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Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
- piloto_ciego 2y agoPay attention to the people with the most dogmatic views in this thread about determinism and free will. It’s extremely interesting. Typically (and strangely) I find the most dogmatic folks are mostly determinists. I think probably because it’s more “science-y” than a philosophy that has to say “I don’t know.” Even in this thread you’ll note that there’s a very vocal group of people who would happily shout down any idea that there’s any sort of free will in the universe and that the universe is anything other than a cold mechanistic computation that was determined billions of years ago. They’ll shit talk Penrose, or shout about pseudoscience, and very few of them will critically engage with the topic in good faith. They’ve already made up their minds. Not only that but some of them (troublingly) will even talk how we’re not even conscious at all. As if we are all just meat computers or something. Now, I don’t know if we’re conscious or not and I don’t know if the world is on rails either, but it certainly feels like I have free will and it certainly feels like I’m responsible for my actions and it qualitatively feels like I’m conscious. Obviously, not all of my choices are made freely, but some of the ones that matter to me at least seem to be made freely. But a lot of people seem absolutely sure that we’re not making anny choices and we have no free will. It’s weird to me, because literally every day I get increasing evidence suggesting I have free will within some limits and the universe is unfathomable and unpredictable. Not to be an ass, but if I can be honest I kinda pity the folks that don’t have that experience. I reckon if you’ve never made a decision that really mattered it would be easy to feel like it all wasn’t your choice. Maybe that’s too harsh, but anti-free will and determinism are just as untestable as any other philosophy I suppose, but I do wonder what kind of life can lead to people thinking that they’re not making any conscious decisions.
- Nikretep 2y agoI’m a determinist and I certainly feel like I’m in control of my thoughts and actions. That doesn’t mean I actually am. I think that we as humans are just hardwired to feel like we have free will, even if we believe otherwise on an intellectual level.
- galaxyLogic 2y agoI don't know how you define "determinism" but perhaps in the sense that future is determined by the past, right? The initial state of a system and the forces acting on it determine its state at some future time. Right? But universe doesn't work tat way. Universe is non-deterministic because quantum effects happen randomly. They cannot be predicted, only their probabilities can.
- rcxdude 2y agoThat does depend on your interpretation of quantum mechanics: the wave-function is still entirely deterministic. Non-determinism is only induced by 'collapse', but it's not mandatory for this to ever happen: the many-worlds interpretation is basically the result of saying it doesn't, and is completely deterministic. (In fact 'collapse' interpretations are not particularly popular theoretically, because it's actually a blurry line of decoherance: it's just generally convenient for interpreting the outcome of a calculation, and you can assume it's a close enough approximation to experiment once your system has interacted with your detectors).
- baja_blast 2y ago>the many-worlds interpretation is basically the result of saying it doesn't Few problems with this, the state that a particle can be in after the collapse of the wave function follows a probability distribution, so if all states are equally real then why does it seem like some states are more likely than others? Why would probabilities be such a powerful mathematical tool, and how would it work in a MWI. If all points of the universe branch out into several universes after each particle interaction, where does all this energy come from? If all branches are equally real why even have the wave function in the first place?
- galaxyLogic 2y ago> if all states are equally real then why does it seem like some states are more likely than others? Because some states are more probable than others. That is what the wave-function tells us. It does not give equal probability to every possible outcome.
- falseprofit 2y agoYou should define “free will” if you want to claim you have direct experience of it. I’d suggest that what you’re experiencing may be just “will”. And in my opinion, whether you’re “responsible for your actions” isn’t a question about the nature of reality (ontological), rather a question (or one of several) about how we should act in it (moral).
- piloto_ciego 2y agoI’d say “free will is the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” That’s not my definition it’s almost verbatim from the Oxford English Dictionary. Still, it’s exactly how I feel. But morality is important to this discussion I think but I cannot put my finger on “why” it is.
- falseprofit 2y agoI personally think of “will” as being closer to “discretion” than to “action”, but I’ll try to steer the conversation away from semantics. What I want to focus on is what leads you to conclude that your will, or your discretion, is not deterministic. Forgetting, if we may, arguments for or against determinism from a physics perspective: what’s the argument from your personal experience? As for morality, I would make the case that ontology should inform morality but not the other way around.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoYou might as well be a compatibilist. Yes, it looks like free will exists and the universe is deterministic, consequently free will is compatible with determinism. Then you can realize that the myth that free will is incompatible with determinism is just a superstition.
