#14 - Orchestrated Objective Reduction: presenting the Hameroff-Penrose model

In episode 14 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle spells out the orchestrated objective reduction theory of consciousness by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Biology requires a central processing unit to integrated information across the cell. While quantum computation offers unique solutions to biology’s problems, the warm wet noisy environment of the brain does not lend itself easily to stable quantum superpositions. Penrose & Hameroff propose that nonpolar pockets with limited environmental influence creates the conditions for delocalized clouds of electrons that enter superposition. Benzene rings and aromatic rings provide a geometric means of building superposed electron channels. At the core of each protein, nonpolar channels of electrons create a macroscopic functional unit to guide protein function. Tubulin extend this principle by aligning with their neighbors in a cyclical pattern to create topological pathways. The topological qubits in microtubules extend to their neighbors via microtubules associated proteins (MAPs). Quantum computers require a digital interface phase and a non-local quantum computation phase. Actin microfilaments dynamically isolate and expose the microtubules to the environment through phase transition from a liquid-state (digital) to a gel-state (quantum). As the microtubules are isolated, the superposition grows in complexity until it reaches an objective threshold and self-collapses. This self-collapse is hypothesized to be the equivalent of a single moment of consciousness. As these moments are strung together, a conscious experience is created. Anesthetics and psychedelics are theorized to bind to tubulin proteins and either silence the electron channels or to enhance their resonance, thereby modifying conscious experience.
I find the “Orch-OR” model of consciousness inspiring. There are many implications from this model with respect to overall brain function, and even more questions. What is being computed? How do the many scales of neural activity map onto this theoretical quantum computational foundation?
~~~ Timestamps ~~~
0:00 Introduction to microtubules
2:50 Subjective reduction is chaotic
7:45 Objective reduction builds order
11:38 ORigins of life
14:20 Delocalized electron clouds
17:20 Molecular microcosm
19:02 Overcoming decoherence
22:50 Fundamental superposition scaling property
26:40 Millions of atoms act as a single functional unit
29:40 Topological tubulin qubits
33:16 Actin gel creates digital and quantum phases
35:38 CaMKII carries bytes of digital information
38:29 Self-collapse sets the rate of conscious moments
42:58 Biological orchestration of wavefunction collapse
#quantum
#consciousness
#biology
Website: www.justinriddlepodcast.com
Email: [e-mail]
Twitter: @JRiddlePodcast
Music licensed from and created by Baylor Odabashian. BandCamp: @UnscrewablePooch
Painting behind me by Paul Seli. IG: @Paul.Seli.art

[@mayatut]

Seems like even Hameroff doesn't make it this clear in his interviews. You are a very good narrator. Interesting to listen and watch. Thank you.

[@ml4173]

Great explanation, more understandable than a lecture I listened to by Penrose himself (who is awesome)

[@raysubject]

I finally understand this. Saw multiple videos where Hameroff was trying to explain it but i never got it. You made it perfectly clear. Thanks !

[@starxcrossed]

Excellent explanation thank you so much for posting these videos. I have done sooo much of my own research into this topic but you really brought it together so coherently.

[@JustinRiddle]

Thanks!

[@gehtdichnixan4704]

100%

[@EllyTaliesinBingle]

Crazy how few views and little attention this topic really gets. I've been playing sci-fi video games my whole life, from the Alien series and Metroid to Prey, Soma to Signalis, I'm always awestruck by the scientific ideas behind them. Prey and Signalis for instance both reference Penrose directly, with Prey having in-game "flavor-text" books by "Stuart Penrose" about quantum processes in biological systems. For as much praise as our favorite sci-fi games tend to get, it's too often we collectively dismiss the science that inspire then for fear that its "not real science." I really do hope this theory is more-or-less correct. ❤ I personally think it is, and I think if more work is done on this, it will open the floodgates for a revolution in biology.

[@sterlingcooley3906]

Vagus Nerve is a massive distributed microtubule quantum computer. Great videos, Justin!

[@JustinRiddle]

Cool idea Sterling. So much emphasis is placed on the brain but there are neurons all over the body! The vagus nerve in particular has extensive innervation to all primary organs, surely it's doing something important!

