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Given 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 obvio

Given 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 ago
Not to mention our eyes. Can our eyes decode quantum properties as well as the usual visual wavelengths?
thsksbd 2y ago
its 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 ago
  Without QM, electrons would just drop into the nucleus. So good luck building anything without QM.
  - thsksbd 2y ago
    Well 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 ago
  Anything that needs enzymes to function would break down without quantum effects.
  - thsksbd 2y ago
    What do you mean by quantum effects? Tunneling? If so, that's too restrictive. The interaction between two He atoms needs QM (dispersion forces). Heck, even two water molecules interacting is a QM even if you decide to classify the polar attraction as purely classical. You'd still be omitting a lot of the interaction energy. I see no way I can simulate catalyzed (enzyme) breaking of a chemical bond without: 1. Direct or indirect use of at least DFT 2. An empirical solution (curve fitting to data)
wk_end 2y ago
Words are intended to cut up the world - this is how they get their meaning. If you’ve taken these words to apply to everything in the in universe, you’ve rendered them meaningless, which is not the intention. Projectiles are subject to quantum effects but you can model their behaviour classically perfectly well. A charitable reading would be something like “to model the operational behaviour of the brain, classical mechanics is insufficient”.
- gfodor 2y ago
  This is the kindest response I’ve ever seen to someone suffering from whatever it is that causes these kinds of comments on this specific website.
  - Maxatar 2y ago
    >whatever it is that causes these kinds of comments on this specific website Clearly it's quantum mechanics that causes these kinds of comments.
  - dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
    "Whatever it is" == the same neurophysical/genetic factors that cause high development of "STEM" intelligence is associated with inability to process social cues in a dynamic fashion, somewhat related to high function autism. A great preference for clear classification that is not self-contradicting.
    - whoknowsidont 2y ago
      There are plenty of spaces that have the type of people the thread is describing and yet almost none of them have the type of behavior that the audience of this website loves to exhibit.
      - newzisforsukas 2y ago
        > audience Wouldn't users be more accurate?
nsenifty 2y ago
Perhaps the title should have been "Brain uses Quantum effects in a useful/controllable way". Sabine explains it well in the video. To use quantum effects for computation, you'd need very controlled conditions and it was thought be to not possible in the brain.
- yayr 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg here is the link
  - denton-scratch 2y ago
    Ouch! the marketing segment is rather annoying.
tensor 2y ago
When these claims come up they don't mean that they are using quantum effects to do normal atomic and molecular things, but rather that somehow quantum effects are used in the process of "cognition" thus allowing us to believe that we are in fact more than biological machines and leave room for various magical properties we like to think we have (souls, consciousness, free will, etc). While quantum effects have been found to aid in photosynthesis, interesting uses in cognition or otherwise are in fact extremely rare in biology. I believe photosynthesis is one of the few documented examples. Also, despite the popularity of the quantum brain idea, no one has been able to show definitive evidence of it for decades now. TLDR yes it would be incredibly novel if this claim were proven to be true.
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  "Soul" I think is basically the memories in our brain. And memories are data, like a picture of bits some of which are on and some of which are off. Is there a picture or just random noise? If there is picture, there is soul. Another way of thinking about it is that a picture is made up dots which are NOT lit up. So our memories, our soul is is not "physical". It does not have mass, because whether a dot is lit up or not does not change its weight. Memory is not made up of particles but by the information encoded by their positions.
- baja_blast 2y ago
  >interesting uses in cognition or otherwise are in fact extremely rare in biology How would you know that when we just started studying such effects?
layer8 2y ago
“Quantum effects” usually refers to coherent states of superposition. In an environment like the brain that is suffused with photons (it’s warm), if nothing else, superpositions decohere virtually instantly. It’s therefore implausible that quantum effects could play any appreciable computational role in the brain.
alevskaya 2y ago
Quantum mechanics is needed to explain any microscopic phenomena in chemistry and biology - that is not at all in dispute. The odd set of claims is that somehow biology has 1) figured out how to preserve long-range entanglement and coherent states at 300K in a solvated environment when we struggle to do so in cold vacuum for quantum computing and 2) somehow still manages to selectively couple this to the -known- neuronal computational processes that are experimentally proven to be essential to thought and consciousness. This more or less amounts to assertions that "biology is magic" without any substantive experimental evidence over the last thirty years that any of the above is actually happening. That's why most biophysicists and neuroscientists don't take it at all seriously.
- Jevon23 2y ago
  Biology isn’t magic, but it does do a heck of a lot of amazing things that we don’t understand yet. We haven’t even been able to reproduce abiogenesis.
  - notarobot123 2y ago
    Any sufficiently evolved biological process is indistinguishable from magic.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  AIU quantum computer needs to maintain superposition, but for body superposition is not a concern and it doesn't maintain it.
- munksbeer 2y ago
  I am a complete lay person, so I feel a bit silly challenging someone who is clearly an expert, but the idea that a physical process that has had countless trillions of generations of mutation and change, "figuring out" how to use an underlying feature of the universe to optimise, isn't far fetched at all. It seems that the most powerful force in the universe is simply, survival of the fittest.
- aatd86 2y ago
  Yeah, a bit like when I try to lift my leg, I actually think about how to activate my neurons so that muscle fibers contract one by one... That's definitely not what happens. That at some level we have quantum phenomenon doesn't mean that everything occurs at the quantum level. Seems that even Nature uses abstractions.