- munksbeer 2y ago> Yes, it looks like free will exists Why do you say this? How do you define free will here?
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoIt's how I understand reality. Some definitions: 1) ability to do as you want 2) ability to do otherwise 3) ability to control choice 4) be an author of choice Also freedom of choice is an observable phenomenon, which seems consistent with these definitions.
- munksbeer 2y ago> It’s weird to me, because literally every day I get increasing evidence suggesting I have free will within some limits and the universe is unfathomable and unpredictable. I find the whole subject fascinating, but I am not an expert. I break it down for myself in this manner, so perhaps you could give your view. If we rewound the universe by an hour (as an example). Literally, every single thing, particle, what have you in the universe is exactly as it was an hour ago. Then you started it again (1). Would you end up where everything in the universe happened exactly as it already did? Faced with the same choices, would *you* make the exact same choices, to end up exactly as we are now? If the answer is yes, then that implies determinism, and would probably reject what you think of as free will (I'm taking a guess, because you didn't explicitly define free will). If the answer is no, then it appears that the choices are just random. You have all the same information, all the same moral conindrums, etc, and yet, you just chose something different. Why? In this case, if it is just random, then that also seems to reject the idea of free will. If there is some other mechanism involved here, could you describe whether it would make the same decisions or not. And if not, then on what basis would the decisions be different? (1) I'd really prefer to avoid nitpicky arguments about the arrow of time and so on. This is just a thought experiment.
- krzat 2y agoWe have billions of neurons but they create one coherent experience, it would be pretty elegant if consciousness was involved here. Basically: what is conscious is quantum, what is unconscious is classical. Vast majority of brain activity is unconscious, what surfaces as experience is a global state of the entire system.
- unsupp0rted 2y agoThat’s much cleaner than reality ever tends to be
- mrfinn 2y agoAm I the only one automatically thinking about LLMs here? Very wild speculation, but what if we accidentally tapped on a phenomena we actually didn't know before, some kind of "event horizon", related with the arise of consciousness and that's the underline reason about why LLMs work so well?
- darthrupert 2y agoKinda weird that (if this is true) evolution is able to come up with things like this. And I'm not trying to dogwhistle for creationism here, just thinking it's weird.
- ttctciyf 2y agoThe paper itself[0] is a little (hah!) over my head, but this[1] tickled me: > I’ve heard more than one person say that what a pity that Penrose fell for this crazy Hameroff person. But, well, I’ve met both Penrose and Hameroff and they’re both crazy of course, but neither of them is stupid. 0: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg&t=181s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg&t=181s
- Animats 2y agoThe important thing in that paper is not "quantum", but the claim that internal data transmission by light within neural systems is a thing. The paper cites this result on ultra-weak light emissions from neurons.[1] The paper is behind Elsevier's paywall. So the paper then takes data transmission by light as a given, and goes on to hypothesize structures that direct light as fiber optics do, and from there goes on to "ultrafast" data transmission. Comments from biochemistry people would help here. It's not at all clear what's an actual result and what's hand-waving. However, it is clear that this is an area where experimentation is possible. Further work should move this out of the range of speculation and either confirm or dismiss it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1011134414000463?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10111...
- nutrie 2y agoEvery time I listen to Sir Roger speak, I wonder how much he keeps to himself. He is such a gem.
- nomemory 2y agoI suspect a lot. He has unorthodox views on lots of topics. For one he doesn't seem to believe in the heat death of the Universe. He has some interesting theories in regards to gravitational waves and so on.
- aspenmayer 2y ago> he doesn't seem to believe in the heat death of the Universe I’m not sure I believe that the heat death of the universe really is the end of all things forever and for all time either, after reading Asimov’s The Last Question and a particularly fantastic manga oneshot adaptation by manga artist Ryul. If you haven’t read it, I can’t recommend it more highly, and the manga version is a nice addition to the canon. I found a version narrated by the man himself on the Internet Archive, and I also found a fully voice acted audio version from the Drabblecast, also linked below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41230 https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41230 Original publication: https://archive.org/stream/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Series_v04n05_1956-11_slpn#page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Ser... Manga version: https://imgur.com/a/9KWrH https://imgur.com/a/9KWrH https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/oo67iat/the-last-question https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/oo67iat/the-last-questio... https://mangadex.org/title/f1e5d886-cc50-4cbf-ac8b-6914d934321b/the-last-question https://mangadex.org/title/f1e5d886-cc50-4cbf-ac8b-6914d9343... https://archive.org/details/manga_The_Last_Question https://archive.org/details/manga_The_Last_Question Audiobook versions: https://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimovAudioBookCollection/1986+-+Science+Fiction+Favorites+(Asimov)+64k+05.13.11+%7B143mb%7D/07+The+Last+Question.mp3 https://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimovAudioBookCollection/1... https://www.drabblecast.org/2011/03/11/drabblecast-200-the-last-question-by-isaac-asimov/ https://www.drabblecast.org/2011/03/11/drabblecast-200-the-l...
