Those are controversial because in science you show the proof of something occruring, an primary proof being shown here mostly anounts to „trust me bro, the guy saying this got a nobel award in physics”. But the fault here is on media reporting, not Penrose himself.

it's fringe because it's almost certainly nonfalsifiable

I'm pretty sure Penrose won't accept his own theory if it's only nonfalsifiable. At the moment, it's only an idea but if it is unprovable he'll abandon it or be very clear about its non-scientific status.

He's not a second Josephson.

I've watched enough interviews with Penrose to know you're correct. He likes all sorts of ideas, but he only really gets excited about the ones where he can see an experimental route to confirmation.

> it's fringe because it's almost certainly nonfalsifiable

That can't be true; those are two completely unrelated concepts. Compare "we're living in a simulation", which became mainstream despite the fact that (1) it is even more unfalsifiable than this is; and (2) it is identical in every way to the old, no-longer-interesting concept of "you are a brain in a jar".

I would consider “we’re living in a simulation” to be fringe. And that anyone who claims with any certainty that we are living in a simulation is a crackpot.

Speculating that we might be living in a simulation is of course all in good fun.

An idea being popular does not mean it is not fringe. Otherwise any sci-fi trope from the Matrix or Interstellar could be called “mainstream”. A large number of people also need to believe it is true with a high degree of conviction.

Based on a previous talk [1] there was a claim that you should be able to see events from previous aeons in the background microwave radiation.

In particular rings caused by the collision of black holes.

And from his talk he had reached out to colleagues from around the world to see if they did exist. So it seems like he does care about it being provable.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftjwnjR0apY

Since I haven’t seen anyone else mention this bit of context elsewhere in the thread: Penrose gets a bit of side-eye in the physics community because of his metaphysical beliefs on consciousness. (Specifically, that quantum effects in tubule proteins of the brain produce special nondeterministic effects that constitute our conscious essence, and true consciousness is impossible without this nondeterministic fount of spiritual essence.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness

He’s clearly a smart guy… but also has some hot takes.

(Zero judgement intended; only bringing this up as background context.)

This is what I always find weird about some areas of modern science is the completly inability to hold new ideas without an ability to abstract away the need for the direct evidence; if this encourages someone to find something that can be wholy described (rather than be called "spirital essence" as so many things previously were we now give names too).

Isn't this what most of science was built upon - Is he right or wrong? Sometimes a need for minds who can push ideas into scientific thinking.

If that wasn't the case, then we might not even have Quantum Physics as it is today...

Unlike medical cranks out there, Penrose has (far as I've seen) never said anything of this is definitive - only that there is the potential in his theory that Orch-OR is the likely seat of conciousness.

Oh this is super cool, thanks for sharing. I have strong (admittedly mostly irrational) inclinations against determinism, seeing something like this is exciting. Definitely going to have to give it a read.

Sapolski's take on determinism was really a low blow for me, and I've since seen several other intellectuals I respect very highly espouse similar views, and there was a point where I would have agreed in my adolescence, but I've since then developed away from that course of thinking. I often wonder if it's a rationalization which is necessary for the framework of the theory of everything to be coherent.

The problem with arguing quantum non-determinism gives rise to consciousness is that it doesn't really give you free will, it just implies the consciousness is an unpredictable process.

But a quantum physicist would then ask "to what degree?" because quantum mechanics is very deterministic over large sample sizes (and a few trillion proteins in the brain would be a very large sample).

More importantly though, free will implies the ability to make a choice and that has problems when you invoke quantum indeterminacy to explain it: you don't get "a choice" you get random chance deciding things (and other depressing ideas like "human consciousness can't be backed up, saved or transferred - we really are trapped in these meat prisons and doomed to suffer).

If randomness is all that's needed, you can produce it with a random number generator.

Sure, but are we not precluding that the forces which gave rise to the genesis and evolution of life were able to search and select for functional quantum phenomena? We're talking about processes that can turn a pile of water, salt, sugar, nitrogen, and some vitamins into an obscenely complex, highly adaptable, self-replicating, self-regulating machine which can produce a variety of different micro and macromolecules in a baffling concert of physics and chemistry at scales and complexity humans can hardly work at, and certainly not so majestically.

And we've also got eyes, which in principal means that many life forms already have quantum-sensitive apparati, right? Magnetoreceptors as well, and they're also found in "lower lifeforms" in various different forms from the basest phototaxis to extraordinarily refined lens systems which can numerous wavelengths.

And then I suppose when talking in scale — what does it actually mean — to flip that coin when you've only got an N of one in reality.

Of course I would have to concede that I accept an element, even a large one of determinacy, but my experience also precludes the idea of it existing exclusively. I'm really just pattering away right now, frankly I know very little of quantum physics (nothing, really) it's just nice to know someone is willing to furnish a hypothesis contrary to what I believe is the consensus on the topic.

> He’s clearly a smart guy… but also has some hot takes.

I'm good with that as Penrose is very clear where the uncontroversial science ends and the hot takes begin; he doesn't try to "peddle" anything. "Here is my hot take and this is the TRUTH" is something I have problems with, "here's my hot take a lot of people will disagree with, but I think it may be true because [...]" isn't; and is often even valuable even if the hot take turns out to be wrong, because it exposes shortcomings, omissions, or other things that are not yet entirely clear.

Mostly its controversial simply because the evidence for it is week. You need to perform a complicated analysis of the CMB, to find some statistical artifacts that are consistent with your theory, and not any other theory. This is incredibly difficult, because the CMB is very noisy, we don't have a full understanding of how the universe evolved post big bang, and even with our current understanding, a full simulation is computationally impossible. Penrose's analysis found the signature that shows CCC, however when others attempt to perform the analysis, they do not find it. As such, the accuracy of the only evidence remains controversial.

In addition to the empirical lack of convincing evidence, there is also a theoretical problem. In order for CCC to work, you need to assume that all massive particles decay. The is not inconceivable, but involves things like proton decay, which is speculative at best, and electron decay, for which (as far as I am aware) we do not even have a serious speculative mechanism.