[@TheMirageQuest]

@@JustinRiddleanother thing that would be interesting is to reflect on how our gut bacteria interact with this. There is a lot of evidence to show how much they affect mood

[@panosr2135]

As a Biotechnology student, physics enthusiast as well as what i call: a daily philosopher, I'm very intrigued. This stuff is the reason why I literally wanted to study what we call Life itself and try to understand it exactly at levels like this. Levels that try to describe what makes life LIFE and what that thing that we call consciousness might be ! Thank you so much for the interesting thought impulses 😁🧬🧫

[@SolidSiren]

Same same, on all counts!

[@cosmicwit]

I'm fascinated at the way we've taken the computer metaphor into every area of research. Perhaps it is a workable metaphor for understanding nature but it is also possible that it is inapt and therefore limiting us in some way.

[@fredflintstone8048]

Penrose argues that computers are merely computational and as such cannot have consciousness. They don't contain an observer. The observer is the human. To quote Hameroff, to view a neuron as presenting either a one or a zero in a larger computational process is an insult to neurons. The neurons evidently contain billions of microtubules each a container for these continuous quantum collapses potentially creating the rhythm of consciousness. Those who's goal is to create a computer that will achieve consciousness tend to dislike the Orch OR model because if it's accurate, then that places conscious machines much farther down the road, perhaps even out of reach all together.

[@Carfeu]

This is incredibly exciting, my favorite subject at the moment. Kudos for making this easier to understand

[@squamish4244]

Consciousness is the final frontier.

[@MengsenZhang]

Reminded me of something I was thinking about while watching a previous episode -- I wonder how many people think of biochemicals or proteins in particular as mainly input-output machines (let me know if I didn't interpret your point correctly). For me, I rarely think about their functions as input-output except in special circumstances of signaling. When thinking about biochem/orgchem, I think mostly in structural terms, e.g. formation of boundaries, providing structural stability, assembling~dissembling. The thing is that a living system not only need to, to some extent, "compute" -- its physical composition must have minimal stability, i.e. a large part of living is not cognition or optimization but simply to be (surviving the laws of physics) [how living relates to consciousness is a different matter]. Back to chemistry, let's say the benzene, I would mostly think of how the circular arrangement of pi bonds provide a lower energy orbit and structural stability, which also allow them to impose spatial constraints in forming larger compounds. Or in the case of microtubule-actin networks, I think of how they provide structural stability to axons, dendritic spines etc. At this point, I'm also thinking to myself that neither the magnitude, stability, nor collapse of a superposition is a sufficient for arguing that such a process carries out quantum computation. To be computational (or with any hint of problem solving), the numerous states that the wave function may collapse into must be functionally distinguishable (or for a digital computer, it may not be useful if 0 and 1 always lead to equivalent results). For example, though benzene can be think of as a superposition of resonance structures, add a new bond to any of its six corners result in the same compound, thus the six corners are functionally equivalent and no distinguishable. The question to microtubules is that whether the 2 to the million billion (not sure how many dimers they usually have) states in superposition are functionally distinguishable (suspectedly mostly in terms structure formation and mobility) and whether that is demonstrable experimentally. Finally, an unrelated question: when it comes to highly repetitive structures with lots of hexagons (and pentagons) and beautiful geometry, what do you think of DNA?

