The discussion centers on Sir Roger Penrose's critiques of modern physics theories, including string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmic inflation. Participants explore the implications of his views, particularly in relation to his ideas on consciousness and the validity of his criticisms.
Participants exhibit a mix of agreement and disagreement regarding Penrose's critiques and theories. While some acknowledge his past contributions and the importance of his criticisms, others question the validity and applicability of his recent ideas, particularly in relation to consciousness and their empirical testability.
There are unresolved issues regarding the foundational aspects of quantum mechanics, string theory, and cosmic inflation, as well as the implications of Penrose's theories on consciousness. Participants express varying degrees of skepticism and support for Penrose's recent work, indicating a complex landscape of opinions.
Chronos said:Here is a paper discussing the concept http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/consciousevents.html , it is interesting.
His past work was excellent. I have been exceedingly disappointed by the things he's been proposing lately. The CCC in and of itself was a curious idea, but highly unlikely from the start. What disappointed me was that when he tried to make use of CMB data to back up his idea, he completely and utterly misunderstood the basic statistical properties of the CMB, and his arguments to try to back up his interpretation were just terrible. This shows that he's willing to step into a field he hasn't learned much about and not do his homework before jumping to unwarranted conclusions.Chronos said:Apparently there is a consensus Penrose is an amazing intellect. Even a genius like Einstein makes an occasional error. That in no way diminishes their contributions to our body of knowledge. Personally, I still find his insights amazing.
Ironically, some years ago he wrote a pretty good popular-science book (not of the usual kind but with a lot of mathematics ;-)) with the title "The Road to Reality". There's a lot of standard physics in this book explained in quite unusual ways, but it's still standard physics. Some parts are, however, already then his personal opinion with incomplete scientific justification.Chalnoth said:He was well-respected. He did a lot of important work in decades past. Essentially anybody who studies General Relativity these days knows his name.
But sadly, I think he's spent that respect. It's really unfortunate, but he seems to have become rather divorced from reality. It's really too bad.
vanhees71 said:Some parts are, however, already then his personal opinion with incomplete scientific justification.