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Organisms might be quantum machines
- mixedmath 10y agoOnly 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 bit for the last week or so.
- bad_alloc 10y agoTha's what Roger Penrose argued in "Shadows of the Mind" where he theorizes about quantum effects in the human brain and how they might give rise to conciousness [1]. There's some criticism about it, because the brain is pretty warm and decoherence should disturb all quantum states so much taht they become unusable, but it is still a research topic if "warm" quantum states can exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Mind
- runT1ME 10y agoThe novel was based on Penrose's Earlier book I believe.
- mlvljr 10y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computers/dp/0192861980 https://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computer... ?
- mlvljr 10y agoWas searching for Penrose being mentioned, going to post myself otherwise (immediately struck me as well :)).
- JoshTriplett 10y agoWhile 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 consciousness is emergent!" or "maybe consciousness is supernatural!". (Here, I'm talking about vague statements like those, or sci-fi theories like those in a Stephenson novel, as opposed to actual analysis like that of photosynthesis in the linked article.)
- erikpukinskis 10y agoWouldn'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.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoOne disambiguation: everything involves the presence of quantum mechanics, insofar as Newtonian physics isn't how the universe actually works. It's not entirely obvious where to draw the line here in calling an effect "quantum" or "not quantum"; Newtonian physics alone doesn't explain the majority of chemistry or electricity, for instance, and the body wouldn't function without a wide variety of chemical and electrical reactions. The brain (and absolutely everything else) runs on the actual physics of the universe, not on a model we might have of it. The default assumption would be our current model of how the brain works; any model proposing effects (quantum or otherwise) not yet accounted for would require an appropriate amount of additional proof. When I suggested which seemed more likely, I was taking priors into account. More generally, though, I wasn't referring to concrete models that make specific claims about how the brain works; I was referring to the rather frequently stated vague claims that use "quantum" in a way that would have no more or less meaning with the word "magic" substituted. A specific concrete model would be amenable to prediction and experiment. Whether any particular such concrete model seems probable or not would depend on what it claims. For instance, a claim that the brain depends on macroscopic quantum effects at a far larger scale than observed elsewhere seems improbable; a claim that the brain depends on properties of chemical or electrical interactions that quantum mechanics explains better than other physics models seems relatively less improbable by comparison, depending on the details. Whether any particular claims seem probable or improbable would depend on our current understandings of quantum mechanics, the brain, evolutionary search processes, and so on.
- Terr_ 10y agoMy 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".
- mirimir 10y agoFor example: Masgrau et al. (2006) Atomic Description of an Enzyme Reaction Dominated by Proton Tunneling http://sci-hub.cc/10.1126/science.1126002 http://sci-hub.cc/10.1126/science.1126002
- ddt_Osprey 10y agoPerception 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 this, I'd wager we (and our perception of self) only exist in the ether between our body's neurons.
- paul_milovanov 10y ago5 channels? those are some whooping-ass channels.
- taneq 10y agoEach 'channel' (assuming he means senses) has a helluva bus width.
- acqq 10y agoMoreover, we have more than five senses. An example of one of these, for this we have the real "devices" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system built-in to give us the sense of balance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_balance
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoIt's an excellent book that takes you on a trip through a couple millennia of development of thought in philosophy and physics, all presented in an accessible and entertaining way. Highly recommended.
- fsiefken 10y agoYes, look into Stuart Hameroff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff who thought of quantum effects through neural microtubules independently of Roger Penrose in 1987 whose work from 1989 inspired Neal Stephenson. Neal wrote on his website in the Acknowledgements section: "1. Penrose posits, in The Emperor's New Mind (ISBN 978-0192861986) and Shadows of the Mind (ISBN 978-0195106466), that the human brain takes advantage of quantum effects to do what it does. This has been so controversial that I have found it impossible to have a dispassionate conversation about it with any learned person. The dispute can be broken apart into a number of different sub-controversies, some of which are more interesting than others. The science-fictional premise of Anathem is based on the relatively weak and modest assumption that natural selection has found some way to construct brains that, despite being warm and wet, are capable of exploiting the benefits of quantum computation. Readers who are uncomfortable with the specific mechanism posited by Penrose might also wish to read Henry Stapp's Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics (ISBN 978-3540407614) which posits a quantum brain mechanism that is completely incompatible with Penrose's." Also read this, I was lucky enough to do an academic level course on parapsychology long ago with Dick Bierman for 4 study points: * Quantum States In The Retina? Pierre St. Hilaire, Dick Bierman, Stuart Hameroff http://quantum.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/prod/content/quantum-mind-quantum-states-retina#overlay-context=content/qm-topological-quantum-computationerror-correction-microtubules http://quantum.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/prod/content/quantum... Why is research like this not funded and practised more? Is it to far out, costly or difficult?