[@JustinRiddle]

Hi Mengsen, thank you for your thoughtful response!! So many points of intrigue in here. Quantum computation is fundamental to nature, so to assert that something is structurally inert and non-computational may be the harder thing to prove in the end. The computation could simply be a way of understanding the evolution of all things. As for the importance of the state as relevant to the larger context - this is huge. If the state is non-consequential then the computation may not matter as you say. At the end of this video I allude to this mystery. What is being computed and why? I think the answer may lie in an understanding of what the inputs and outputs to the system are. For example, we may find that a system is contributing to a collective - a vote within a group - or that it may be guiding the activity of sub-structures, like a microtubule directing the activity of proteins, etc. I wonder what the functional number of qubits truly are and how many of these qubits are truly consequential. Answering these questions may be key to reverse-engineering consciousness in silico. As for your DNA comment, there are some that speculate that the double helix pattern is conducive to the creation of a quantum superposition running along the core of the DNA. Each of the subunits in DNA has an aromatic ring which coalesces at the core of the DNA. Further speculation that microtubules and DNA may condense photons in the core and produce the conditions for creating lasers - only photons of the same wavelength may enter the core - and this could serves as an optical form of quantum computation. I didn't go into that theory in this video but may bring it up in the future at some point. That theory seems highly speculative though... check out: "Quantum optical coherence in cytoskeletal microtubules: implications for brain function" by Mari Jibu, Stuart Hameroff, Karl Pribram, and Kunio Yasue

[@versag3776]

I think of the electromagnetic-cheical reactions in combination with the optimal geometry. Allowing higher than room temperature superconductivity. This is the quantum entanglement allowing for superposition and 0 resistance. Interestingly/ironically/coincidentally the pattern of Penrose's tiles and 5 fold symmetry that he has already discovered twice and Penrose is also working on this paper and is finding the same symmetrical pattern in the microtubules. There is something to it 5 fold symmetry kind of lays the framework of the cosmos yet is disallowed as a large scalequazicrystal but they have been made artificially in small scales. The crystalography of one produced a dodecahedron diffraction through the (twin plane?)not sure. But yes geometry is key. Think magic angle graphine and other symmetries yet to be discovered with greater uses. ultrawieband Quantum fractal Antennas. Superconducting 99.999-100% Efficient motors Wireless power

[@versag3776]

Ooh I just got to the protein core part that spiraling looks very "golden" to me (5 fold) phi= 5×5^.5+.5

[@versag3776]

So many implications, so many more questions as well. what does this mean for our whole existence? 😆 Are we just dreams of stars and black holes? I'm guessing this means pilot wave is dead. And magic is real? Extra sensory perception, clairvoyance etc. And Dr. Garrett Modell is right about remote viewing and

[@kronk2294]

Wow! What an amazing introduction, will definitely be watching your series.

[@ParanormalAnarchist]

I would love to interview you for an upcoming series we are making. Love your series, it was an inspiration for me to start my channel. Thanks for all you do

[@user-wu6eq1ty1y]

Excellent video that explains these difficult concepts very well

[@deniz517]

Great series! Thanks buddy!

[@johnnyboidam]

Thank you. Love your videos. Please keep up the good work.

[@fredflintstone8048]

Good explanation.

[@garretthiggins2152]

Really cool, especially with the news that Superadiance (a quantum property) is seen in microtubules! Also, have you heard of Michael Levin's work on bioelectric patterns between cells potentially encoding morphology? Sounds like the aromatic rings preserving quantum coherence may link quite heavily! Edit: Are the delocalized electrons in the aromatic rings entangled or is the syncing of oscillation just caused by charge?

[@ocerams1826]

this is really good

[@SkyNelson]

Nice clear presentation, Justin, kudos! My stance is that Penrose's objective reduction is wrong, and in fact I published a paper last year which is incompatible with objective reduction. Here's the basic argument. The point of the paper is to formulate a wavefunction which is equal in its treatment of space and time. In other words, such a 4-Dimensional wavefunction could not evolve in time because it is itself a distribution over time. Much like the way a 2D hologram encodes 3D information, a static 4D wavefunction encodes motion through time, but does not itself change in time. From this, one gets the following: Corollary 1. The wavefunctions before and after an interaction must be invariant. (Another way to see this is that momentum-space is not parameterized by time, so it cannot evolve in time). Corollary 2. Given a system represented by a 4D wavefunction, its path of travel is defined in momentum-space AS A WHOLE. In other words, a path through space is defined by its Fourier transform, which is static (see Cor. 1) and describes the motion all-at-once. Corollary 3. Only interactions (i.e. endpoints of travel) can therefore be assigned physically meaningful descriptions. No physically meaningful description can be made between interactions. Thus, Cor. 3 describes a purely subjective universe, in which nothing objective and definite can be said. Is the moon still there when you look away? Of course it is, but not in a definite state. Quantum mechanics is the study of what the world is doing when you are NOT watching. And I think the best answer is that it is evolving into an ever-expanding web of subjective correlations. (Here's the full paper: www.mdpi.com/2624-960X/3/1/2 )

[@JustinRiddle]

Interesting interpretation Sky! I really enjoyed our conversation last week. I am going to put together a holograph-interpretation of quantum physics video in the next couple months. It would be helpful for me to consult you on this. Thanks for sharing!

