Comment on Peter Higgs, physicist who theorised Higgs boson, dies aged 94
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m still cheesed it’s not unanimous that Roger Penrose is the greatest living physicist.
Like., I’m pretty sure even Hawking says it’s Penrose, he just never got his name on something household famous.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Penrose like Linus Pauling went down the crackpot road which damaged his reputation.
Pauling went around news programs claiming mega doses of vitamin C would cure cancer.
Penrose got into “quantum mind” crackpottery.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Weird way to say:
xkforce@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nonsense is still nonsense.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
…
He’s been focusing on it for like 20 years… And not on his own, he’s been working with psychologists and anesthesiologists. Dude is pretty much the only physicist working at understanding consciousness, he’s literally the expert
And that’s not even getting into how physics is technically outside his expertise. Dudes a mathematician, he just applied that to physics, then applied physics to brains.
He doesn’t claim to understand all of it, just like Einstein died before his shit was proven. Then Penrose showed up and worked with Hawking to prove a lot of Einstein’s theories.
Penrose 100% accepts he won’t live long enough to see his stuff finished. But he’s confident it’s in the right direction and if future generations keep working, some day we’ll actually understand what consciousness is.
But it’s not exactly easy man.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There are dozens of ideas. It’s ok if a researcher says, “I don’t know.”
Besides, Penrose has no idea either. He only adds an extra “quantum did it” layer between “this is what we know” and “this is how consciousness works.”
Claiming a brain is a quantum computer doesn’t answer any questions about consciousness.