- saskurambo 10y agoThis can open new research also on how works for example homeopathy and acupunture?
- danbruc 10y agoHomeopathy does not work except for the placebo effect, there are several studies.
- saskurambo 10y agoActually the mechanism of homeopathy isn't know. Clinic results are differente from test with placebo
- alex_anglin 10y agoSource?
- DanBC 10y agoThe source is not in any way controversial. When you run a well-conducted trial you find zero benefit to homeopathy. When you run a poorly-conducted study, with poor blinding or weak randomization you find some benefits to homeopathy. When you don't even run a study, but just give people homeopathy in clinics they'll tell you it works because they say they can feel a difference.
- danbruc 10y agoDo 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.
- djsumdog 10y agoI too would be interested in a source. I don't think that homeopathy works, but I am willing to admit I can be wrong. Doubt is essential to make progress: http://khanism.org/science/doubt/ http://khanism.org/science/doubt/ Also, the placebo effect shouldn't be used dismissively. If you convince someone they should be feeling pain (tell them they're next to a low frequency transmitter that causes pain when they're really next to an empty speaker box), that pain is real in the sense their nervous system can have a physical reaction to it. It is in their heads, but perceptions can generate physical responses.
- danbruc 10y agoTl;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 new revolutionary ideas in the article.
- kakarot 10y agoI was under the assumption that the working theory is birds share a similar feature as fruit flies and possibly foxes. The cones that allow us to see blue light actually work as compasses when suspended in a fluid, and they are not attached to the retina of a fruit fly but are suspended in their eye and thus shape incoming visual patterns around magnetic fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThat's fascinating, but birds do have their rods and cones attached to the retina. IIRC birds are though to be in some way detecting either directly, or through secondary effect, polarization of light.
- danbruc 10y agoThat is essentially the proposed mechanism discussed in the article but the article gives the impression - at least to me - that it is not yet confirmed that this indeed how it works in birds. EDIT: After skimming the Wikipedia article, both articles agree that it is a possible but not yet confirmed mechanism.
- dnautics 10y agoThe cryptochrome hypothesis doesn't require detachment from the retina as it's a protein that has directional excitatory preference, not the whole cell.
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- djsumdog 10y agoIn Kim Stanley Robinson's fictional series on Mars (Red, Blue, Green Mars), researches discover that memory is actually based on quantum physics. It's a really good series I highly recommend, and it's won awards because Robinson put a lot of research into make the book believable. The descriptions and time scales used in the book make it very accessible to engineers while also containing incredible character development. Anyway, memory could be very well related to the quantum world. There's a lot we do not understand about the brain, and what we do know raises a bunch of questions about how does our brain store information when it seems to have such limited potential capacity?
- jheriko 10y agoquite 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 place you expect to see quantum effects - because its in the universe and at the appropriate scale.
- flukus 10y ago>stuff like this is misleading imo. its exactly the sort of place you expect to see quantum effects - because its in the universe and at the appropriate scale. Isn't this a few orders of magnitude above where you'd expect to see quantum effects?
- jheriko 10y agoIt's quite a few below for some effects. Have you heard of the double slit experiment? But actually the scale of cells and their structures is macro-molecule scale... a lot of the behaviour of those things (DNA, proteins etc..) is very quantum mechanical.. there are also structures working with ions and even protons (hydrogen ion) in there.
- pdonis 10y ago> Isn't this a few orders of magnitude above where you'd expect to see quantum effects? No. Chemistry itself is fundamentally dependent on quantum effects; quantum effects determine the structure of atoms and molecules, how they combine, and how much energy is involved in those processes. That's true whether the processes are taking place in living bodies or not. My reaction to this article is basically the same as jheriko's: this is news?
- flukus 10y agoI 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?
- mirimir 10y agoIt's well known that quantum tunneling plays crucial roles in protein chemistry. And has been for at least ~30 years.
- kingkawn 10y agoor a series of aqueducts
- gsmethells 10y agoScience works via repeatable experiments and inductive reasoning where hypothesis are tested against observational evidence. Until they have that in-hand, it is but interesting conjecture whose plausibility remains untested.
