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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2023/10/23/testing-a-time-jumping-multiverse-killing-consciousness-spawning-theory-of-reality/ [forbes.com]

“This retroactive idea. It has to be that,” says Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, reflecting on a problem about the building blocks of reality that has dogged physics for nearly a century. “Any sensible physicist wouldn't be perturbed by this,” he adds. “However, I'm not a sensible physicist.”
[...]
For decades, Penrose has been working with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff on a theory of consciousness called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR).
[...]
Penrose demurs. He politely but unequivocally waves off the idea that a conscious observer collapses wave functions by looking at them. Likewise, he dismisses the view that a conscious observer spins off near infinite universes with a glance. “That's making consciousness do the job of collapsing the wave function without having a theory of consciousness,” says Penrose. “I'm turning it around and I'm saying whatever consciousness is, for quite different reasons, I think it does depend on the collapse of the wave function. On that physical process.”
[...]
What’s causing collapse? “It's an objective phenomenon,” insists Penrose. He’s convinced this objective phenomenon has to be the fundamental force: gravity.
[...]
For Penrose, the relationship between gravity and consciousness was inspired by a revolutionary mathematical discovery nearly a century ago. In 1931, mathematician Kurt Gödel revealed his incompleteness theorems—theorems of mathematical logic that show there are statements in mathematics that must be true even though they can’t be proven. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and Goodstein's theorem sometime later, made an indelible imprint on Penrose. He took from these theorems that there’s a unique property of the physical universe giving rise to conscious understanding.
[...]
The ability to understand Gödel and Goodstein’s theorems means there’s something about our conscious understanding that is not confined to computational boundaries.
[...]
When it comes to the suddenly salient question of whether or not AI could be conscious, Penrose draws again from Gödel and Goodstein’s theorems. Computer science is built on formalized systems. They’re confined by computation. For Penrose, AI built on classical computers today isn’t capable of true understanding or consciousness. After some consideration, he adds a caveat when it comes to quantum computers: “You put wave function collapse into its process somehow…”

For an in-depth discussion about this theory, including Penrose’s Hemingway Paradox, watch the interviews with Penrose that were the basis for this reporting:
[Roger Penrose on His Theory Of Consciousness & Reality [youtube.com]]

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