turnip_burrito t1_iur5v9m wrote
Reply to comment by The_Final_Ka-tet in Nanowire Synapses 30,000x Faster Than the Human Brain have been created for the first time. by AylaDoesntLikeYou
Cells are pretty warm. It would be difficult to maintain any sort of quantum coherence at these temps on the spatial scale of a whole cell. It is constantly interacting with its environment and will decohere "instantly". At best, you can hope for quantum characteristics to be maintained in only subcellular pieces of it like chlorophyll, and for an extremely short time. Networks of neurons are much larger, so they are vastly more likely to operate classically (non-quantum). Maaaaybe small small micronetworks in the brain leverage quantum effects, or consciousness does, somewhere, but I'd need to see strong evidence to entertain the idea further regarding human scale intelligence. Until then, classical physics seems a more likely bet.
Tl,dr: it's a fun idea but seems unlikely that human level intelligence must rely on quantum physics. You may still find use of quantum processors in artificial intelligence, however.
The_Final_Ka-tet t1_iurb1pi wrote
I know there is pushback and there absolutely should be.
That said, I don't think I'll wholly give up this line of thinking until someone is able to demonstrate that quantum physics has no role in evolution. I think it is the only even potentially viable explanation I've seen so far for some of evolution's gaps, like the Cambrian explosion. I also haven't seen an explanation for a mechanism that would allow lactose intolerant bacteria, for just one of several great specific examples, to evolve the gene needed for lactose digestion when in the presence of only lactose as a food source. This experiment has been repeated many times and the same thing happens every time. Around 3% of the bacteria seem to spontaneously evolve the genes needed to digest lactose. No other theory, in my humble opinion, has shown promise in explaining it. It shouldn't happen, and yet it does. Why?
Anyway, there are leaps between these basics I'm trying to describe and the bigger picture thinking I've arrived at concerning quantum physics and AI and, as I said above, I am probably wrong. I do have a gut feeling here that I'm missing something important and, hopefully, eventually, I will be able to learn what it is. I am simply excited to see what the truth ends up being ever since I was first inspired to think about this stuff by JohnJoe McFadden's book Quantum Evolution. It took me years to finish it even one time and I've read some dissenting opinions on his work, but I don't feel anyone has sufficiently cast serious doubt on it either. I can't shake the feeling that the author is onto something profound.
If consciousness is an emergent property of quantum physical characteristics in the constituent parts of a neural network, then I might be right. If it's not, then I'm wrong. We'll see. 🤞😁
[deleted] t1_iurkybx wrote
It's kinda obvious that everything is effected by quantum physics in some way we just don't know how. I think that issue that some people have including me is that why is the world so seemingly so stable as a whole. By quantum logic things even at our scale should be teleporting quite often . So the only two things are possible. Either there is no quantum effects in biology or there must be at some scale have a sudden extreme increase in stability.
The_Final_Ka-tet t1_iurqvgp wrote
I really think it must be the latter.
turnip_burrito t1_iuts85v wrote
The more massive an object (for simplification, say a single particle) is in quantum mechanics, the less likely you are to observe tunneling/"teleportation". This is calculable using quantum mechanics, so not so mysterious.
It's not a sudden transition from quantum to classical. There is a continuous transition away from quantum effects being noticeable as you move up the mass/size scale. At large object scales, the resulting decoherence removes our ability to observe superposition, and mass removes the noticeability of tunneling.
[deleted] t1_iuu5lm5 wrote
How unlikely is it that I will suddenly be teleported to the other side of the world.
turnip_burrito t1_iuu9p7c wrote
Zero, basically. Think of it as similar to the chance of winning the lottery billions of times in a row. Even if you waited from the big bang until now, it wouldn't have happened even once.
[deleted] t1_iuucd9f wrote
How small do you have to go for the odds of teleportation being 50/50 or happening often? Blood cells are a lot smaller than a person but the odds are much higher then why don't we hear people's blood being mixed or removed because of quantum physics?
turnip_burrito t1_iuuey6g wrote
I don't know how small you'd have to go to see 50/50 odds. But I can suggest how a physicist would initially continue approaching the problem, if you're interested.
Blood cells are still too big to see these effects. Typically in labs you strive to measure these quantum effects with roughly atom-scale things: electrons, nuclei, and atoms are all less than 10^(-9) meters large. In contrast, red blood cellsare roughly 10^(-6) or 10^(-5) meters, so still at least 10 thousand or more times longer. Humans are larger still, order 1 meter. By volume, the difference is even larger. To have objects made of many objects tunnel, you need every particle inside it to tunnel. The chance of 1 particle tunneling is much higher than 10, and enormously higher than 100, etc.
If you're interested in learning how to calculate it though, here's a place to get started: you need to solve Schrodinger's equation for a particle of some given energy, and a potential wall. When you solve the equation, you get a wave function. The probability of seeing tunneling is given by integrating the squared amplitude of this complex-valued wavefunction over the region of space you want to see it in (other side of the wall) and dividing it by the integral of the squared magnitude of the wavefunction over all space.
The electric fields outside of your thing you want to see tunnel are responsible for producing the potential barriers. This could be things like liquids, vascular walls, other blood cells, objects in the liquid, etc. The larger the potential barriers are between where you are now and where you want to be, the exponetially lower the probability of tunneling across the barrier is.
For another reference, see this: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/223277/if-quantum-tunneling-is-possible-is-there-a-maximum-thickness-of-material-a-par
An introductory textbook to quantum mechanics like Griffiths' will also help.
Hedgehogz_Mom t1_iursa19 wrote
Prove im not tho. some days....
blueSGL t1_ius7u17 wrote
> Either there is no quantum effects in biology
Human smell perception is governed by quantum spin-residual information
or is that something different and I'm missunderstanding?
Baron_Samedi_ t1_ius4osn wrote
>Cells are pretty warm. It would be difficult to maintain any sort of quantum coherence at these temps on the spatial scale of a whole cell.
How does it follow that just because we cannot achieve the desired quantum effects at these temps with our current tech, 3.7 billion years of evolution could not?
turnip_burrito t1_iutqa1d wrote
It doesn't. It just makes it less believable, in the absence of compelling opposing evidence.
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