Tuesday 20 November 2007

Consciousness and computing concepts

Going through notes which I scribbled down some years ago and titled them "New Ideas Laboratory". The following is an extract from an article by Stewart Hameroff.

"The main obstacle to realization of quantum computation is the problem of interfacing to the system (input, output) while also protecting the quantum state from environmental decoherence. If this problem can be overcome, then present day classical computers may evolve to quantum computers".

The interfacing of Hameroff's idea lit up a connection in my mind; interfaced, compelling me to explore its implications armed with whatever knowledge I possess now before I delve into his article. The word 'interfaced' I used, could it be the key? Is it an attempt to use my subjective experience of it, as it comes naturally within me? Interface what? What is an interface?

Taking ideas from the computing science field, their specific use of the interface concept: the two different kinds of programs, the client and the server. The client program wanting to instantiate objects served by the server and doing it so by the use of interfaces. Binary interfaces that both can understand, written in a language understood by both client and server programs. Each client and server programs evolved developed, making use of different languages of expression but nevertheless both built up from the same basic language, the binary, bits and zeros and the interfaces used are built from the same basic language so that the two kinds of programs can communicate with each other. Which means each individual client and server programs must have the ability, possess the proper functions to reach down to their basic levels and by doing so to establish a link, a handshake with the other program.

Can it be that our brain/mind uses the same principles? That our brain/mind being the client reaches down to its basic level language, the binaries of quantum computation, the same level that all reality exists and finds the interfaces which are available and gets connected with the various server programs that exist in nature, server programs that are responsible for the proper function of nature, natural phenomena, physical phenomena which we have understood and define with the laws of physics chemistry biology and so forth.

Which we need to look at them, examine them from another perspective, a perspective of language, programming language and define the language's code. Code that uses quantum computation at its basic level, define its 'bits and zeros' and therefore determine the nature of the interfaces that are used for client and server programs to communicate.

Who knows? We might be able to discover what consciousness is? Whether consciousness requires the 'I' to express itself? That the objects that client programs instantiate, in computing, via the interfaces by the server programs might be the same with the objects in the world?

Objects, being instantiated, in a similar way as in computing, as a result of client programs, executed by our brain/mind, via interfaces by server programs, executed by the physical universe.

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