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Quantum Entanglement and You
Biggles
<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
in Zocalo v2.0
[url]http://robots.net/article/1691.html[/url]
An interesting speculative paper which discusses a few things, including where conciousness resides.
An interesting speculative paper which discusses a few things, including where conciousness resides.
Comments
If we could do quantum computing, why the *massive* electro-chemical machinery? Why should we spend significant portions of our vital resources to fire neurons and synthesize neurotransmitters/other regulator substances? To keep a "quantum consciousness" from evaporating in a poof of entropy?
Or to simply filter and relay a mess of slow signals and feedbacks, among neural networks adapted to perform different tasks (as consequences of damage to them indicate in practise) accomplishing consciousness without anything significantly entangled?
Also, it has been estimated (and I suspect the estimate is good) that our neurons (and I dare suspect they are in our brains to compute, not look pretty)... are inadequate and far too clumsy, to take any advantage, either temporary or permanent, of a possible flicker of quantum entanglement which *might* occur between them.
Yes, even if a quantum consciousness existed, heavy chemical machinery might still be needed, to keep it anchored to anything of lasting usefulness.
But but but... the claims of human neurons being far too warm, and far too slow to interact *at all* with anything quantum-computational... they sound serious.
Also, should a hypothetical quantum consciousness not behave differently from an electrochemical consciousness upon illness and injury?
In my humble opinion, the human brain (and human consciousness) exhibits a damage model reasonably likely for an electrochemical computer. It has localized functions and localized damage takes them out for good. Its localized functions are also specialized functions, explainable rather well with neural networks of different topology, without invoking any quantum effect.
Overall, while I'd consider quantum consciousness a jolly fun discovery... I rather doubt one needs to rely on anything quantum-entangled or superposed, to get a functioning human mind.
Not the most auspicious beginning for a paper supposedly dealing with quantum mechanics...
Then you see that the other publications are in the journals of Neuroquantology (sound like neuroquackery).
Arxiv itself is not a journal, just a preprint archive, where people send papers but they aren't necessarily peer-reviewed.
The idea itself is not new, Roger Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" proposed and popularized about a decade ago.
And it's been for that long that I've found the idea unconvincing...
That paper might update or rehash some things about quantum conciousness, but overall is nothing but a speculation, one that is not easy to test.
Personally I agree with sleepyshadow. We don't need quantum flapdoodle to explain conciousness.
The decoherence argument of Tegmark relates to a personal objection of mine: the correspondence principle states that when you have large quantum numbers (which might mean high values or high numbers of particles) quantum processes approach the classical limit. This principle remains true, those that propose quantum conciousness usually ignore that their supposed quantum-mechanical computers in the brain are large molecules (large numbers of atoms in proteins) or a large collection of molecules (remember Avogadro's Number).
The usual arguments I've seen in favor of quantum conciousness reduce to saying "conciousness is a mistrerious weird thing that we haven't understood, quantum mechanics is a misterious weird thing that few people understand, maybe they're related."
Phht!
:p ;)
*in broken voice* No.. it's not linear :( [/i]
Very odd but I'll often think of something random like "I've got the loot steve" and someone I didn't even know had the same exact thought. There was no trigger for it either I was just on the train and well they said it first...
Makes me paranoid :nervous:
[B]Very odd but I'll often think of something random like "I've got the loot steve" and someone I didn't even know had the same exact thought. There was no trigger for it either I was just on the train and well they said it first...
Makes me paranoid :nervous: [/B][/QUOTE]
I [i]knew[/i] you were going to say that!!!:eek:
Jake