8 ms·

>If the clock runs at half speed, your brain runs at half speed, so you see it ticking forward at twice the rate, and 2.0 * 0.5 = 1.0 Consider changes in gravi

by rl3 6y ago

>If the clock runs at half speed, your brain runs at half speed, so you see it ticking forward at twice the rate, and 2.0 * 0.5 = 1.0 Consider changes in gravity affect cognition. Likewise, if the brain has any quantum mechanisms, then that 1.0 might not be exactly 1.0.

jiggawatts 6y ago
> Consider changes in gravity affect cognition. That is literally what it does. It slows down cognition. In the exact same way that it slows down clocks. The "clock in your brain" and the "watch in your hand" are all operating on the same physical and chemical principles. It's all just atoms and electromagnetic interactions at the lowest levels. > Likewise, if the brain has any quantum mechanisms Again, this is a pop-science misunderstanding of all of physics, not just Quantum Mechanics (QM). The rules of QM either apply to everything or nothing. The laws of the universe do not begin or end at the edge of the laboratory bench top. Similarly, there are no special rules that apply to just the human brain. The rules that govern galaxies, particle beams, atomic clocks, mechanical watches, and human observers are the same. They all tick along at the same rate. One second per second, locally at least.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  > The rules of QM either apply to everything or nothing. The laws of the universe do not begin or end at the edge of the laboratory bench top. Similarly, there are no special rules that apply to just the human brain. Well, for now we don't really know how the rules of QM apply to macroscopic objects. The exact physical interpretation of wave-function collapse (if any) is still a matter of speculation, with all options still being on the table - maybe there is no collapse (e.g. many worlds theory), maybe there exists a collapse when interacting with large enough systems (measurement - the Copenhagen interpretation), maybe collapse is a physical process that happens at precise scales (Roger Penrose seems to believe something like this), maybe the wave function is a physical wave (pilot wave theory) and there is no collapse in another way.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    > Well, for now we don't really know how the rules of QM apply to macroscopic objects Sure we do, "we" just refuse to acknowledge this, keeping a 100 year old debate alive for no good reason. Macroscopic objects follow microscopic rules. That's that. There's no further debate. There can be none. I can't even begin to describe how absurd it is to argue anything else. It's like... saying with a straight face that software doesn't "really" follow the rules of boolean algebra if it has enough lines of code. That somehow once a program gets "big enough", it can transcend truth tables and somehow go analog or something. It's like a mathematician saying that really big equations, the kind that span several pages stop following the rules of algebra. Get it? It's just... insane. The rules of the universe are the rules for all things in it. They apply to everything, at all scales, at all times. If they don't, they're not the rules!
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Have you ever observed an interference pattern for tennis balls? Have you ever been unable to place a stationary object in space because you knew it's velocity? Furthermore, leaving behind direct observations which could perhaps be waved away with discussions of probabilities, we have one big problem: there is no gravity in QM and we have no idea how to account for it or curved spacetime in QM. So for now, we have one working model for the macroscopic world (general relativity) and one for the microscopic world (QM), but the two are mathematically incompatible, they can't be simultaneously true, and we have not yet found an experiment which contradicts either of them.
      - jiggawatts 6y ago
