Are cells conscious?

[scruffy]

It works pretty well if you are trying to list the characteristics that living things possess that inanimate objects like rocks don't possess.

This is the kind of useless crap you get from Google:

Type "sentient" into the search box.

First result:,dictionary.com says "able to perceive or feel things".

Second result Merriam-Webster says "capable of sending or feeling: conscious of or responsive to the senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling".

These idiots should be SHOT for posting drivel like that. My robot can perceive things, is it sentient? Webster's going to exclude sharks and bats because the electromagnetic senses aren't listed. These fuckers have NO CLUE what sentience is.

 

[scruffy]

Now - compare to MY definition, which is mechanistic.

1. Egocentric reference frame
2. Stateful memory that spans t=0
3. (Continuous) sensory and motor activity around the span.

This is a PHYSICAL definition, it applies equally to any organism, and even an AI or robot. It is independent of the underlying mechanism, whether it new neurons, optics, computer chips, or rocks in a magnetic field.

Each of these three requirements is NECESSARY for "subjective experience", whether you call it feeling, perception, awareness, consciousness,nor anything else.

Number 1, the egocentric reference frame - we just about understand how our brains do that now. We're not quite fully there yet, but we understand "enough" to grasp how it's done. The egocentric frame is RECIPROCAL to physical time - instead of time ticking linearly like a clock, it instead flows "through" the organism. That is why sentient entities have "future" and "past".

Number 2 - stateful memory that spans t=0. I define t=0 as "now, the current moment". Thus, my definition is DIFFERENT FROM the physicist who place t=0 at the big bang or the beginning of the universe. In my definition, the origin of the reference frame is always "now, the current moment". Therefore, this is a MOVING frame, it moves along with physical time, and suddenly concepts like dT/dt start to make a lot of sense.

Number 3 - sensory and motor activity that is continuous within the span - which means specifically IN THE LIMIT AS dt => 0. This in my view is the key requirement. It is a statement about topology. It works this way:

a. Every sensory and motor activity has a DELAY associated with it. In the case of neurons, it might be the time it takes for a nerve impulse to travel down the axon (so, some number of milli-seconds). Whereas in a digital computer, the delay might be very short, maybe the time it takes for current to flow through a wire (with a short wire, maybe nanoseconds). Either way, there is a measurable delay.

b. This means, in any sensory and motor device, there is a SINGULARITY, in a small region around "now". Our brains can never know what's happening "exactly now", because of the delays. For example in our visual system, it takes 50 msec for the visual signal to get from the retina to the visual cortex. (You can see this in the VEP = visual evoked potential). Similarly, there is a 50 msec delay between when the brain commands and when the muscle contracts. So in humans, this singularity (this "gap") is actually quite large, it might be 100 msec or so.

c. The requirement for continuity says the stateful memory must "cover" the singularity, in the topological sense. The easiest way to understand this is a stack of pancakes (called the Lebesgue pancakes by topologists). The concept looks like this and is explained quite nicely in the Wiki.

Covering space - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In a biological system, the pancakes are not perfectly centered, they are "staggered" because of stochastic delays associated with the opening and closing of ion channels.

Each pancake is its own little patch of the egocentric reference frame, which is assembled exactly the same way it is in the hippocampus of rats, cats, monkeys, and human beings. Even goldfish, have this exact same architecture. It is highly conserved in evolution, it hasn't changed in a hundred million years.

This architecture does something magical to the information flowing through the egocentric reference frame, because it is self-similar ("fractal") at any and every resolution. This is what links distant memories and plans to "dt".

dt is used in the same way as in calculus, it is the smallest discernible interval of physical time, which in a human nerve network is very small indeed, it's considerably less than a microsecond and maybe even approaches a nanosecond. (Because you have 100 billion neurons covering the singularity).

"Sensation" arises because of scale invariance. It has to do with the breaking of symmetry around the singularity.

So you see, this definition is very precise and it is experimentally accessible.

 

[ding]

This is the kind of useless crap you get from Google:

Type "sentient" into the search box.

First result:,dictionary.com says "able to perceive or feel things".

Second result Merriam-Webster says "capable of sending or feeling: conscious of or responsive to the senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling".

These idiots should be SHOT for posting drivel like that. My robot can perceive things, is it sentient? Webster's going to exclude sharks and bats because the electromagnetic senses aren't listed. These fuckers have NO CLUE what sentience is.

Here's the useful stuff I got:

Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to the environment.

