Comment by FollowingTheDao | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FollowingTheDao | Hacker News Reader

FollowingTheDao

As a Daoist I will say; "Of course they did!"

But, now the scientist:

"The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, where particles like photons behave in fuzzy, probabilistic ways rather than following strict rules."

There are people in quantum physics, very few, who will tell you that all physical objects exist only as probabilities (fields). But I think this is the truth that is holding back quantum physics. There are no particles, there are only waves.

Think of the location of your coffee cup as only the probability that your coffee cup is where it is. What the human brain does is collapse the probability of your coffee cup into a certainty so it can know how to pick it up. (and is probably why we sometimes drop things). In reality, my coffee cup exists as a sort of cloud of probability, and it is by our quantum computer mind accurately computing the probability curve of the coffee cup that allows us to safely pick it up.

We do not manipulate particles, we manipulate probabilities. There is no "elementary particle" and it is a waste of time trying to fine it. The god particle is not a particle, it is a field.

There are no particles, there are only fields

https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article-abstract/81/3/211/1032...

I don’t completely disagree with the physics part but the brain part doesn’t make sense to me (as someone in the field). Quantum effects average out on a scale much smaller than a cup, that’s why Newtonian mechanics have been so successful in (mostly) describing the world we actually live in.

Even if picking up a cup technically involves collapsing the superposition of an uncountable number of particles/waves in the object, this is a completely unnecessary computation that’s definitely not implemented in the brain. Going with this line of reasoning, does each object pick up also involve quantum calculations of positions of your fingers, your arm, your trunk, the nerves connecting your arm to your brain? Does each neuron perform quantum computations to determine the position of each connected neuron and every surrounding ion that will drive its action potentials? This wouldn’t make sense and has no basis in reality. How many times do we try to use our hand and the quantum calculations in the brain determine that the hand is in some unexpected position? The neurons are either connected to each other and the arm is attached, and in a predictable position to your body, as is the cup, or things wouldn’t work at all and the entire build of our body would be an evolutionary failure, not the blueprint for the only kind of life we’ve been able to observe in the universe. If position of large objects and parts of your body was uncertain, no amount of quantum computation in the brain could correct for it, so why waste the energy of even doing it?

Thankfully, we have a pretty good understanding of the neural computations behind picking up cups correctly and we were able to design simple electronic circuits and programs involving absolutely no quantum effects that are easily able to pick up cups and move around our world. On a scale we exist in, we don’t manipulate probabilities, we manipulate objects with fixed physical positions and forms, because our biological machinery enables nothing else.

Respectfully, I feel like your line of thinking goes down a misguided path where a QM “observer” is equated to a conscious being, somehow isolated (or even deliberately harnessing) from the effects you propose drive every aspect of the universe. In actuality, an observation is just a particle/wave interaction, as relevant for particles arranged into non-living objects, as for those temporarily special arrangements we would call life.

> that’s why Newtonian mechanics have been so successful in (mostly) describing the world we actually live in.

But it does not integrate quantum physics. Because it cannot, since everything is a wave. The point they are making is that a correct quantum math would predict Newton and quantum physics, and this can be done, I feel, if we got rid of Newtonian physics altogether.

> Even if picking up a cup technically involves collapsing the superposition of an uncountable number of particles/waves in the object

Ah, here is the confusion. We do not collapse the wave of the object, our brain collapses the wave in our mind so instead of seeing a hazy probability, we instead see a "solid object". But that solidness only exists in our mind.

When we pick up an object, you know, we never actually touch the object. it is just electrons repelling other electrons. A force FIELD of sorts. So what are we (not) seeing when we pick up an object? The wave form of the cup, and the wave form of the hand. Those two wave forms can interact.

It is not particles that give aus a sense of things, but elector-static repulsion and the wave of an electron bouncing off the the wave of another electron.

> we were able to design simple electronic circuits and programs involving absolutely no quantum effects that are easily able to pick up cups and move around our world.

No quantum effects? Where are there no quantum effects in the world?

> In actuality, an observation is just a particle/wave interaction

Here is my disagreement. An observation is always and only a wave/wave interaction.

I am a wave, and the cup is a wave, the electron is a wave, and everything is a wave. My brain is a wave that does not care about waves adn does not want to see waves. It only wants, or needs, to see particles.

And thank you for your respnse.

>and is probably why we sometimes drop things

Huh?

The certainty (probability) of you holding on to something depends on quantum physics, not Newtonian physics.

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