Given 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 ago

Not to mention our eyes. Can our eyes decode quantum properties as well as the usual visual wavelengths?

thsksbd 2y ago

its 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 ago
Without QM, electrons would just drop into the nucleus. So good luck building anything without QM.
- thsksbd 2y ago
  Well 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 ago
Anything that needs enzymes to function would break down without quantum effects.
- thsksbd 2y ago
  What do you mean by quantum effects? Tunneling? If so, that's too restrictive. The interaction between two He atoms needs QM (dispersion forces). Heck, even two water molecules interacting is a QM even if you decide to classify the polar attraction as purely classical. You'd still be omitting a lot of the interaction energy. I see no way I can simulate catalyzed (enzyme) breaking of a chemical bond without: 1. Direct or indirect use of at least DFT 2. An empirical solution (curve fitting to data)

wk_end 2y ago

Words are intended to cut up the world - this is how they get their meaning. If you’ve taken these words to apply to everything in the in universe, you’ve rendered them meaningless, which is not the intention. Projectiles are subject to quantum effects but you can model their behaviour classically perfectly well. A charitable reading would be something like “to model the operational behaviour of the brain, classical mechanics is insufficient”.

gfodor 2y ago
This is the kindest response I’ve ever seen to someone suffering from whatever it is that causes these kinds of comments on this specific website.
- Maxatar 2y ago
  >whatever it is that causes these kinds of comments on this specific website Clearly it's quantum mechanics that causes these kinds of comments.
- dj_mc_merlin 2y ago
  "Whatever it is" == the same neurophysical/genetic factors that cause high development of "STEM" intelligence is associated with inability to process social cues in a dynamic fashion, somewhat related to high function autism. A great preference for clear classification that is not self-contradicting.
  - whoknowsidont 2y ago
    There are plenty of spaces that have the type of people the thread is describing and yet almost none of them have the type of behavior that the audience of this website loves to exhibit.
    - newzisforsukas 2y ago
      > audience Wouldn't users be more accurate?

nsenifty 2y ago

Perhaps the title should have been "Brain uses Quantum effects in a useful/controllable way". Sabine explains it well in the video. To use quantum effects for computation, you'd need very controlled conditions and it was thought be to not possible in the brain.

yayr 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6G1D2UQ3gg here is the link
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  Ouch! the marketing segment is rather annoying.

tensor 2y ago

When these claims come up they don't mean that they are using quantum effects to do normal atomic and molecular things, but rather that somehow quantum effects are used in the process of "cognition" thus allowing us to believe that we are in fact more than biological machines and leave room for various magical properties we like to think we have (souls, consciousness, free will, etc). While quantum effects have been found to aid in photosynthesis, interesting uses in cognition or otherwise are in fact extremely rare in biology. I believe photosynthesis is one of the few documented examples. Also, despite the popularity of the quantum brain idea, no one has been able to show definitive evidence of it for decades now. TLDR yes it would be incredibly novel if this claim were proven to be true.

galaxyLogic 2y ago
"Soul" I think is basically the memories in our brain. And memories are data, like a picture of bits some of which are on and some of which are off. Is there a picture or just random noise? If there is picture, there is soul. Another way of thinking about it is that a picture is made up dots which are NOT lit up. So our memories, our soul is is not "physical". It does not have mass, because whether a dot is lit up or not does not change its weight. Memory is not made up of particles but by the information encoded by their positions.
baja_blast 2y ago
>interesting uses in cognition or otherwise are in fact extremely rare in biology How would you know that when we just started studying such effects?

layer8 2y ago

“Quantum effects” usually refers to coherent states of superposition. In an environment like the brain that is suffused with photons (it’s warm), if nothing else, superpositions decohere virtually instantly. It’s therefore implausible that quantum effects could play any appreciable computational role in the brain.

alevskaya 2y ago

Quantum mechanics is needed to explain any microscopic phenomena in chemistry and biology - that is not at all in dispute. The odd set of claims is that somehow biology has 1) figured out how to preserve long-range entanglement and coherent states at 300K in a solvated environment when we struggle to do so in cold vacuum for quantum computing and 2) somehow still manages to selectively couple this to the -known- neuronal computational processes that are experimentally proven to be essential to thought and consciousness. This more or less amounts to assertions that "biology is magic" without any substantive experimental evidence over the last thirty years that any of the above is actually happening. That's why most biophysicists and neuroscientists don't take it at all seriously.

Jevon23 2y ago
Biology isn’t magic, but it does do a heck of a lot of amazing things that we don’t understand yet. We haven’t even been able to reproduce abiogenesis.
- notarobot123 2y ago
  Any sufficiently evolved biological process is indistinguishable from magic.
GoblinSlayer 2y ago
AIU quantum computer needs to maintain superposition, but for body superposition is not a concern and it doesn't maintain it.
munksbeer 2y ago
I am a complete lay person, so I feel a bit silly challenging someone who is clearly an expert, but the idea that a physical process that has had countless trillions of generations of mutation and change, "figuring out" how to use an underlying feature of the universe to optimise, isn't far fetched at all. It seems that the most powerful force in the universe is simply, survival of the fittest.
aatd86 2y ago
Yeah, a bit like when I try to lift my leg, I actually think about how to activate my neurons so that muscle fibers contract one by one... That's definitely not what happens. That at some level we have quantum phenomenon doesn't mean that everything occurs at the quantum level. Seems that even Nature uses abstractions.