Let's see rocks do that.

 

[scruffy]

Here's how you build a reciprocal reference frame at the cellular level. It's not too hard.

https://web.mat.upc.edu/sebastia.xambo/santalo2016/pdf/JL/JL1.pdf

Biophysically, continuity is achieved this way:

A "memory trace" is achieved by noting the downstream reaction to events. Let's say we represent the state of the system at any given time as s(t). To trace the reaction to an event, we simply take snapshots at subsequent times. So,

s(t)
s(t+1)
s(t+2)

and so on, for however long we want to keep monitoring. The oddball thing about this symbolism is the + sign actually represents the past, the larger the offset the longer ago it happened. So we want to turn this around, so things become more logical (and intuitive). So we apply our reciprocal reference frame to it, and then the + sign changed into a - sign, like so

s(t)
s(t-1)
s(t-2) etc

So now - represents "the past" in our new frame, and therefore + represents "the future".

Now let's apply this to a simple cellular event, let's say, an inflammatory response. (We are not interested in the inflammation, only the response).

At a certain time t, a cell notices it has been attacked. The DNA says "make histamine". After a small delay the cell begins the anti-inflammatory response by instructing the ribosomes to make histamine, which is then transmitted to the periphery near the cell membrane, (where the sensors are) where it binds with some membrane proteins.

Here is one of the prerequisites for awareness: the cell has an expectation of future events. It basically says "I just released some histamine, therefore I expect the level of inflammation to go down". This is "active monitoring" in the sense already mentioned.

Next at some time a few ticks later, the inflammation either subsides or it doesn't. In both cases we can match the actual results against the expected results and get a delta. The expectation (the memory) has to last long enough for a complete round trip, that's where the span requirement comes from.

So when we map this sequence of events into our moving reciprocal reference frame, we see immediately that the "memory" has been extended in the other direction. The + sign now represents the future, and there is a small gap between the instruction to make histamine and it's deployment onto the sensors, wherein the system state is unknown (that's our singularity).

In the middle of the gap, the reference frame looks like this:

t+2 instruction to make histamine
t+1 deploy histamine to periphery
t,=0 (gap= singularity)
t-1 read sensors to get effectiveness
t-2 transmit effectiveness back to the DNA

Topologists will immediately notice the timeline has been compactified. The ends are now joined. Because the next step after t-2, is t+2. This is called an Alexandroff 1-point compactification, and it gives us a projective mapping from a straight line to a unit circle. We will use the measured and transmitted response as a further instruction to the DNA, this way we have a closed feedback loop. This cycle will persist for as long as we're making histamine

With me so far? Nothing unusual so far, we have a closed feedback loop to monitor the effect of the histamine on the inflammation. Let's go to part 2.

 

[scruffy]

Part 2 is, we now have a circular representation of time, and we're going to ROTATE the circle (a "Wick rotation") so the gap is exactly over t=0.

When we do this, the point at infinity where our ends joined, is looking directly down on "now". If we project this circle back onto the unit line, the two points become one and the same. Only...time is traveling in the opposite direction, in the one relative to the other! (Which isn't unusual, happens all the time in conformal Riemann mappings - but in our case, it has physical significance). You can verify this for yourself, by drawing a diagram of the flow around the unit circle. It always maintains the same sense, so the direction never changes as we go around the circle. However when we project back down to a line, we find two directions instead of 1. Time has been "unfolded" for us in the immediate vicinity of t=0, and we have a real-time relationship between the origin and the point at infinity. Now when we phase-encode this region, guess what happens? Our sequence of events is played BACKWARDS, from effect to cause.

 

[scruffy]

So, I propose this as a PHYSICAL mechanism for awareness.

It requires a compactification, and the good news is that these are everywhere - in humans, in single cells, even in the universe at large.

If you think about this in physical terms, it amounts to an "unfolding of time", and specifically this is taking us out of the realm of relativity where everything is causal, and putting us into the quantum realm where cause and effect are more flexible.

 

[scruffy]

Here is the physics of the Alexandroff 1-,point compactification:

Alexandroff extension - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is specifically how we arrive at an AWARENESS of the events around "now".

 

[scruffy]

Ha ha - a little math scares away the experts.

So then, part 3. The difference between a human and a single cell. A cell only does this once. A human does it twice.

In a cell, the mechanism is assisted by DNA-coupled proteins, and by short segments of RNA that regulate expression. The idea is these configurations form a stateful memory. It lasts as long as the biochemical kinetics allow it to.