[@SkyNelson]

@@JustinRiddle awesome! Let me know, I'd love to connect again anytime.

[@douwejan]

​@@SkyNelson . what evolves is not the quantum aspect its that what is holding it. time is there for instance when neuron fires and arrives. the consciousness it self is timeless. so what we experience is not the consciousness its an image of the consciousness meeting time. I and we can come closer to this timeless aspect or move further away in to information and computation alike to when we get older and time speeds up or when we use an psychedelic substances and come closer and time slows down. its changing time within us and so our perception of time... 2 yes. you need a ''static' space to define what movement is. you need a non dual point to see what duality is other ways you would be all over the place. its an anker which makes it more objective and makes it possible to sink with others so we experience more or less see the same thing as the thing experienced is not related to it self but to its relationship to timelessness non dual . this relation ship is energy, is vibration. is information. depending if its closer or further away from timelessness. ) and as everything relates to time and timelessness in its own speed in its own vibration we can experience it as a shared experience and so communicate about it. . there for The more timeless experience you can contain for instance trough the use of psychedelic or trough meditation. the more ability you can have for duality and paradoxes for your relation with the timelessness has grown and so your relationship with duality improved but your state will be different than the others and so your world view changes which has cultural and social impacts, like the 60s.

[@douwejan]

an instant experience . and a computed experience both reach the same point. the difference between those points is being. within time but both could not be there without the other. .which gives you the possibility to exist and act within the world and survive.

[@dananorth895]

Around 35:00 the liquid/gelatinous states sound like a phase change between crystal states liquid--gel.

[@craigromney6934]

Very informative and clearly presented. But it’s still slow going for me to understand quantum physics. Love Hammerhoff’s theory

[@arandomguyontheinternet756]

Hi Justin, I wanted to ask if you could explain a bit of how the new research in quantum optics for Orch OR fits in the model and what does it do.

[@dananorth895]

Hamerof and Penrose wrote their initial paper in 99' or 2000. It blew me away when I first saw it. I would suggest anyone interested in the details google their names and papers/pdf's. Researchgate and others should have many of their papers. Much of this IS further work/theory since their initial offerings.

[@finbeats]

I thought of this concept today and chat gpt let me know it was this exact model. Nice

[@erawanpencil]

Justin can I ask if you have an idea as to what other forms of consciousness maybe feel/look like subjectively? Since I understand that OR has 'proto-consciousness' necessarily built in to the fabric of existence, I'm wondering if it's correct to wonder what it would feel like to be, say, just a single cell or even a single microtubule. Would you just see that benzene ring geometry in front of your eyes with slow kaleidiscoping rotations perhaps, until you hooked up with other microtubules? Can you point me to others who have videos wondering about this particular subject?

[@abhiramn474]

I thought Penrose argues that conciousness isn;t a computation. Then again, I am only in high school. Tell me about the proto conciousness that they speak of and the conciousness. You did a good job explaining it such that a younger person can understand it to a degree.

[@JustinRiddle]

Hi Abhi, Great comments. Penrose makes an argument against digital computation as a model for consciousness. However, he leaves some open room for quantum computation as it includes novel principles and potentially new types of computation that we have yet to fully explore. Protoconsciousness is the idea that there are simple forms of consciousness, maybe not having the narrative flow that we are used to in our minds. Or lacking any form of long-term memory. Just an immediate experience of reality, but maybe even lacking a flow of time. *Simple* awareness. Thanks for watching!

[@abhiramn474]

@@JustinRiddle Can you tell me the implications of Orch Or for the average person.

[@ExistenceUniversity]

@@abhiramn474 Implications for the average person would be Alzheimer's cures, next would be people that learn to make this into toys and communication and therapies, I would expect.