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- icf80 2y agoTEXT 24: This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same. https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/ https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoQuantum effects allow for randomness which is nice since it gives some sense of not being a machine entirely on rails. That alone alone doesn't give determinism though. For that we still need to have some influence on the outcomes of quantum events. If there's a mechanism by which we can will for some quantum outcomes to be more likely than others that'd be nice. It'd fit with intuition that we aren't just observers of a series of events but actual participants that determine the outcome.
- GrantMoyer 2y agoI find the notion that free will requires a non-determistic system strange. Consider for the sake of argument that you love apples and hate oranges. Then given a free choice between an apple and an orange, you'll always pick the apple. The system is determisitic, and your free will is what makes it deterministic. On the other hand, if you were required to choose an apple or an orange based on a coin flip, you wouldn't call that free will.
- cykros 2y agoI've for a long time simply asked the question: with what faculty does one decide what their will is? If it's the will itself, that's circular, and sounds like a feedback loop. If it's something else, great...tell me about it. And how it's free.
- jl6 2y agoSomeone who hates oranges might still, on rare occasion, pick one. Maybe they’re having a bad day, misunderstood the instruction, or wanted to turn their life around starting now. We might make decisions with high likelihood but it’s a qualitative leap to go from 99.999999% to 100%.
- ben_w 2y agoIf there's a reason for it, that's still deterministic; if there is no reason for it, that's still random.
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- _Microft 2y ago… but so does anything that performs photosynthesis?
- p0w3n3d 2y agoThere is a lot of intelligence in plants. For example crown shyness, navigating to water, trees informing each other that a giraffe is eating their leaves, etc.
- ben_w 2y agoNone of that is what I'd call "a lot" of intelligence, not even in aggregate. (Evolution itself can be described as a form of intelligence, but evolution is as different from individuals as humanity collectively is from a single thought).
- ioblomov 2y agoGiven that it took probabilistic models to create the fluency of generative AI, it would only make sense that brains exploit quantum effects.
- api 2y agoI’ve speculated for many years that biology is harnessing quantum computing in some way and that this is one of the simplest explanations for how the brain can do what it does so quickly on so little power. It only consumes around 40 watts and does things an entire AWS data center can’t do. Quantum compute could be being leveraged to do things like accelerating search for gradient descent. This would allow very rapid learning in polynomial time. There are also quantum algorithms that can more or less serialize parallel search, etc. The objection is usually that biology is hot and noisy and wet and that this is a poor environment for QC. This assumes that it’s doing QC in a remotely similar way to how the quantum computers we are trying to build would do it. Billions of years of evolution might have found ways to harness quantum phenomena for information processing that are quite radically different. It’s all analog for starters, so nothing like a “qubit” or rigidly defined circuits. Maybe some biochemical reactions are structured so as to invoke and amplify useful quantum effects that allow things to happen informatically that would be much slower or more costly without those effects. Without understanding what’s happening this would just look like noise and luck to us. I do know that there are “unreasonably effective” enzymes and reactions involved in things like DNA repair, though it’s been a while since I read about this. I think there are cases where repair complexes find DNA errors more effectively than can easily be explained by basic chemistry and chance, and we are not sure exactly what’s going on. Maybe there’s something involving quantum information processing happening somewhere.
- 613style 2y agoThis feels a lot like a standard line of muddy thinking we see in youtube videos about consciousness (for example): "we don't understand brains, and we don't understand quantum mechanics, so they're probably related." It's easy to speculate, but it's not easy to find any evidence at all to back up those guesses. It's still not clear that this has anything to do with consciousness or information processing or AWS datacenters.
