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Why Many Researchers Now See the Brain as a Quantum System (mindmatters.ai)
6 points by labrador on Dec 21, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


Not too many, it's just a tiny minority. Most researchers think that a hot wet system like the brain has a huge amount of internal interactions that kills all the fancy quantum stuff at long range.

There are many well know quantum effects inside molecules. It is possible that there are some minor very local quantum effects like in photosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis#Efficiency But the idea that there is an electron in the back of your brain that is entangled with an electron in the front of your brain is ludiculous.

(The article cites a recent experiment that measure some signal produced by quantum effects in sync with the heartbeat. Assuming it's not an error, it can be some boring local effect, not necessarily a global effect related to consciousness or something.)


Worth noting that the source is essentially a Christian disinformation campaign on AI and brain research.

mindmatters.ai is ran [1] by the "Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence", who's stated mission is [2]:

> to explore the benefits as well as the challenges raised by artificial intelligence (AI) in light of the enduring truth of human exceptionalism. People know at a fundamental level that they are not machines. But faulty thinking can cause people to assent to views that in their heart of hearts they know to be untrue. The Bradley Center seeks to help individuals—and our society at large—to realize that we are not machines while at the same time helping to put machines (especially computers and AI) in proper perspective.

So they have an incentive to associate the brain with quantum stuff or cosmic spacetime weirdness or any other topic that people pride themselves in not understanding - because they want to present the brain as something otherworldly and mysterious that we could not possibly be able to understand.

Unsurprisingly they are also big fans of panpsychism [3].

Edit: ...not to mention, the Discovery Institute [4] is in there too...

[1] https://mindmatters.ai/about/

[2] https://centerforintelligence.org/

[3] https://mindmatters.ai/2022/09/can-panpsychism-save-naturali...

[4] https://www.discovery.org/id/about/


I'm open to any and all ideas when it comes to consciousness because I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation for it




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