[@gehtdichnixan4704]

@@abhiramn474 some medical, but mostly philosophical

[@cosmicwit]

Forgive my ignorance but is Orch OR simply describing the way that pure consciousness might arise from MTs in the brain but not necessarily anything beyond that (how specific thoughts form, decisions are made, memories stored, etc.)? In other words, the quantum computation in this model is generating a field of consciousness but any qualia, thoughts, images, etc. arising there are beyond the model. Is that right?

[@simirp2269]

Thank you

[@alvinaganci9278]

I love your channel. Thank you for this valuable content. I have some questions. I'm really trying to understand this. When anesthesia breaks up brain connections, consciousness is "wiped out"; but yet it supposedly survives death? If consciousness survives death, then I don't buy the notion of consciousness being "completely gone" during anesthesia, because if consciousness can't even endure anesthesia, how can it endure death? What happens if someone is blown up in an explosion or burned up in a fire? Connections within the microtubules would not just be disrupted as with anesthesia, rather those connections, in fact, the entire brain, would be completely obliterated. So, how then is consciousness surviving that, but not anesthesia? We don't know where we go and don't remember any of it. Could it be that anesthesia merely wipes out the conscious connection to the physical presence in the world, i.e., the conscious connection to the body, but that one is still having a conscious experience outside of the body? In this medically induced coma, one would be close to death; and this experience would be in line with an NDE, only it isn't recalled due to anesthesia's memory-suppressing effects. I'm thinking in terms of non-local consciousness. Also, how is it that microtubules in the brain but not the liver give rise to consciousness?

[@squamish4244]

The Eastern traditional view is that the human subtle energy body (chakras etc.) detaches from the brain and physical body under anesthesia. How this relates to Orch-OR, _I have no idea._

[@DanBray0]

Considering mathematics only discovers what the answer already is with certainty using finite values, is the opposite not to discover what the answer already is with uncertainty using infinite values (infinitesimals)? If so, then that would explain why there is always uncertainty at the quantum level and how the random state of a particle can be shared over any distances instantaneously via quantum entanglement. If individual quantum fluctuations are nothing, do nothing, experience no awareness, and cause no changes, then there only needs to be an infinite quantity of them to experience awareness and cause random changes. Only discovering the information that is already there via conscious experience avoids the ambiguities of infinitely nothing being equivalent to any finite value, as the finite values are only discovered (aware of).

[@rennerpedroza2353]

How would the Hameroff-Penrose Model explain the cases (a big quantity of cases just ask to yor physicist) where people experience complex objective mind experiences on undergoing anesthesia health procedures? Some people, under anesthesia and even not, relate have extra body experiences very clearly.

[@tabularosa333]

kinda sounds like an ionic cellular switching fabric. perhaps this cellular computation is generally all pervasive across biology, with neurons being just a simpler performance optimized specialization of fundamentally the same process.

[@JustinRiddle]

I like your idea of self-similar patterns across scale. Perhaps this is carried further to the molecular scale and into the higher level with populations of neurons in cortical columns

[@hrdowns9464]

My Wave Function totally collapsed. Bravo!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👌🏽

[@abhiramn474]

Doesn't this theory allow the information that is YOU to exist outside the body. Atleast that is what I have heard Stuart Hameroff say.

[@JustinRiddle]

Hameroff has a theory based on the concept of quantum teleportation that because a wave function can migrate between different qubits, then if the human mind is a wave function that maybe it can also teleport to a new host body. Deepak Chopra and Hameroff have a paper on the "quantum soul" suggesting that this might enable reincarnation or other anomalous forms of consciousness. I think these are super fun and interesting ideas, I will cover them in a future video (for sure!)

[@ltandrepants]

How do we know there is a wave pattern if we can’t observe it without interfering

[@fredflintstone8048]

Penrose proposes the opposite. Conscious observation is in itself a quantum collapse going on in the brain. He proposes that the quantum collapses that are going on all around us happen whether we're here to observe them or not. One cannot deny classic physics and it's a little bit absurd to look at it from the perspective that reality is dependent on the observer.

