bigbad

I tend to think that the most relevant piece of information about the singularity is Moore's Second Law, "the cost of a semiconductor fab rises exponentially with each generation of chips."

Corollary 1: At some point, the rate of increase in computing power will be limited by the rate of growth in the overall global economy.

Corollary 2: AI will not go FOOM (at least, not by a process of serially improved computer designs).

High status individuals, being older, tend to rely on memory more than creativity to solve problems. As a result, their first response to a given situation is often slightly mistuned; the first answer they remember was appropriate to a similar situation but often slightly inappropriate to the current situation.

I'm a chemist; we actually have to use quantum physics on a routine basis. The main reason many-worlds never got traction is that it doesn't make a testable prediction. Most physicists realize that making a model of reality that predicts experiment (as far as possible) is, well, science; BSing about what the implications are is more of a late night and beer thing.

In other words, if the model implies that there may be other worlds, but they can't conceivably be detected, then who cares?

One last thing: there's some pretty good evidence of nonlocal physics these days. It's inconsistent with general relativity, but no biggie. We already knew that general relativity and quantum physics were incompatible. The current situation in physics (for the last 30 years or so) is considerable confusion at the level of fundamental theory, but extremely robust models for every actual physical situation that we can probe. The robustness of the models is exactly what has halted progress.

You seem to be confusing plausibility with possibility. The existence of God seems plausible to many people, but whether or not the existence of God is truly possible is not clear. Reasonable people believe that God is impossible, others that God is possible, and others that God is necessary (i.e. God's nonexistance is impossible).

If we are, in fact, living in the Matrix, then science has already characterized the rules of the simulation rather well. Barring further interference by the sysadmin/God/whatever, it should continue to operate by mechanistic, semipredictable rules. Science has little to say about one-time interventions from outside observable reality, whether you call them "Matrix hacks", "miracles", or what you will. Regarding such matters, the null hypothesis has yet to be convincingly falsified, but absence of proof is not proof of absence.

As Feynman said, one of the characteristics of the truth is that, as you look more closely at it, it gets clearer. Most of the parapsych crowd tends to report results that are have a 1% probability of occurring randomly, after having done hundreds of experiments and failing to report the rest. The difference is that the level of confidence in the best experiment in a real effect doesn't scale simply with the number of experiments. A real effect should show millions-to-one odds in a few trials, once solid experimental procedures have been devised.

Brain functional MRI scans show that, to the best available resolution, conscious states are highly correlated with events in space.

The brain operates by electrical and chemical signals, so a complex circuit seems like a better physics-based model of consciousness than what you propose.

Why would you try to approach consciousness this way, as opposed to through neuroscience? Neuroscience has been making some real progress lately; what is it that you think this approach could add?

I can't help but notice that the "self-monad" looks a lot like a "soul" in a thin, crispy quantum shell. What are the differences? Are there differences? Dressing it up this way allows you to do math with the monad. Does that math tell you anything? Especially, can any testable prediction come out of this?

You describe how to think like a quantum monadologist. If you answer these questions, I'll be able to decide if thinking like a quantum monadologist is worth attempting.

I've always found "Just be yourself" to be particularly unhelpful advice.

"Just be Brad Pitt" is better advice, but still not helpful.