        Interference patterns have been observed for buckyballs, and superposition has been observed for MEMS springs consisting of many thousands of atoms. Electromagnetic interference effects can occur with radiation that has kilometer-long wavelengths. Similarly, quantum encryption and key exchange have been performed over many kilometers. > there is no gravity in QM The weakness(es) of any one particular theory doesn't in an way disprove that macroscopic objects follow the same rules that microscopic objects do. Just because MySQL is bad doesn't mean that the relational model is false, or that databases are pointless. Just because the current theories of GR and QM aren't easily extended to all regimes doesn't meant that there is some sort of hard boundary where the rules change. Our theories of the world don't affect how it works. The boundaries of our theories are not boundaries of the world. You can't fall of the edge of the world because the maps only go so far...
- a2tech 6y ago
  This is opening up all new avenues of thought in my head! So theoretically if we tested an astronaut on a simple mental recall test on Earth and timed then, then had them repeat the test on a trip to the Moon but timed them on the Earth the astronaut outside of Earth's gravity well should be observed completing the test faster (from Earth), but if they measured the test on the space craft, the results would be the same as when they completed the test on Earth.
  - kadoban 6y ago
    Correct, but the effect would be too small to measure like that (human performance at tests is noisy). If you made the difference in gravity more extreme the difference in measurement would be trivial to notice, but we don't have a way to achieve that in practice.
- gizmo686 6y ago
  > The rules that govern galaxies, particle beams, atomic clocks, mechanical watches, and human observers are the same. And we do not know what those rules are. We have 2 widely accepted guesses: quantum physics and general relativity that have each been incredibly succesful in their predictive power. The problem is, we do not know how to make these theories consistent with each other. Either relativity is wrong on quantum scales, or QM is wrong on relatavistic scales. Probably both.
- rl3 6y ago
  >That is literally what it does. It slows down cognition. Yes, but I'm talking actual changes in the cognitive output. Look at all the physiological changes astronauts undergo. Those changes extend to their cognition, even if the effect of general relativity is small. >Again, this is a pop-science misunderstanding of all of physics, not just Quantum Mechanics (QM). There's an entire field called quantum biology. I'm not advocating the brain has quantum magic (in fact last I checked the theory was pretty much completely discounted). Rather, on the off-chance that it does, your example breaks down via way of the elements that comprise the brain's computation not being necessarily subject to the same relativistic effects due to potentially vast distances between some of those elements. Or, without QM at all, consider that there's an extremely minute difference in relativistic effects even across the few inches that span your skull. By that alone, 1.0 is not 1.0. Not trying to be pedantic here, merely food for thought.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    I'm saying that GR and QM apply to all things, not that the brain "isn't quantum". It follows QM rules in the ordinary sense that electrons orbit atoms in the brain the same way as they do in other well established contexts. Similarly, the many-world interpretation is that the non-locality experiments make perfect sense if you include the human brain in the experiment and stop excluding it. That's simply a statement that we are not "gods", somehow standing apart from the Universe and observing it from the outside. We're in it, and interacting with it, the same as everything else. The only really interesting QM "stuff" that seems to be going on is that some enzymes have incredibly high efficiencies, even when bathed in dilute reactants. There are hints that this may be some sort of inherently quantum mechanical process that cannot be understood classically. But this is a tenuous hypothesis at best, there's no hard evidence yet, let alone a good theory.

