Consciousness as Quantum Integration of Digital Signals
Posted: July 30, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: digital, identity, models, philosophy, reconciliation Leave a commentSequel to Modern Self Café v4: Aaronson, Damasio, and Penrose
Write a Dialogue where Aaronson, Whitehead, and Polanyi discuss the hypothesis below.
ChatGPT Prompt (condensed)
Hypothesis:
“Consciousness is the interior experience of any analog quantum system integrating classical digital signals.”
Act I: Framing the Claim
- Michael Polanyi: The hypothesis respects the epistemic humility I value. Consciousness emerges not from algorithms, but from participation. It’s like a scientist indwelling their tools.
- Scott Aaronson: I appreciate the attempt. Quantum systems resist cloning and prediction, which gives them a unique character. But that’s not enough to infer subjective experience.
- Alfred North Whitehead: Yet indeterminacy may be the shadow of something deeper. Each “occasion” of existence integrates many into one. That act—of becoming—is experiential.
Act II: Integration and Subjectivity
- Polanyi: Integration here mirrors my concept of “from-to knowing.” Consciousness isn’t the data; it’s the wholeness we tacitly grasp.
- Aaronson: But why invoke quantum systems for this integration? Classical systems also integrate.
- Whitehead: Classical integration is static. Quantum processes are becomings—and becoming is where subjectivity lives.
- Polanyi: And that subjective coalescence can’t be explained from outside—it is known only from within.
Act III: Objections and Clarifications
- Aaronson: Does this make everything that integrates conscious? That seems too generous.
- Whitehead: Not quite. Experience comes in degrees. Larger occasions encompass and unify many smaller ones—consciousness scales with complexity.
- Polanyi: Science cannot access this directly. We know our awareness because we live it.
Act IV: Toward Synthesis
- Aaronson: Perhaps the hypothesis doesn’t solve the mystery, but gives us a structure: unpredictability, integration, and tacit interiority.
- Whitehead: A metaphysics where experience is central, not accidental.
- Polanyi: Science as stewardship, not just measurement.
- Together: Consciousness is not an output, but an interior event—where the world gathers and knows itself.
2. Appendix: Aaronson, Shannon, and Penrose Derive a Quantum Integration Threshold
Problem
Given a classical digital system with complexity C (in bits), what is the smallest quantum system that can integrate this system into a unified conscious state?
Step 1: Shannon’s Framing
- Define system complexity using Shannon entropy:
H(X) = –∑ pᵢ log₂ pᵢ - For n signals with k values, C ≈ n log₂ k.
- Goal: Find a quantum system whose Hilbert space can embed this classical state space.
Step 2: Aaronson’s Bound
- To represent all C bits in a coherent quantum way:
Minimum Hilbert space dimension = 2^C - Therefore:
Minimum number of qubits q ≥ C - But if integration involves redundancy or symmetry:
q ≥ C_IIT (Integrated Information Theory), which may be much less than raw entropy.
Step 3: Penrose’s Gravitational Threshold
- Conscious integration may occur only when quantum collapse meets a gravitational threshold:
t ≈ ħ / E_G (Objective Reduction) - Suggests a mass-energy requirement for consciousness.
- Proposes that only systems with sufficient coherence and mass can “collapse into awareness.”
Step 4: Comparative Systems
- Complexity: ~10¹¹ bits
- Required qubits: 10⁹–10¹¹
- Likely meets Penrose OR and IIT thresholds
- Complexity: ~10³–10⁴ bits
- Required qubits: ~10³–10⁴
- Likely below threshold for conscious integration
- GPT-4 on 1,000 GPUs
- Complexity: ~10¹⁵ bits (activations)
- Integration: Stateless, no unified substrate
- Not a candidate for consciousness
Final Reflections
- Aaronson: Quantum unpredictability offers privacy, not necessarily awareness.
- Shannon: Integration gives you bandwidth. Coherence gives you meaning.
- Roger Penrose: Collapse, not computation, is where experience begins.
Radical Centrism 