- asciimo 10y ago"Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology," by Johnjoe McFadden is a great book for history and details on these topics. The author does a very good job explaining alien theories to curious layfolk.
- tener 10y agoPretty sure brains are exploiting quantum phenomenas too, we just haven't noticed that yet. This should make replicating human brain much harder.
- taneq 10y agoWhy? Because computers can't exploit quantum phenomena? Phenomena such as, say, field effects in doped silicon?
- paul_milovanov 10y ago> 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.
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- flohofwoe 10y ago- -1st century: the brain is 'magic' - 15th century: the brain is the creation of a divine being - 17th century: the brain is a clockwork - 20th century: the brain is an electrical computer - 21th century: the brain is a quantum device - 22th century: the brain is a ?? It's an interesting thought though, and I especially like Neil Stephenson's idea that the brain is a quantum device that 'leaks out' into parallel universes and uses 'brain capacity' from those overlapping universes, but it's just that: a neat idea, and science fiction. What's different this time? :) [edit: formatting]
- Razengan 10y agoI like this best: The brain is the Universe trying to understand itself.
- lagudragu 10y agoThe brain, at least, plays a (somewhat local) observer role towards the Universe. The brain trying to understand the Universe is a nice byproduct of that role.
- torustic 10y agoEvery agent tries to understand (or perhaps "dualize") its environment. I both like and dislike theories of mind that describe the brain in terms of n-veiled solipsism. But I generally like them because of the specific (decision-theoretic) statements they make about how an agent is defining its environment. What's striking to me about life on earth -- mostly humanity, but also the larger notions of noo-/biosphere -- is that, so far, it doesn't match up to our larger-scale evidence about how <things in general> define <their environments>. We have managed to define our environment in a fashion which is scale-agnostic, at least with respect to the measurement of physical accumulations of stuff. We readily form metaphors between: (a) things in our locale, (b) things in the huge, (c) things in the tiny, and (d) things in the meta (read: math/pattern). I think the worst thing we can do -- as engineers or scientists or mathematicians or even metaphysicians -- is to presume that any of |a-d| generate the others "in reality". (I just did a bit of that when I implicitly defined "larger-scale evidence" as "most legitimate evidence".) In the categorical sense of arrow-reversal-without-structural-change[0], models of |a-d| are dual to any notion of 'environment' we can imagine. That doesn't suggest determinism, but it does offload every variation on the question of free will into a(n empty) simulationist argument whose limit is some computational infinity, like an omni-* deity or an extremely general structure like an ∞-topos[1]. An interesting partial exception is complexity theory. When we map out statements like PostBQP==PP[2], we're doing something fundamental, that bridges the gaps in |a-d| without adding something too weird as |e|. The actual notion of 'complexity-wise truth' that's being generated[3] is a measure of inferential distance that doesn't seem to care about pesky details but is somehow still attuned to specific problems. There are caveats -- you could imagine each distinct problem/distance class as the dual of a scope (our syntactic presentation of such scope anyway[4]). The segregation of our environment into such scopes is only the first half of the problem. Less trivial is the act of mapping out our environment as a structured space of such scopes, so that we dissolve all questions of type ['what is', 'what should be', 'what was', etc.] into a singular question of type ['what direction to go now']. To me, this sounds quite dangerous. And yet some variation on that is what many of us in the greater "self-directed tech" milieu are working on. There's an embedded urgency to the framework. Call it "the market" or "the simulation" or "the basilisk" or "bringing about the singularity" or "humans vs. ai" or "geopolitics" or whatever you want, but what's difficult to ignore is how effectively |bcd| equivalences eat up |a|, for any definition of |a| that invites historical norms. Interpret this how you will.[5] For me it causes a sharp recoil from generalizations like "we are just the universe observing itself." The recoil is followed by a question, "okay what should I observe so that I might identify with it?" To which the answer is usually, "whatever makes me a better engineer, so that I can worry about this later, when I have a better understanding of what I'm asking." (i.e., I fail to prevent |bcd|>|a|, and each iteration on the theme speeds up the process a little bit.) [0] https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/duality https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/duality [1] I should say I feel pretty awful making this analogy, as it performs a |bc| equivalence at the expense of most of |a| and everything important in |d|. It's no better than "what if atoms are tiny universes?"-type questions, and it should be treated as illegitimate as evidence for anything more detailed than the notion of existence itself. [2] http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/01/complexity-class-of-week-pp-by-guest.html http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2004/01/complexity-c... [3] https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo [4] https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/07/what_is_a_theory.html#c034010 https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/07/what_is_a_theor... (though this analogy is almost worse than [1]'s) [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12317525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12317525
- crystaln 10y agoWhy would anyone ever assume that biology obeys an entirely artificial distinction between classical and quantum mechanics devised from human ignorance billions of years after evolution began?
