this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
20 points (81.2% liked)
Science
13175 readers
5 users here now
Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The crazy thing to me is that this is the conclusion I came to around 30 years ago, based on evidence that was already present in research available at the time.
For me it was the natural conclusion from coming to accept a no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics. Before that, the ghost in the machine seemed to me like maybe it could be hiding somewhere in the spooky apparent randomness of wavefunction collapse, but if the universal wavefunction fully and deterministically describes the evolution in time of all particles everywhere, and there are no terms for "thoughts and feelings and free will" in that equation, then they are epiphenomena.