神经科学与心理学2014arxiv.org
意识作为一种物质状态
Consciousness as a State of Matter
专业 · 约 120 分钟读完前置知识：量子力学、张量网络与量子信息、凝聚态物理基础
导读
Max Tegmark 在这篇论文中提出把意识当作一种物质状态（他称为 Perceptronium）来研究，试图从量子力学、张量分解、纠错码等物理学工具出发，刻画什么样的物质系统组织形式能产生意识。论文更多是提出一个跨学科的研究纲领和概念框架，而非给出确定结论。
HN 关注点：是因为 Tegmark 是知名物理学家，却把'意识'与量子物理、凝聚态等硬核概念混在一起，讨论焦点集中在这是严肃科学还是类似 Sokal 恶作剧式的概念堆砌。
后来怎么样
这篇论文提出了 Perceptronium 概念和用物理学工具刻画意识的纲领，但未形成可检验的成果，其具体框架未被学界广泛采用；Tegmark 后来将相关思想写入科普书《生命 3.0》，影响主要停留在引发讨论层面。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 1 质疑 3
质疑论文把意识与记忆等人类特征混淆，违背了'假设应基于观察'的科学基本原则
我很高兴这篇论文被写出来，但到第 3 页就已经有严重问题。例如：任何冥想过的人都能观察到，人可以在不记忆任何东西的情况下保持有意识——也就是说意识独立于记忆之类的东西。而 Max 第 3 页的清单里有'独立性''效用''整合'这些词，与对意识实际样貌的观察毫无关系，更像是关于'人类是什么'的高层概念。但科学不需要解释'人类'这个复杂的生物有机体——那已经有答案了。要清楚地思考意识，就必须剥离出意识本身是什么，研究它的性质。科学的基本原则是：假设应当解释实际观察到的现象，第一步是仔细观察，而不是凭空造假设。所以每当科学家写意识论文时把意识和记忆混为一谈（几乎每次都如此），都是巨大的危险信号——说明他们没有真正花时间观察意识，注意不到实践者眼中显而易见的东西。
jblow查看英文原文
I am glad this paper has been written, but already by page 3 there are serious problems with it. For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory. Yet Max's list on page 3 has stuff like "independence", "utility", "integration" which have nothing to do with observations of what consciousness is actually like. Rather, they are more like high-level ideas of what human beings are like. But we don't need to explain human beings (complex biological organisms that walk around and do stuff). Science has got that covered already, at least kind of. So if you are going to clearly think about consciousness, you need to factor out what consciousness really is and look at the properties of that. This is supposed to be a foundational principle of science: that your hypotheses are attempts to explain things that are actually observed. The first step is to observe things carefully! You don't just go making up hypotheses. So it's a giant red flag any time a scientist writes a paper about consciousness where they conflate it with memory in some way (which is almost every time). It's a red flag because it indicates that the scientist has not actually spent any time observing consciousness, because they aren't noticing things that are obvious to people who have done that. (You might think that because we are all walking around conscious every day, there would be no need to observe consciousness, but this isn't true. We walk around in a space governed by Newtonian physics, but it took until Newton to figure out this thing called inertia and that a frictional force is required to make things stop, etc, because if you don't look carefully and make careful measurements, most of the everyday world doesn't appear that way at all. Same thing with consciousness.)
质疑论文术语堆砌到让人怀疑是不是自动生成的
鉴于里面出现了这么多看似互不相关的术语：量子因子分解、希尔伯特与傅里叶空间、矩阵张量分解、Hilbert-Schmidt 超算符、基于神经网络的意识、纠错码、凝聚态临界性、量子达尔文主义……我必须确认一下：这篇论文是真货，不是自动生成的吧？
Aardwolf查看英文原文
Given the amount of different seemingly unrelated terms in there: quantum factorization Hilbert & Fourier space tensor factorization of matrices Hilbert-Schmidt superoperators neural-network-based consciousness error-correcting codes condensed matter criticality Quantum Darwinism program ... I have to ask just to be certain: This paper is the real deal, and not auto-generated, right?
质疑质疑论文严谨性，并指出跨学科工作难以被同行评审
一看到标题我就想到两个词：'Sokal 恶作剧'和'David Deutsch、Max Tegmark 某个捣乱者'。Tegmark 以前干过类似的事（'宇宙是数学构成的'）。他还与 FQXi 有关联，而资助 FQXi 的组织有时在科学语境中推行明确的宗教议程。不过我们本应只凭论文本身的价值和论证的严谨程度来评判。唯一的问题是这类工作高度跨学科，到底谁有资格评审？
suprgeek查看英文原文
As soon as I saw the Title of this paper, there were two ideas that sprung up: 1)"Sokal Hoax" 2)David Deutsch, Max Tegmark, Some Other trouble-maker Max Tegmark has done similar things before:[1]. He is also related to the FQXi which is funded by an organization that has sometimes promoted explicit religious agendas in a scientific context. However we should be judging every paper by its merits alone & the rigor of its arguments. The only problem is that work of this nature is very interdisciplinary, so who is qualified? [1]http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-is-the-universe-actually-made-of-math
支持为论文辩护：其价值在于推动用物理学视角研究大脑，但部分论证有缺陷
因为论文里出现几次'量子意识'就懒得批评它，这很诱人。但这篇论文的目的只有一个：让人们从物理学视角而非计算机科学、信息论乃至生物学视角来思考大脑和信息承载系统。物理学是现有最精密的应用数学领域；无论意识是什么，它终将通过物理学被理解——因为意识大概本来就是物理的。大脑确实表现出其他物质状态的许多特征，比如相变。我不喜欢的一点是金戒指与池塘的例子：他们据此说信息在池塘中不持久，这没错，但不能因此说大脑不同——大脑持续受到'外部'影响，不断被供给新鲜营养……
cool_shit查看英文原文
It is tempting to be lazy and criticize this work because it contains a few instances of the phrase "quantum consciousness". This paper has one purpose: To get people thinking of the brain and information-carrying systems from a physical perspective rather than solely a computer-science or information-theoretic perspective, or even worse -- a biological perspective. Physicists were largely responsible for computer science and information theory, and they will be largely responsible for breakthroughs in biology and machine-learning as interdisciplinary laboratories continue to grow. Physics is the most sophisticated area of applied mathematics that currently exists. Whatever consciousness is, it will be understood through physics -- because, presumably, that's what it is. That said, it is interesting to see a consolidated paper touching on common motifs. The brain exhibits many characteristics of any other state of matter; for example, it has phase transitions. One thing I disliked about this paper is the conclusion is draws from its examples with the gold ring and the pond. They go on to say that information is not persistent in a pond; for example if you write your name on the surface, the energy will be propagated away and the surface will return to a higher entropy state fairly quickly. This is true, but one cannot say that the brain is different solely because of this. The brain is constantly under "external" influence. It is constantly being supplied with fresh nutrients; neurons are constantly being supplied with tugs from their neighbors. If you were to remove all incoming nutrients, the brain would surely collapse as an information processor, too (e.g. death of the organism). I would go so far as to say that a conscious system requires constant input, and does not necessarily do anything in the absence of any input. This assertion is in direct contradiction to the heuristics ("principles") established in the paper. For example, computers, bacteria, and brains are all computing systems which require constant input.
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历次讨论
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- 2017Hacker News 讨论帖76 分 · 53 评
- 2019Hacker News 讨论帖49 分 · 73 评
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