- QuantumRoar 10y agoThe same way you assume you can compute how a ball flies through the air without using quantum field theory. Turns out, the ball isn't noticeably influenced by its atomic structure. But then it turns out, some of biology might be. The best description is the simplest one being able to describe all related phenomena. So unless you have a very good reason, it wouldn't be helpful to start from the standard model of particle physics.
- crystaln 10y agoThat's silly. "Simple" in this context is an entirely human construct. Matter and energy just are. They have no sense of their own complexity. If quantum effects exist, they are equally as accessible as macro-classical effects to biology even if not human understanding.
- QuantumRoar 10y agoOf course you're right but we're talking about two different things. I was telling you about how humans cope with complexity in science. You wouldn't get anywhere in science if you would always start from the most detailed theory. Instead, you try simpler models first and if they accurately describe the phenomenon, there's no need to involve quantum mechanics (which often renders problems almost impossible to solve). On the other hand, if you tried the classical theories and notice that there are things unaccounted for, then you go and look for more detailed theories to apply to your problem. That's the normal way you do research and that's what happened here.
- EddieSpeaks 10y agoThe comments here seem like a slippery slope to Deepak Chopra-ish Quantum babble. Somebody already mentioned Penrose and Hameroff. Remain objective please.
- nopassrecover 10y agoInteresting insight on olfaction. Quantum involvement (e.g. selective wave-form collapse) is about the only viable possibility I can see for escaping determinism and allowing free will (and even then we're pushing current physics firmly into pop-sci fiction).
- dnautics 10y agoWhile I'm a fan of torins hypothesis in general, the specific molecule highlighted in the article (borane) has a much simpler, traditional reason for smelling like rotten eggs due to disulfide bond reduction reaction.
- FeepingCreature 10y agoQuantum does not rescue free will. "Random" is "free" in the sense that a wheel has "three degrees of freedom" when it's not attached to the axle.
- nopassrecover 10y agoYou're right that it doesn't necessarily rescue free will. That's why I said, selective pop-sci wave-collapse (as in some imaginary mechanism for free will that leverages a quantum avenue). Determinism (in most accounts) precludes free will. Therefore randomness is necessary but not sufficient for free will. Quantum mechanics is the only avenue we have for randomness/non-determinism, so if free will does exist, it's going to have to involve some sort of quantum "magic". It's certainly possible to imagine consciousness based on quantum mechanics (ala Penrose) that facilitates some level of choice by selectively collapsing wave-forms (not just randomly collapsing them) and is still compatible with a macro-deterministic universe.
- FeepingCreature 10y agoYeah but there seems to be some kind of belief that quantum is somehow "less lawful" in a way that would rescue it from the conflict with determinism. Which simply doesn't work - either it's random, in which case it's not Will, or it's determined by something else, such as consciousness, in which case it's not any more Free than classical physics. (Personally, Compatibilism offers the only satisfactory way out.)
- acqq 10y agoRemembered me to this nice article: "What Gives Gold that Mellow Glow?" https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/golden_glow/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/golden_glow/
- fredo699 10y agoIs it meant to be at all surprising that in a universe with quantum physics, organisms will evolve to take advantage of those mechanics?
- spectrum1234 10y agoI'm convinced that this is also how consciousness works yet I've never seen this published. Consciousness can't spontaneously appear so the only way it's possible is through quantum phenomena.
- IanCal 10y ago> Consciousness can't spontaneously appear Why? > Consciousness can't spontaneously appear so the only way it's possible is through quantum phenomena. I don't understand at all how these two statements are connected.
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- deckar01 10y agoI am familiar with the concept of plants to growing towards the sun and following the sun throughout the day. I'm curious if a similar mechanism is occurring at the atomic level, causes new cell growth to converge onto a shape that maximizes electron transmission.
- MrPatan 10y agoEverything is quantum. There is no classical.