Pretty sure brains are exploiting quantum phenomenas too, we just haven't noticed that yet. This should make replicating human brain much harder.
Organisms might be quantum machines
61–70 of 127 posts
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#62> The one saving grace is that these truly bizarre quantum
> behaviours don’t seem to have much of an impact on the
> macroscopic world as we know it, where “classical”
> physics rules the roost.
> Or, at least, that’s what scientists thought until a few years ago.
Yeah, no. You're reading this on something with a semiconductor inside. Which you might remember from novelties like transistor radio and such.
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#63quite interesting, but its a bit confused... and its not exactly a revelation that processes involving molecules or particles are best explained by quantum effects. this is precisely where quantum physics came from - trying to explain these things. "The wet, warm, bustling environment of living cells is the last place you might expect to see quantum events." stuff like this is misleading imo. its exactly the sort of…
PSA reading most popular science reporting considered harmful
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
My cynical prediction is that if quantum-effects are part of the brain, it will only be in a practical, philosophically-boring way. So they may be essential to basic plumbing shared by many species, but not otherwise a game-changing factor for "consciousness" or "intelligence".
Perception in humans seems capable of grasping data sets with billions of pieces of information each second, and distilling it all down to intuition. All this information is serialized onto pretty much 5 channels (excluding things like one's sense of balance, or the awareness of how your body is posed), all streamed concurrently. Sounds like a recipe for high bandwidth consumption. Many cycles per second. Based on th…
5 channels? those are some whooping-ass channels.
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought chemistry operated at a higher level, as in it doesn't care how or why a atoms are structured they way they are, they just deal with the results at a higher level of abstraction. Is this incorrect?
> I thought chemistry operated at a higher level "Chemistry" as you're using the term here is a name for a set of models made by humans, not something in actual atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules don't know that they're supposed to be doing "chemistry" instead of "quantum stuff". When I say chemistry is fundamentally dependent on quantum effects, I mean the things atoms and molecules actually do would be im…
Thanks, I think. I really need to brush up on my understanding of chemistry.
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#66This can open new research also on how works for example homeopathy and acupunture?
I absolutely would not rule out that this can open new research on for example homeopathy and acupuncture.
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually the mechanism of homeopathy isn't know. Clinic results are differente from test with placebo
Do you have a reliable source for that? I omitted adding a source because if you look for scientific research on homeopathy you find essentially only studies stating that it does not work, Wikipedia has plenty of references.
Proving homeopathics
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#68[deleted]
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#69Only somewhat related: I'm currently reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson. I'm nearing the end of the book, and the concept that human brains might use quantum processes in the decision-making process is a very important and prevalent idea in the novel. [Although he takes some artistic license --- it is only a novel, afterall]. So I've been thinking, at least passively, about organisms being quantum machines quite a bi…
While it's certainly possible that neural networks involve some non-trivial quantum-mechanical effects, it's also much more likely that (in the context of the brain), this notion arose from people expecting the brain and consciousness to be mysterious and inscrutable, hence "maybe consciousness is quantum!". In the absence of a concrete theory and testable experiment, that sentence has about as much meaning as "maybe…
Wouldn't the presence of quantum effects be the default assumption, and there would have to be some compelling reason for their absence? It's not like nature started from Newtonian physics. Natural selection uses whatever it can get its sticky mitts on. Quantum effects are perfect for information processing.
To me, it's not the inscrutability of the brain that makes this seem likely... it's the bare knuckled win-at-all-costs no-holds-barred nature of natural selection.
Re: Organisms might be quantum machines
#70Tl;dr Biology is applied chemistry, chemistry is applied quantum physics and in some cases chemistry is a leaky abstraction and does not perfectly explain what is going on in organisms. Three examples - photosynthesis being more efficient than expected, birds sensing Earth's magnetic field by an unknown mechanism and a lack of understanding how olfaction works in detail - are presented but besides that there are no n…
> ... chemistry is a leaky abstraction ... Well I second you on that. Even stronger: All of (theoretical) science is a leaky abstraction. When an area is new, people are doing the spherical-cow-approximation willy nilly. After it gets established, corner cases start to surface. Incidentally, theoretical physicists are the masters of creating spherical-cow-approximations and leaky-abstractions. They're always going fo…
relevant xkcd https://www.xkcd.com/435/