TheMajor comments on Confused as to usefulness of 'consciousness' as a concept - LessWrong

35 Post author: KnaveOfAllTrades 13 July 2014 11:01AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 13 July 2014 10:53:36PM 1 point [-]

GR doesn't explain why space time exists though. Quantum theory does, although there we have other problems such as explaining where the Born probabilities come from. At some point you simply stop and say "because that's how the universe works." Positing consciousness as the subjective experience of strongly causally interfering systems (my own theory, which I know doesn't exactly match Tengmark's but is closely related) doesn't tell you why information processing things like us have subjective experience at all. Maybe a future theory will. But even then there will be the question of why that model works the way it does.

Comment author: TheMajor 14 July 2014 09:43:20AM 2 points [-]

Wait - quantum theory explains why spacetime exists? You mean that we can formulate QT without assuming the existence of spacetime, and derive it?

Comment author: [deleted] 14 July 2014 12:48:42PM 0 points [-]

No, but it takes us a step closer than GR...