We've already invalidated hidden variable theories in Physics so I find it hard to believe consciousness has some separate class of hidden effects still undiscovered and allowable in our universe.
The only theories not ruled out by Bell are non local. You have to accept such a mountain of nonsense for any non local theory to be valid that I don't think anyone takes them seriously.
Aside from non-local theories which have been known since the 1950s and are regularly used in quantum chemistry, superdeterministic theories have seen virtually no development. Claims that they either of these approaches entail a mountain of nonsense are based on no evidence.
I think you are misunderstanding. These are typically mathematical tricks used for computation and don't lead to actual non-local interpretations of QM. I don't think any major work is done without standard QFT.
I doubt you can find any serious Theoretical Physicist who believes retrocausality or FTL information transmission is compatible with the Universe we observe.
Anyway we've diverged off the actual crux which is that Quantum Conscious Woowoo theories require types of hidden variable theories which are not coherent with this Universe.
> These are typically mathematical tricks used for computation and don't lead to actual non-local interpretations of QM.
Bohmian mechanics is an explicitly non-local theory of QM, not merely a computational trick. It actually makes predictions that differ from QM in non-equilibrium regimes, but is consistent with QM in all regimes currently accessible to us.
> I don't think any major work is done without standard QFT.
I don't know what "major work" means. Work in quantum foundations is done without QFT all of the time. Yes, QFT is a useful effective theory, but that's a far cry from the original claim about the nature of reality, ie. that there are necessarily no hidden variables. Literally no experiment has ruled out hidden variables wholesale, only certain types of hidden variables.
> Anyway we've diverged off the actual crux which is that Quantum Conscious Woowoo theories require types of hidden variable theories which are not coherent with this Universe.
Maybe consciousness would require hidden variables, but your conclusion is still based on a fundamental error, which is that we have observations that are inconsistent with hidden variables. Since this claim is in error, then the conclusion does not follow.
I think Hoffmans path and the idea of consciousness being fundamental comes from a few conceptual
Leaps - let me go through the high level of each one:
1. Current physics shows via quantum mechanics that spacetime has a definite limit in measurement (Planck scale)
2. Relatively also applies a similar limit on our ability to measure time and space (infinite energy/black holes)
3. Latest work in high energy physics has led to some interesting new findings (in the last 10 years or so) regarding an approach to calculate particle scattering amplitudes in supercolliders <= that is: when you apply nonlocal assumptions and certain mathematical simplification and that new approach simplifies the scattering amplitude calculations and ALSO just happens to map to a new conceptual framework where you think “outside of space and time” and then you can come to a geometric “structure” of immense complexity (let’s call one conception of that geometry the ‘amplitudehedron’) which is static, and immense encoding the universe itself, this polytope encodes the scattering amplitudes
4. Given the hard problem of consciousness, ie “only awareness is aware” (ie we cannot break down the qualia of awareness) (Now this is where Hoffman goes wild: Hoffman says: “ Ok well, given that space time as we know it doomed (not fundamental - again see point 3 above)” then, let’s propose that consciousness IS defined to be FUNDAMENTAL and that it exists as a ‘network of conscious agents’:
Ie he preposes a “formal model of consciousness based on a mathematical structure called conscious agents”. then he proposes how time and space emerge from the interactions of conscious agents via the structure mentioned in point 3 above..
Hoffman then claims his math for these models implies that we are in a universe that emerged out fundamental consciousness and that he is working on a mathematical model he hopes can be tied the new physics that emerge out of the amplitudehedron through networks of these agents
5. Finally it was my observation that the general theory of Neural Networks in the article had some interesting similarities with all of this (ie maybe Nature uses such networks at all scales to represent intelligence )
Feel free to be skeptical- I am but I get all sorts of weird feeling he’s onto something here…