by rl3 6y ago

jiggawatts 6y ago

> Consider changes in gravity affect cognition. That is literally what it does. It slows down cognition. In the exact same way that it slows down clocks. The "clock in your brain" and the "watch in your hand" are all operating on the same physical and chemical principles. It's all just atoms and electromagnetic interactions at the lowest levels. > Likewise, if the brain has any quantum mechanisms Again, this is a pop-science misunderstanding of all of physics, not just Quantum Mechanics (QM). The rules of QM either apply to everything or nothing. The laws of the universe do not begin or end at the edge of the laboratory bench top. Similarly, there are no special rules that apply to just the human brain. The rules that govern galaxies, particle beams, atomic clocks, mechanical watches, and human observers are the same. They all tick along at the same rate. One second per second, locally at least.

tsimionescu 6y ago
> The rules of QM either apply to everything or nothing. The laws of the universe do not begin or end at the edge of the laboratory bench top. Similarly, there are no special rules that apply to just the human brain. Well, for now we don't really know how the rules of QM apply to macroscopic objects. The exact physical interpretation of wave-function collapse (if any) is still a matter of speculation, with all options still being on the table - maybe there is no collapse (e.g. many worlds theory), maybe there exists a collapse when interacting with large enough systems (measurement - the Copenhagen interpretation), maybe collapse is a physical process that happens at precise scales (Roger Penrose seems to believe something like this), maybe the wave function is a physical wave (pilot wave theory) and there is no collapse in another way.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  > Well, for now we don't really know how the rules of QM apply to macroscopic objects Sure we do, "we" just refuse to acknowledge this, keeping a 100 year old debate alive for no good reason. Macroscopic objects follow microscopic rules. That's that. There's no further debate. There can be none. I can't even begin to describe how absurd it is to argue anything else. It's like... saying with a straight face that software doesn't "really" follow the rules of boolean algebra if it has enough lines of code. That somehow once a program gets "big enough", it can transcend truth tables and somehow go analog or something. It's like a mathematician saying that really big equations, the kind that span several pages stop following the rules of algebra. Get it? It's just... insane. The rules of the universe are the rules for all things in it. They apply to everything, at all scales, at all times. If they don't, they're not the rules!
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Have you ever observed an interference pattern for tennis balls? Have you ever been unable to place a stationary object in space because you knew it's velocity? Furthermore, leaving behind direct observations which could perhaps be waved away with discussions of probabilities, we have one big problem: there is no gravity in QM and we have no idea how to account for it or curved spacetime in QM. So for now, we have one working model for the macroscopic world (general relativity) and one for the microscopic world (QM), but the two are mathematically incompatible, they can't be simultaneously true, and we have not yet found an experiment which contradicts either of them.
    - jiggawatts 6y ago
      Interference patterns have been observed for buckyballs, and superposition has been observed for MEMS springs consisting of many thousands of atoms. Electromagnetic interference effects can occur with radiation that has kilometer-long wavelengths. Similarly, quantum encryption and key exchange have been performed over many kilometers. > there is no gravity in QM The weakness(es) of any one particular theory doesn't in an way disprove that macroscopic objects follow the same rules that microscopic objects do. Just because MySQL is bad doesn't mean that the relational model is false, or that databases are pointless. Just because the current theories of GR and QM aren't easily extended to all regimes doesn't meant that there is some sort of hard boundary where the rules change. Our theories of the world don't affect how it works. The boundaries of our theories are not boundaries of the world. You can't fall of the edge of the world because the maps only go so far...
a2tech 6y ago
This is opening up all new avenues of thought in my head! So theoretically if we tested an astronaut on a simple mental recall test on Earth and timed then, then had them repeat the test on a trip to the Moon but timed them on the Earth the astronaut outside of Earth's gravity well should be observed completing the test faster (from Earth), but if they measured the test on the space craft, the results would be the same as when they completed the test on Earth.
- kadoban 6y ago
  Correct, but the effect would be too small to measure like that (human performance at tests is noisy). If you made the difference in gravity more extreme the difference in measurement would be trivial to notice, but we don't have a way to achieve that in practice.
gizmo686 6y ago
> The rules that govern galaxies, particle beams, atomic clocks, mechanical watches, and human observers are the same. And we do not know what those rules are. We have 2 widely accepted guesses: quantum physics and general relativity that have each been incredibly succesful in their predictive power. The problem is, we do not know how to make these theories consistent with each other. Either relativity is wrong on quantum scales, or QM is wrong on relatavistic scales. Probably both.
rl3 6y ago
>That is literally what it does. It slows down cognition. Yes, but I'm talking actual changes in the cognitive output. Look at all the physiological changes astronauts undergo. Those changes extend to their cognition, even if the effect of general relativity is small. >Again, this is a pop-science misunderstanding of all of physics, not just Quantum Mechanics (QM). There's an entire field called quantum biology. I'm not advocating the brain has quantum magic (in fact last I checked the theory was pretty much completely discounted). Rather, on the off-chance that it does, your example breaks down via way of the elements that comprise the brain's computation not being necessarily subject to the same relativistic effects due to potentially vast distances between some of those elements. Or, without QM at all, consider that there's an extremely minute difference in relativistic effects even across the few inches that span your skull. By that alone, 1.0 is not 1.0. Not trying to be pedantic here, merely food for thought.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  I'm saying that GR and QM apply to all things, not that the brain "isn't quantum". It follows QM rules in the ordinary sense that electrons orbit atoms in the brain the same way as they do in other well established contexts. Similarly, the many-world interpretation is that the non-locality experiments make perfect sense if you include the human brain in the experiment and stop excluding it. That's simply a statement that we are not "gods", somehow standing apart from the Universe and observing it from the outside. We're in it, and interacting with it, the same as everything else. The only really interesting QM "stuff" that seems to be going on is that some enzymes have incredibly high efficiencies, even when bathed in dilute reactants. There are hints that this may be some sort of inherently quantum mechanical process that cannot be understood classically. But this is a tenuous hypothesis at best, there's no hard evidence yet, let alone a good theory.