[@brianmcdaniels8249]

TIP: The wavefunction does not mean something vanishes or disappears. If you visualize a big cone/wave of energy moving toward a small round object, PART of that wave depending on how much energy it has, wraps around the nuclear depending on a few factors and then yada becomes an electron. Youre talking about quantum phnysics here but you keep describing electrons and photons as pin point particles and not a WAVE that can "Wrap" around an object and become MORE of that energy.

[@SkyNelson]

There are some subtleties to "subjective reduction" that I think you are missing. I wouldn't characterize it as chaotic, my sense is that you are still thinking of it as objective. You are describing environmental collapse, which is still objective. What I would call "subjective collapse" is purely informational, for instance based on Carlo Rovelli's 1996 proposal of Relational Quantum Mechanics. There, you have simply an expanding web of relationships, and there are no global facts, only local facts between subjective observers.

[@donghoshin3460]

according to Orch OR can quantum computers have consciousness then?

[@wilsonsil2605]

Justin, did you already see the new results of the Orch-OR theory? "Experiments show that anaesthetic drugs reduce how long tiny structures found in brain cells can sustain suspected quantum excitations". At NewCientist article.

[@JustinRiddle]

Stu sent me the link, but I couldn't get past the article's paywall. Very cool to see. Also, James Tagg claims to have just tested the objective reduction collapse model in a recent unpublished experiment (presented at The Science of Consciousness last week) by showing that there is a predictable delay in the collapse time after measurement. These predictions are based on the Diosi-Penrose collapse model. I'll have to cover this at some point in the future of this channel.

[@mrk-ism]

@@JustinRiddle I have a copy of the article let me know if you'd like me to email it to you it's well written

[@JustinRiddle]

@@mrk-ism Hey that would be great! [e-mail] please

[@hollies4806]

👍👍

[@onlythetruthwillsetyoufree8872]

So petrol is basically a quantum computer! Just kidding. This is very interesting.

[@lucianmaximus4741]

Gematria444:360=1.23*Monad

[@eenkjet]

Dimers do not superpose. They pin a magnetic flux which is maintains a geometric language much like a sum of phasors. OrchOR is no longer a viable model due to finer and finer resolution experimentation.

[@OfTheVoid]

Combine Orch-OR with "One Electron Theory"

[@fredflintstone8048]

I don't think that's necessary.

[@OfTheVoid]

@@fredflintstone8048 It makes some fun thought experiments.

[@No-thing-ness]

To the questioner: answer; no, but it’s inevitable. What will prevent the essentialness is the predicted earth rotation of 90 degrees. However, the USA have massive underground cities in preparation. I assume other countries also have this. Putin certainly has a personal palace / university size underground. As life is truth and the world is a stage there are parallel leaks to Hollywood storytelling. Such as the 2012 movie where the world is flooded due to magnetic pole shit. The core of the earth changes and then resettles. Ships however is not the best option, underground caverns are! The past examples suggest 18 months before the earth settles back to magnetic pole stability. This is proven by examples of penis. Yes penis. Wooly mammoth to be exact. An erect frozen wooly mammoth penis. It demonstrates the speed in which the cataclysmic environmental collapses happen. Mammoth meat so quickly snap frozen it’s said you could eat it. The estimates are around 2-3000 years between each cycle. Welcome to the party

[@Blargability]

Schizoposting

[@maximilyen]

If people have free will then why some people kill other people and serve a life time in prison

[@peopleofearth6250]

Don't give yourself too much credit. Your mind is a classical computer, not a quantum computer. Get over yourself.

[@Blargability]

So much aggression from opponents of the theory. Why can none of you appreciate the effort put into the theory and actually use your brain to try and logically deduce why it's not a possibility. Do better.

[@peopleofearth6250]

@@Blargability Stop complaining.

[@Blargability]

@@peopleofearth6250 hahaha you're the only one with the negative attitude mate. Why isn't this theory probable?

[@peopleofearth6250]

@@Blargability Nobody needs to disprove an unproven hypothesis. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. It is unproven garbage by default until demonstrated otherwise. That is how science works. If you don't like it then simply go away. The world owes you nothing.

[@simirp2269]

People like you stop progress