean that hypothetical alien civ ? Well they wouldn’t "leave that", that’s the point.
Not physically. They would have the ability to move their consciousness to another space. Time wouldn’t matter here.

 

[Fluff]

mmm, for them it sounds like a game of sims.

I'm bored Mum - well go and see how you#731 is doing, on that backward dump you picked to send him too....

1 nuclear war/City abduction later ....aka 3 minutes....

I'm bored Mum.....

 

[Orionblamblam]

"Astral projection" kind off already exists in the form of quantum entanglement...

In reality, only in the world of subatomic particles. In the world of fiction, only among newage frauds like Deepak Chopra.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Worm holes, which is fine for worm's. Seriously, philosophy does tend to go off on tangents and call the inane, intelligent. Schroedinger's cat for example is a pointless meander down the road to dementia. The volume of air in the box is a known quantity or the premise is pointless anyway. A bit like philosophy tbh. Worm holes would make for much more efficient long distance travel and would dodge the "Light speed and multiples thereof is impossible due to time dilatation" brigade. That many of them think time travel is possible is an issue they trip over, if time travel is possible so is faster than light movement.

 

[Tony Williams]

But let’s imagine an Octopus civilisation had appeared on earth instead of us, on the same environment. To the point of being very advanced, technologically dunno, but at least they would have reached a high level of consciousness or intelligence.
Wouldn’t their history ,culture, living, philosophy, be very different from us ?
Just from the fact that an Octopus just doesn’t move like us, that would have made their civilisation way of thinking very different from us.
So many different ways of thinking, motives, interests, among humans that we can’t understand.
So imagine an advance Octopus civilisation…

The fundamental difference is that octopodes live in water, and can't survive long without it. A technological civ, as we understand it, requires all sorts of processes - metal extraction and use, many chemical reactions and electrical devices, etc - which cannot easily function underwater. The same problem applies to other intelligent aquatic animals like dolphins (plus, of course, they have no hands so can manipulate very little).

 

[galgot]

"Astral projection" kind off already exists in the form of quantum entanglement...

In reality, only in the world of subatomic particles. In the world of fiction, only among newage frauds like Deepak Chopra.

Agree, but do we know how consciousness is "stored" and work ? What if it was at subatomic particles level ?

The fundamental difference is that octopodes live in water, and can't survive long without it. A technological civ, as we understand it, requires all sorts of processes - metal extraction and use, many chemical reactions and electrical devices, etc - which cannot easily function underwater. The same problem applies to other intelligent aquatic animals like dolphins (plus, of course, they have no hands so can manipulate very little).

Agree. But may I remind that we just use Octopus as an example for something physically very different from us. Something from another world would again be totally different, not necessarily living in water.
I took an Octopus civ example to show that just the fact that its physically different from us would have made their evolution and thus culture, thinking, philosophy surely taking different path from our.

Plus , does an advanced civilization imply necessarily being a technological civilization ? Romans were not very hitech, yet were they less smart than us ?

In fact, given our current path, being technologically advanced doesn’t really makes our civilization smartness shine, as we are f..ing up our own living environment with that.

 

[Tony Williams]

Plus , does an advanced civilization imply necessarily being a technological civilization ? Romans were not very hitech, yet were they less smart than us ?

An interesting question. How do you define "advanced"? I suggest that it is down to the depth of knowledge and understanding of life, the universe and all that. But our knowledge has been accumulated over the centuries, with technological equipment - telescopes and microscopes being an important early step - being vital in facilitating that understanding. Without technology, a lot of knowledge would be hard or impossible to come by.

 

[galgot]

Plus , does an advanced civilization imply necessarily being a technological civilization ? Romans were not very hitech, yet were they less smart than us ?

An interesting question. How do you define "advanced"? I suggest that it is down to the depth of knowledge and understanding of life, the universe and all that. But our knowledge has been accumulated over the centuries, with technological equipment - telescopes and microscopes being an important early step - being vital in facilitating that understanding. Without technology, a lot of knowledge would be hard or impossible to come by.

