133. Dr. Stuart Hameroff On Quantum Consciousness and Moving Singularity Goal Posts

Summary: Human consciousness researcher Dr. Stuart Hameroff describes how discoveries are revealing more brain complexity than artificial intelligence (AI) experts suspected. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Stuart Hameroff. Dr. Hameroff is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Hameroff discuss whether DMT-based psychedelic experiences provide evidence that our consciousness exists outside of the brain: Alex Tsakiris: Your understanding of the quantum mechanics of the neuron really stirs up a lot of angst among the AI singularity crowd. Tell us a little bit about that controversy. Dr. Stuart Hameroff: To look at our brain as 100 billion simple switches -- to look at a neuron as a switch or gate -- it's an insult to neurons. It's just not that simple. If you study biology you realize this.  But a lot of biologists get bogged down with the details and lose the big picture. They see the information processing in the cell as a minestrone soup of chemicals when they're ignoring the solid state system in the microtubules. The bit with the AI and the singularity, there's actually a couple of points of friction here. As I said, I spent 20 years studying microtubule information processing. The AI approach would be, roughly speaking, that a neuron fires or it doesn't. It's roughly comparable to a bit, 1 or 0. It's more complicated than that but roughly speaking.  I was saying no, each neuron has roughly 10-8 tubulins switching at roughly 10-7 per second, getting 10-15 operations per second per neuron. If you multiply that by the number of neurons you get 10 to the 26th operations per second per brain. AI is looking at neurons firing or not firing, 1,000 per second, 1,000 synapses. Something like the 10 to the 15th operations per second per brain... and that's without even bringing in the quantum business. So that alone was pushing the goalpost way, way downstream into the future. Dr. Stuart Hameroff's website Play it: Download MP3 (34:00 min.) Read it: Today we welcome Dr. Stuart Hameroff to Skeptiko. Dr. Hameroff is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. Dr. Hameroff, thank you so much for joining me today on Skeptiko. Dr. Stuart Hameroff: You're welcome, Alex. It's nice to be here. Alex Tsakiris: You know, there are so many interesting topics I want to talk to you about, but I thought we might start with your credentials. As I was looking through some of your research in preparation for this interview, I ran across a comment from a blogger along the lines of Isn't this guy just an anesthesiologist who's playing around with quantum mechanics and consciousness stuff as a strange sort of hobby? So I just laughed that off because you have a distinguished academic career, a list of publications as long as my arm with some of the world's leading physicists. But then I ran across a similar comment again, and it got me thinking about the deeper issue of consciousness studies and the problem that I think a lot of folks have in figuring out who's really qualified to talk about this stuff. We see philosophers throwing in their opinions, neurologists, physicists, so do you want to talk a little bit about this field in terms of who's really qualified to venture into this area and say what consciousness is all about? Dr. Stuart Hameroff: Well, I don't presume to judge anybody. I think a ditch-digger might figure it out just out of luck or because he or she is motivated, so that's not the point. I think if you have a good approach you should use it. Now, my approach has been two-fold.  I got interested in microtubules inside cells when I was in medical school.