- throwaway11460 2y agoThere's evidence that biology takes advantage of quantum effects on all levels - all the way from individual chemical bonds and interactions of molecules (quantum biochemistry) up to cellular and multi-cellular. Mostly because there's no way it could work on such small scales and be so energy efficient if it didn't. So one thing is certain - the brain does use quantum mechanics just like the rest of the body, because otherwise it wouldn't be possible to have so much done inside such a small volume, with such small amounts of energy. Of course this question is actually meant to be "is brain a quantum computer?" and we don't have any idea.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoIf you take the results of this work and also recent work in understanding what’s called the “Null space” of preparatory neuronal activity prior to action [1] then it paints a fairly clear picture that the null space might be interacting with this micro tubular architecture, and perhaps the activation function for skeletal muscle act is this wave collapse, informing the null space function evaluation [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-024-00796-z.epdf?sharing_token=Xj7ZKJWQ8LwiyGcs6q_UEtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Or1bTj_qZ2Lkr1jWL88fkD1kOAUGpwHeNzo_OsZtMex8IEQqyMETLQb4olldqzxW7u-fY0BKlvsocogKzDwZYlmP2D49Xty_lPlN3SxF9gGkfhgg4vldLOiTZ_vg3Zv4c%3D https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-024-00796-z.epdf?shar...
- coppsilgold 2y agoWould it be surprising if evolution managed to exploit quantum mechanics for function? It did exploit everything else. There is also a theory that quantum mechanics plays a role in olfaction[1]. [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction>
- moralestapia 2y agoIt plays a role in photosynthesis, I don't have the reference at hand (I'm on my phone), but that one is 100% verified.
- dekhn 2y agoYou can start at https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/06/14/photosynthesis-key-to-life-on-earth-starts-with-a-single-photon/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/06/14/photosynthesis-key-to-... and https://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html https://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-se... and use the names in those articles to pull up the relevant literature.
- dekhn 2y agoThere are several biological processes for which we're fairly certain that some quantum mechanical process is exploited. Strictly speaking, everything about biology is ultimately explained by quantum chemistry and physics, but not in a particularly exciting way. However, I don't think anybody has found any concrete evidence that any process in biology exploits entanglement. Instead, the examples we've seen so far are mostly around tunnelling, and coherency. People argue a lot about the "meaning of quantum" but nearly all the arguing is about the behavior of entanglement and wavefunction collapse. Tunnelling and coherency are pretty banal QM phenomena at this point. As for Sabine... I don't find her popular science vides about biology to be particularly enlightening or accurate.
- greyface- 2y agoIt would be surprising if it didn't. Why would an evolutionary process avoid searching through mechanisms that involve quantum effects?
- Hugsun 2y agoThe first thought that came into my head reading this title was: "Ah, so they turned off the quantum effects for someone and they became dumb". I guess that someone was me.
- alevskaya 2y agoThis referenced paper seems like primarily a theoretical modelling paper (almost all of its figures are simulations?) that contains as far as I can read 3 (!) actual experimental measurements in bulk on a fluorospectrophotometer. The claim is that the observed increased fluorescent quantum yield (QY) of microtubules over tubulin can be explained by the ideas in their simulations. It's hard to buy that their proposed stories are the simplest explanation for these few measurements. Much more boring phenomena can influence QY. e.g. simply occluding fluorophores from the bulk solvent can have a huge influence on QY and spectra. (I used to design biological fluorescent reporter reagents...)
- havaloc 2y agoStar Trek had it right, living organisms beam at a "quantum resolution".
- parpfish 2y agothis paper is going to unleash a mighty wave of woo-woo
- usgroup 2y agoI think -- roughly speaking -- Penrose argues that human capabilities such as transductive reasoning are clearly not computable, therefore falsifying the idea that the mind reduces to an algorithm. He then goes on to propose how nonetheless what the mind does might be physically grounded, even if not in purely computational machinery.
- rowanG077 2y agoThat doesn't make sense to me at all. If something is physically grounded and can be achieved then shouldn't it, by definition, be computable.
- usgroup 2y agoIn your statement, I'm not sure by which definition physically grounded things are a sufficient condition for being computable, but I think Penrose depends on the Turing notion of computability and the hardness of the halting problem. We can of course move goal posts, redefine computability however we like, to get whatever conclusion we care for, but I think that Penrose effort is intellectually honest.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoComputing brain behavior is not the halting problem though. It's a computation of one algorithm.
- usgroup 2y agoYes, just like the algorithm that decides whether any given algorithm terminates could be "one algorithm" (if it was possible) :-)
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoFor that to be uncomputable brain must run the halting problem algorithm, which it doesn't, because the halting problem algorithm needs infinite memory. Being finite, brain has finite number of states, which all can be enumerated in finite time.
