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superluminary t1_it23s5c wrote

Reply to comment by dangerousamal in New research suggests our brains use quantum computation by Dr_Singularity

When I was at university, a guy hooked an FPGA up to a genetic algorithm to try to evolve a radio. The circuits worked but made literally no sense and would only work on one chip. The suggestion was that the algorithm had evolved to use the physical/quantum structure of the specific matter of the specific chip it was running on.

I'd be hugely surprised if our brains were not doing something similar.

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Longslide9000 t1_it33tn0 wrote

Do you have any more information on this experiment?

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red75prime t1_it37hd1 wrote

Look for "An evolved circuit, intrinsic in silicon, entwined with physics." by Adrian Thompson

I'm pretty much sure that it has nothing to do with quantum computations. Quantum effects maybe (but unlikely) had a part in it, but quantum computation is an entirely different beast.

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superluminary t1_it3bmhq wrote

The brain is obviously neither a quantum computer or a digital computer, but it would be surprising if evolution was not taking advantage of every property of the substrate, including things like entanglement and maybe various other properties that we don’t know about.

Evolution will make use of the material it has available

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red75prime t1_it3c9ku wrote

Yes, if there's a way to utilize it in a biological system. Evolution hadn't invented macroscopic wheels after all.

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dangerousamal t1_it3gjt5 wrote

It just depends on where you want to draw the line.. did evolution invent macroscopic wheels or not? One could argue it did, because all products of life are a result of evolution.. including our own inventions. Human beings are just a product of evolution.. a fact we so often forget.

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Prayers4Wuhan t1_it4ku2j wrote

Right. That is what happened. Wheels are ways humans conserve energy when transporting goods. How does nature transport goods? It doesn’t. It either consumes the goods on the spot or transports the life form toward the good instead of building systems that transport the good to the life form. There’s imply was no need for a wheel. There was a need for a pump to move nutrients to other cells and so the heart was formed. Wheels that transported oxygenated blood and sugars would be a terrible invention.

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dangerousamal t1_it4llfh wrote

You've kind of made my point though. You said "Wheels are ways humans conserve energy when transporting goods. How does nature transport goods? It doesn't." .. from your point of view, humans are something outside of nature.. something supernatural.. paranormal even. You seem to misunderstand the simple truth that we are a product of nature, and our inventions are also natural. We do not exist outside nature. There are also other tool using species like apes, birds, and even insects.. would you say these animals and their inventions are outside of nature also? Not to toss further rain on this parade, but actually wheels did evolve "natrually" as well - https://www.nature.com/articles/am200915

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Prayers4Wuhan t1_it4n0fe wrote

Not kind of. I did exactly that. I was agreeing with you.

It seems you’re looking to be argumentative

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dangerousamal t1_ita4et4 wrote

Possibly :) as someone said above.. welcome to Reddit hahah .. It's hard to get clarity on here sometimes, particularly when multiple comment threads at the same time.

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superluminary t1_it3l0ja wrote

There’s no good way to provide blood flow or muscle attachment to a rotating element though.

All mammals are quadrupeds, although some have specialised forelimbs or vestigial legs. This is a local maxima, it would be hard for evolution to produce a hexapedal biped because the extra legs would take multiple generations to become useful.

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