Uuuuugh. I had no idea about that. Well, he’s the perfect example of the other points being made here about the problems with Rogan.
I always say that software engineers and physicists are the worst for feeling like they are experts at everything, so this guy claiming neurological dualism is real and not a long-discredited idea is not the least bit surprising.
Lex Fridman had him on his podcast as well:
which book are you referring to?
The Emperor’s New Mind, though IIRC it was the sequel Shadows of the Mind where he started to get really explicit. Something about how quantum mechanics makes it hard to model the behavior of brain cells, proving that their collective operation must be governed by Jesus? It’s a bit hazy as I haven’t read these books since I was a teen, and even at the time I started to run out of credulity before the end.
The former book has a lot of Douglas Hofstadter–type excursions so it’s entertaining enough to read, but I strongly recommend you give the rest of his oeuvre a miss and read Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained instead.
Yeah, I won’t bother to find the relevant XKCD comic(s) but physicists are notorious for this sort of thing. It’s not even the arrogance so much – we all have our moments, especially online – but there’s this sense that if you are lauded in the field of physics, you’re obliged to stretch the tips of your golden wings toward the Earth to tell economists / social workers / doctors etc. where they’re going wrong.
I read both of those, when they were first published ( > 30 years ago I think ). What I recall was more “consciousness likely can’t be achieved with a Turing machine” and that Penrose is a mathematical Platonist. Both positions maybe not too controversial, perhaps? The second book went into the microtubule speculation, as I recall, but it was pretty clear he meant it as speculation. I don’t mind hearing Penrose spitballin’ but I agree I wouldn’t recommend “Shadows…” because it was too focused on this one speculative idea (which probably doesn’t even well reflect his present views). If there was a mystic element to these books I probably didn’t respond to it due to my preexisting “filters” 
I do however kind of distrust the “stay in your lane” admonitions applied to people like Penrose and Feynman, Freeman Dyson, etc. (not to suggest that you used such pejorative language). Other Penrose books? “Road to Reality” I wouldn’t dismiss; you can easily identify his preferences expressed in the latter part of the book and exclude them if you wish. My appreciation for this book comes to some degree from the fact that it was available in hardcover for five bucks a copy not long after it was published I bought a few and gave them to young people I knew. If you’re not familiar, the book is a good review of physics and the math needed to understand it…about 1000 pages (for five bucks! Well, not anymore I guess)
Then…don’t listen.
Some people consider the higher education process a winnowing experience, in order to (somewhat) guarantee ideological acolytes. Certainly that seems to be the process in economics and/or sociology,
The idea that a college education = intellect is an idea that should be examined from many different angles. Maybe a B.A. or B.S. just indicates malleability and a willingness to follow cultural mainstreams?
Insightful addition to a discussion about the cultural impact of a public figure. Thank you!
Really looking forward to seeing Artificial General Intelligent machines running on a quantum computer.
I remember listening to this episode thinking, Who the hell roped Penrose into a room with Rogan? He’s great to listen to. Really loved his fun fact about the octopus escaping its tank.
Then again… Penrose endorsed a book that pushed Platonic ideals which could be described as ‘woo’.
Does Roger Penrose fall into the David Bohm camp?
This phone call with Roger Penrose just after his being informed of winning the Nobel Prize is pretty great. He talks a bit on his ideas about Hawking Points, warm fixed regions in the cosmic background that he suspects are the remains of ancient black holes from a previous universe (or iteration thereof).
Yah, and I don’t want to just shout “stay in your lane” all the time, but when it’s causing material harm, well, we need to put a stop to it. There are prominent non-medical scientists who are anti-vaxxers. There are prominent physicists who are young earth creationists. There are many many prominent engineers who are outspoken climate change deniers (and populate those lists of “scientists” who disbelieve it). All these people lend the credibility of science and their positions to promote ideas that are causing real harm to people and the world.
anything having consciousness of being is a living soul, an entity of conscious, having lives before as well as after always being, in this plane knitted to dna bodies, the living soul, not the body but living thru it. so in the subject of consciousness, the discussion is about an entity that functions and exists of itself needing no outside source for regeneration, capable of crossing dimensions. the soul more than being knitted, its soul energy completely encapturing the entire body in an energy aura, in essence duplicating the image of the body. why those who remain and haunt, show themselves in the same body image as the body they were once knitted to.
Except that voices are going to be winnowed in one way or another. Historically, it was through established social networks of power and wealth. Higher education broke up those networks and actually gave new voices a way to prove their mettle.
Now, perhaps higher education needs to evolve again, but I would argue it’s direction should be toward what @VeronicaConnor recommends, away from the more “winnow-y” private universities that more often than not just reproduce the networks that higher education should be disrupting.
I’m not sure if you know this, but Schrödinger was quite into Vedanta, and posited that the thing that might collapse the wave form function is a unified nondual awareness at the heart of everything, and this would actually make his equations work. Just because YOU don’t like some people’s sense of physics, doesn’t mean the people who, well, invented it shared your perspective. Schrödinger was not alone in this perspective, of course.
You know, you’re the one who said “the world would be a better place without him.” I don’t love the guy, I don’t think he’s particularly good at what he does, I totally disagree with him on many many things, but he does have some interests that overlap with my own, and I’m not wishing for him to be blotted out of the universe.
Why do you express total intolerance of him, to the point of wishing him off the face of the Earth? Do you believe this is the case for all people you disagree with? Should you be the sole arbiter of who gets to stay and who… goes? Yeah… not a line of thinking some of us generally appreciate.
You know they weren’t actually advocating killing Joe Rogan, right? It’s a hypothetical.
I think “they” can and did speak for themselves. Listen, even as a rhetorical technique, it’s not one I tend to practice, not one I tend to be supportive of, and at the end of the day, signals a perspective I simply cannot take – that all people must share my views and live their lives like I do. My own perspective on what “tolerance” means does not jive with this.
What’s with the scare quotes around they?
I have a visceral gut response against censorship. I found what Roger Penrose said was fascinating re quantum mechanics and that to hear this on Rogan wasn’t the best platform but hey, he shut up through most of it and when he had a comment Penrose engaged in a meaningful way.
I’m thinking that ideas are more important than the messenger, and if that messenger is passing this on to people that you have issues with then what is the issue here?