- TheLoafOfBread 2y agoSo there is a chance to abuse a cockroach and turn it into quantum computer for breaking encryption on the budget.
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- Horffupolde 2y agoGiven that the brain is a physical object subject to all quantum effects, wouldn’t the novelty be that it doesn't use quantum effects? That it does sounds obvious.
- supportengineer 2y agoNot to mention our eyes. Can our eyes decode quantum properties as well as the usual visual wavelengths?
- thsksbd 2y agoits worse than that. A physical system can go far without QM -> see a system subject to Newton laws. A chemical system is necessarily QM. Chemistry is either purely empirical, or quantum.
- amelius 2y agoWithout QM, electrons would just drop into the nucleus. So good luck building anything without QM.
- thsksbd 2y agoWell duh, my point is that Newtonian physics is a subset of QM, but doesn't need to be. In fact it's an important result in QM that QM becomes Newtonian in the limit. Chemistry, on the other hand, is QM. All of it. You can empirically get around it like alchemists did for a while. But it sucks. This is partially why chemists accepted the existence of the atom far (far) earlier than physicists who stuck with continuum theories - their empirical methods were banging against the wall.
- epgui 2y agoAnything that needs enzymes to function would break down without quantum effects.
- thsksbd 2y ago
- thsksbd 2y agoI'm always amused by the lack of creativity of biologists. It seems every decade or so some closely held dogma of biological systems is proven wrong after they mock physicists, computer scientists or mathematicians who first suggest it.
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoThe following is most likely nonsense, but I always had the intuition that there is a hidden connection between mother and child that remains after the child's birth.
- QuantumG 2y ago[flagged]
- kunley 2y agoI honestly think, everyone who uses the term "meatbag" should see a therapist sometimes. There is so much negativity in this term
- CalRobert 2y agoI generally dislike the word as well, _however_ it sorta makes sense in this context since it makes sense to think about the composition of our brains (and bodies). We are, of course, meat.
- paulb73 2y agoFor the brain I think I prefer 'wet jelly' than 'meat bag'!
- unaindz 2y agoI always liked the term wetware
- indigoabstract 2y agoThat may be true, but if you see yourself as a butcher, naturally, you tend to see everyone else as meat. The OP's disregard for "dumb people" is pretty obvious.
- QuantumG 2y agoI am a dumb person. Ask me about colours sometime.
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- victorbstan 2y agoCould’ve just asked me.
- cat_plus_plus 2y agoSo there is a little quantum soul which is the consciousness of the brain. How does the soul get it's consciousness? I think the best attitude is that a. We have no clue what causes consciousness and b. it's probably much more widespread that we previously assumed. We assume that other humans, cats and sufficiently advanced AI are conscious based on observing behaviors similar to our own. But why should self awareness be tied to specific behavior? Why not a star self aware of being a star, without having any of the same senses, drives and capabilities as a human? At best we can assume is that some other animals/things might be self aware of similar occurrences as we are. As for quantum effects, if brain is able to leverage them in computation, that's an obvious evolutionary advantage. One obvious person of a brain is to simulate many possible potential actions and their real world outcomes. If it's able to use quantum states to model multiple scenarios simultaneously, that's quicker/more detailed modeling with less energy use. But as far as quantum effects causing consciousness, how could we possibly tell and what useful insights have we gained by making this assumption?
- wrp 2y agoFor a popular survey of the relevant neurophysics, try Stairway to the Mind by Alwyn Scott (1995). He argues it is very unlikely that quantum effects are relevant, and is skeptical of Penrose.
- canjobear 2y agoIf the brain can get any extra fitness from exploiting quantum effects, it will. But the reason people are interested in this stuff seems to be that they think there's a connection between the quantum nature of the brain and consciousness. I don't see how the argument is any more than this: 1. Quantum effects seem mysterious. 2. Consciousness seems mysterious. 3. Therefore, quantum effects cause/are consciousness. ...which seems pretty weak.
- zone411 2y agoWhy is the link to this blog spam instead of to the paper or a better article? Hossenfelder lacks qualifications in neuroscience and is often confidently inaccurate.
- chefkd 2y agoIs this just huma brains or does it apply to something like beavers?
- baja_blast 2y agoThe microtubules were from a pigs brain according the material and methods. These proteins exist in all animal cells. So this probably explains why single cell organisms are so intelligent despite not having a brain