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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

This has been my thought process for a while as well - that the brain amplifies quantum effects and uses them to drive larger processes. It's definitely physically possible - for instance, you could construct a double slit splitter that chooses 0 or 1 using the measurement of the direction a photon takes, and decide whether a train goes left or right based on this. You would be making huge macroscopic changes based on minute quantum effects. Perhaps the brain doesn't work this way, but the point is that it is entirely possible, and not ignorant pseudoscience.

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In my experience, such emphasis on quantum phenomena tends to be the motivated reasoning of free will compatibilists: they hope to preserve the intuitive idea of free will by looking at what corners of non-determinism still remain in modern physics, emphasising any possible connection to the macro-scale mind, however tenuous. It's analogous to the God of the Gaps argument. [0]

Even assuming quantum phenomena are central to the brain's workings, the arguments still fail: you have no control over the quantum phenomena in your brain, so you still don't have free will in the naïve intuitive sense.

I see even less connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness. Consciousness need not depend on free will.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

I agree that some people think this way, but not I. I don't even believe there is a "you" to have free will. Who has control over anything in their brain? They are their brain.

I'm just thinking that perhaps there is a possibility that the brain evolved to take advantage of quantum phenomena to increase capability.

Why would it need to do that, if it can extract randomness from classical, macroscopic phenomena (see rolling dices for one example).

That would assume that randomness is the only quantum property that the brain would use. The possiblity of quantum computation demonstrates that there is more that could he possible.

Your earlier comment certainly appeared to be suggesting the brain uses quantum phenomena as an RNG. Are you instead suggesting the brain is a quantum computer?

The purpose of the example in my first comment was to show that quantum phenomena can influence macroscopic phenomena, not as an example of an RNG. It was probably a bad choice as everyone took it to mean an RNG. Quantum phenomena are not needed for this.

But… why? What’s the purpose of this? Just for a RNG?

Does it have to be random? There must be some value besides randomness that can be derived from quantum effects, else why would all these tech companies invest billions into quantum computing?

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