I don't really know how to define "advanced". One thing for sure is that i don't find our own civ very "advanced".
Our curiosity or the necessity of having ways to win wars or cure diseases or other things gave us huge knowledge , but we still have the same basic motives as Romans for example. Motives that are basic in fact, making sure our tribe can win over the other, making sure we have enough food , enrichment, and such...
Romans or not, we are just monkeys with car keys.

Only now, we have the power to destroy our own "fishtank" pursuing the same motives, we don't know and don't have other ways of thinking.
To the point that we think of moving to another "fishtank". It's like a guy having his trash full, instead of thinking of cleaning and finding way of not filling his trash completely , would go and fill neighbor's trash... and he CAN'T find another way...

This don't seem very advanced to me.

How about a civ that would have found a way to evolve intellectually and have great power and stay in harmony with his environment , is that possible ? dunno...

 

[steelpillow]

imagine an Octopus civilisation had appeared on earth ... Just from the fact that an Octopus just doesn’t move like us, that would have made their civilisation way of thinking very different from us. ... So many different ways of thinking, motives, interests, among humans that we can’t understand.

You should watch The Octopus in My House by David Scheel, who is a professor of marine biology.

"Astral projection" kind off already exists in the form of quantum entanglement...

In reality, only in the world of subatomic particles.

Some think that the quantum form may allow the transmission of information. You'd have to create entangled pairs on an industrial scale, agree a communications protocol and ship one set sublight. Then, by forcing the states of successive partners at the home end (say, electron spins), you could force the states of their dearly departed, thus transferring information instantatneously. Others think that the rough sublight ride, the no-cloning theorem and other difficulties would render the task impossible.

Seriously, philosophy does tend to go off on tangents and call the inane, intelligent. Schroedinger's cat for example is a pointless meander down the road to dementia. ... Worm holes would make for much more efficient long distance travel and would dodge the "Light speed and multiples thereof is impossible due to time dilatation" brigade. That many of them think time travel is possible is an issue they trip over, if time travel is possible so is faster than light movement.

It is scientists who come up with these ridiculous notions, philosophers have more sense. I know several philosophers and none of them is daft enough to take any of that rubbish as seriously as some of their scientific colleagues do. Einstein once remarked that scientists make poor philosophers, and you have just produced a clutch of neat examples to prove his point.
Philosophers take this stuff seriously only to the extent that their less appallingly-funded scientific colleagues keep buying them beers.

do we know how consciousness is "stored" and work? What if it was at subatomic particles level?

Current thinking is that consciousness is not stored, it is the stream of information passing through a certain part of the brain. That is, it is not the physical brain that is conscious but the information it sustains. Just like a computer, the physical substrate supports a constant chatter of low-level signalling, which in turn encodes the actual meaning that is flowing to and fro. We understand the brain's electrochemical signalling to a pretty fine level nowadays and we can even track broad aspects of experience in real time. The bit that gets stored is memories, including habitual patterns of thought. Recent neurological studies have suggested that it is all stored through the patterns and strengths of nerve synapses, with new memories creating new synapses and repetitive recollection strengthening them. Decade-old theories of microtubules and similar within the cell protoplasm have been largely discredited. Intriguingly, other work has suggested that quantum entanglement feautres as part of the message transfer system across synapses, somewhat as it does in the harvesting of energy by photosynthesis. But there is absolutely no support for ideas such as quantum weirdness being involed in the memory or thought process itself, any more than semiconductor band gaps are involved in computational algorithms. The feeling of "self" which we have is just one of the more regularly retrieved habitual thought patterns, while the sense of time passing is what we inevitably rebuild every time we look to our memories and find only the past in there.

 

[sferrin]

"Astral projection" kind off already exists in the form of quantum entanglement...

In reality, only in the world of subatomic particles. In the world of fiction, only among newage frauds like Deepak Chopra.

Agree, but do we know how consciousness is "stored" and work ? What if it was at subatomic particles level ?

Or incorporated quantum effects? There was a TED Talk several years ago wherein they discussed discovering part of the brain, that they thought was there mainly for passive purposes, turns out to be heavily involved in data processing. (Gotta chase that down because I'm butchering it. Now that I think about it, it might have been a World Science Foundation talk.) That's not to say it has anything at all to do with quantum computing. Just pointing out, relatively speaking, when it comes to the brain, we're apes throwing rocks at the monolith trying to figure it out.