Talk:The Emperor's New Mind

For me, the current article misses the mark. The Emperor's New Mind does contain much interesting background material on computation, physics, mathematics, and other topics, but all this background material is simply to prepare the reader to understand Penrose's main argument. The main argument boils down to this: the human brain may exploit certain quantum mechanical phenomena, key to intelligence and/or consciousness, that effectively make the brain's activity uncomputable, and hence beyond the reach of Turing machines/classical computers. To allow for this, Penrose suggests that current models of quantum physics are flawed, and hints at how they might be modified.

Although Penrose's expertise and authority on physics is undisputed, many have found the ideas suggested in The Emperor's New Mind unconvincing and unnecessary, though admittedly plausible. Furthermore, even if Penrose turned out to be right, there is no reason why quantum computers would not be able to exploit the same quantum phenomena that the brain does, and thus become just as intelligent as humans. Thus, The Emperor's New Mind is really an argument against strong AI in classical computers, not against strong AI in artificially created systems.

Regarding the followup book Shadows of the Mind, in chapter 2 of that book, Penrose presents an argument that appears to prove that the reader has some insight that a computer could not have. However, there is a subtle mistake in his argument, and I vaguely remember something written by Hofstadter where he succintly points out the mistake. I can't find a reference to what Hofstadter wrote, however I think there have been other reviewers of Shadows of the Mind. A quick web search turned up a detailed review by David J. Chalmers at [1] (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-09-chalmers.html) MichaelMcGuffin 12:49, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This article doesnt just miss the mark, it is on another planet. Most of the references are to do with the first couple of chapters and are largely irrelevant to the theme of the book. The guts of the book must either have not been read by the author of this article, or largely misunderstood. In reference to the discussion that quantum computers could exploit quantum phenomena, as the brain is claimed to: Quantum computers are purely computational and deterministic, and have no net gain over classical computers other than raw speed. They simply serve to assist with the practical complexity of computation, but achieve no greater abilities in principle. The quantum nature of quantum computers is not exploiting the same concept as the quantum nature which Penrose suggests may explain human reasoning.

I seem to recall both emotions and Godel's incompleteness theorum as well

Yeah, I had similar issues with Penrose's book. I felt that some of the chapters were completely unnecessary (he didn't really connect his famous tiles to the topic at hand), and some chapters were in subjects that were outside his expertise (the chapters on biology were unenlightening).

He also summarized his arguments at the end with 'ask a computer how it feels', which is a pretty inane argument. Don't claim to be making a scientific argument and then get philosophical!

All in all, I didn't find the arguments to be very strong. I guess it's a hard position to take, though. If you state that it is impossible for a machine to be intelligent because it cannot perform x, you then have to define x. Then someone will build a machine that specifically does x. Like playing chess.

Anyway...just my two cents

-t.