In a human though, this is only the first mapping - which is achieved in an older part of the brain called paleocortex. The first mapping generates the reference frame, it occurs in the flaps of the temporal lobes. The second mapping occurs in the frontal lobes, and it uses the first mapping as its input.

This double compactification is very powerful. Humans have enough neurons to make it "approximately" continuous.

 

[ding]

Ha ha - a little math scares away the experts.

So then, part 3. The difference between a human and a single cell. A cell only does this once. A human does it twice.

In a cell, the mechanism is assisted by DNA-coupled proteins, and by short segments of RNA that regulate expression. The idea is these configurations form a stateful memory. It lasts as long as the biochemical kinetics allow it to.

In a human though, this is only the first mapping - which is achieved in an older part of the brain called paleocortex. The first mapping generates the reference frame, it occurs in the flaps of the temporal lobes. The second mapping occurs in the frontal lobes, and it uses the first mapping as its input.

This double compactification is very powerful. Humans have enough neurons to make it "approximately" continuous.

That you believe rocks are alive kinda undermines all this.

 

[scruffy]

That you believe rocks are alive kinda undermines all this.

Life is the other thread.

This one is about consciousness.

 

[ding]

Life is the other thread.

This one is about consciousness.

Are rocks conscious?

 

[scruffy]

Are rocks conscious?

You don't seem to understand the subject matter.

If a computer chip can be made conscious, so can a rock.

You'd have to set up the proper conditions though. Which is what we're talking about.

It should be clear by now that your descriptive definitions are inadequate.

Sentience is PHYSICS. It comes from the fundamental symmetries of the universe.

Arbitrary categorizations are worthless. We need to understand the physical conditions that support the phenomena.

One of the conditions is that local causality be quantized. I'm showing you how it's done. You can take this mechanism and apply it to ANYTHING and it will work.

This is a memristor. It's a glorified rock.

Memristor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Microsoft just invested 29 million dollars to build a "brain" made out of these things.

Physics is physics. It's the same for life as it is for rocks.

 

[ding]

You don't seem to understand the subject matter.

If a computer chip can be made conscious, so can a rock.

You'd have to set up the proper conditions though. Which is what we're talking about.

It should be clear by now that your descriptive definitions are inadequate.

Sentience is PHYSICS. It comes from the fundamental symmetries of the universe.

Arbitrary categorizations are worthless. We need to understand the physical conditions that support the phenomena.

One of the conditions is that local causality be quantized. I'm showing you how it's done. You can take this mechanism and apply it to ANYTHING and it will work.

This is a memristor. It's a glorified rock.

Memristor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Microsoft just invested 29 million dollars to build a "brain" made out of these things.

Physics is physics. It's the same for life as it is for rocks.

A computer chip isn't conscious and neither is the rock.

 

[scruffy]

A computer chip isn't conscious and neither is the rock.

And the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese.

Your assertions are unprovable nonsense.

Whereas all Microsoft has to do, is build one.

 

[ding]

And the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese.

Your assertions are unprovable nonsense.

Whereas all Microsoft has to do, is build one.

But they aren't assertions. They are scientific realities.

Inanimate objects are not alive and inanimate objects are not conscious. That may float in a Tom Robbins novel, but not in reality.

 

[scruffy]

But they aren't assertions. They are scientific realities.

Horseshit

Inanimate objects are not alive and inanimate objects are not conscious. That may float in a Tom Robbins novel, but not in reality.

And if God has intended man to fly He would have given us wings.

You're so yesterday.

 

[ding]

Horseshit



And if God has intended man to fly He would have given us wings.

You're so yesterday.

Your beliefs have a religious ring to them.

 

[scruffy]

Your beliefs have a religious ring to them.

My beliefs are irrelevant.

I'm showing you SCIENCE. Physics, and math.

So far I haven't heard you dispute any of it.

 

[ding]

My beliefs are irrelevant.

I'm showing you SCIENCE. Physics, and math.

So far I haven't heard you dispute any of it.

Pantheist per chance?

I have absolutely refuted it. Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to the environment.

Let's see rocks do that.

 

[scruffy]

Pantheist per chance?

I have absolutely refuted it. Living things respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and respond to the environment.

Let's see rocks do that.

You keep beating your head against a brick wall.

We're not talking about rocks, we're talking about cells.

No one cares whether rocks respire.

But lots of people care whether cells are smart.