The mechanism by which quantum-indeterminacies are magnified to create differences at the macroscopic level is starting to be understood. Eukaryotic cells have structures called "microtubules" with charged poles whereby they link and unlink to accomplish basic motions; Roger Penrose noted that in some special microtubules in the neurons, the tubulin acts as a kind of "Faraday cage" isolating the molecules inside from external electric fields, so that the probabilities of discharging-or-not-discharging are not driven to 99.999% or 0.001% but rather are left free. Penrose speculated that, while most neurons base their decisions to fire-or-not-fire on what the synaptically-connected neighboring neurons are doing, some special neurons may be free to fire-or-not-fire based on quantum-indeterminate states of their microtubules, and these would then drive a cascade of neuron firings. Max Tegmark criticized this hypothesis, based on findings that such special microtubules turn out not to be at all unique to neurons, found even in amoebas, so that they can hardly be responsible for whatever is special about human consciousness. I would argue, however, that this may be telling us that even amoebas have some degree of free will, that their decisions to extend and retract pseudopods are not something that a computer program could replicate; they may not have a large scope of action, but the actions available to them are free (prokaryotes on the other hand appear to be pure automata).
We will see: at least I want to make plain to you that when I talk about empirically verifying this kind of hypothesis, I am talking about tangible things which can be researched in the lab.
The assumption being that there is indeed something fundamentally different or "special" about human consciousness versus the amoebas. It reminds me of Bell's critique of those who place too much importance on the wave collapse in QM. I think he asked something like
"was the wave waiting thousands of millions of years to collapse until the advent of the first man? Or did it wait a little longer for the first PhD student?"
Maybe the levels of neurons simply determine the "level" of consciousness the subject has. The more you have, the more "awake" you are.
Not just to account for free will (for those of us who believe in such a thing) but to account for any of the quantum-indeterminacies, some form of "hidden variables" are required, which are distinct from, and strictly uncontrolled by, the distribution of particles in space-time.
Seems ironic that in order to make a theory deterministic, we need to look for non-material "hidden variables". Or maybe we're just looking at ball from the wrong angle....
Maybe
Quantum Chaos can provide a link between local realism and Quantum Mechanics? After all, if chaotic behavior is being reflected in any system, then it follows that local realism should also be true at that level. And if a quantum system can be shown to be behaving in a positivist manner, then it
should follow that all processes in that system are material and
all the variables are controlled by the distribution of particles in space time.
Well no, in terms of the analogy they are not "pieces" because they are not "living on the board" and not subject to the "rules of chess"; I am referring to the "hidden variables" which are not material, not directly observable, subject to some different rules which obviously are harder to learn about. Pointing out within the analogy that the "players" might turn out to be computer programs is meant to concede that the hidden rules for the hidden variables might, possibly, turn out to be some kind of superdeterministic system as you, following Bell, think most reasonable to assume; I am conceding that I don't have evidence to rule that out.
Oh, okay. Gotcha.
I commend to you Lee Smolin's
The Trouble with Physics, discussing the stagnation of the last few decades. He laments that most physics journals have explicit policies against accepting any more articles about "foundational" problems in quantum mechanics (the whole "what does it all meeeeean?"), and even those that don't hardly publish anything on it, banishing the subject to the philosophy journals; young physicists are discouraged from thinking about it, told instead to just "Shut up and calculate!"
I read an article about this very problem on DIGG some time ago. From what I remember, it said something about the proliferation of "too much information". The editors of journals simply don't have any time to go over the (literally) hundreds of entries they have to sort out, or they don't devote enough time or energy that they should.
I agree with the view that the problem is more general, and that the editors themselves aren't the only ones to blame. It's the entire educational system, the way it focuses on force feeding information but doesn't bother telling students how to sort it out so it can become knowledge. This is why if you ask any question that is out of the box , the T.As get totally stumped (and this is true of any discipline these days, but may be even more pronounced in the sciences)
But then again, there is just so much information a person has to absorb before he even gets the opportunity to do original research, that by the time he gets to that point, he/she is already a specialist, which is probably why we have no more polymaths these days...
Anyways, thanks for the link, didn't know there was a book.
