/flees ...

I do not expect to see any 'resolution' of mind/brain (except for the usual, lazy conflations with insufficient theory or data) -- in my lifetime, anyway. 'Action-at-a-distance' remains one of the bugaboos of QM: if you still want to claim conservation of spin, etc. Western science is extremely uncomfortable trying to work in any area overlaid by Consciousness; uncomfortable work produces ___.

I aver that 'we' (sigma 'science') lack fundamental comprehension of ... most Everything, let alone the vastly near-magical relationship of jelloware :: the allegedly-individual consciousness temporarily? borrowing same.

(For that 'matter' (no, not the massive kind) -- Eastern philosophy is light-years beyond the simplistic Puritan bathos, which is not ever too far from the inculcated mindsets of most Western science students -- especially as that relates to all efforts to limn *Consciousness*. And without That model: mind/brain becomes a Red Herring, however many equations are spawned. I wot, muchly.)

Some food for thought or thoughtlessness (as well as quantum mechanics, well-applied by a demurrer: Hugh Everette.)

PBS's NOVA, "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" - on, currently.

Everette wrote a (dare one say, 'seminal'?) paper in '57; finally wangled a meeting with Niels (that's 'Nells' not 'Neals') Bohr in København, in '59. Bohr was, of course, totally immersed in the wondrous apparent cohesiveness of his co-Creation, dismissing the work of Everette -- we cannot know, after .. "how Much? deliberation?"

One focus of E's attention was upon the paradox we all know as Schrödinger's pussy-cat in a box with poison and a geiger detector. Everette's view (and his pukka QM calculations via which he presented that) -- was that BOTH conditions are possible: The cat lives | The cat doesn't. Decently portrayed in this NOVA, which is, of course - trying to make things as simple as possible - and appparently obeying AE's marvelous quip, in the process ["... but not simpler."]

BOTH Possible??
In parallel 'universes' (for want of any referent we could use as familiarly.)
E's are physics calculations, not metaphysical wonderings (though some of us do not dismiss those so readily as physics fundamentalists would dismiss these - sans inspection. I despise knee-jerk auto-negatives, but that's just moi.)

Anyway, genetics being what they are, still understood miniscule-ly:
Everette's son flunked HS algebra! and the aim of this NOVA was to try.. and lead him, via all tricks possible: towards a small appreciation of what his father's life-work had been about. Also to introduce him to another young physicist, as enamored of his father's theories along with (some others = not explored, that last.)

Son likes to play the guitar.. Never Knew his father, who seems to have been almost silently-about-the-house. Has boxes of his father's papers.


Worth the hour, I think


Ashton