Might be noteworthy enough to annotate recently: superradiance experiment paper with microtubules (Coherence effects at room temperature)

https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1789671887049761137

Paper here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.01469

Is the evidence against quantum effects in cognition truly strong enough to warrant a 94% chance of no breakthroughs in over the next 5 years, or is there a bias within Manifold and the rationalist community against anything that might be associated with quantum mysticism or woo-woo ideas?

@soweliSon The other question is around 50%. Interesting to see how stronly resolution criteria matter.

@Irigi The differences between this market and @IsaacKing ’s market is that

A) This market closes on January 1st 2030 as opposed to 2100

B) This market doesn’t require the question to be completely settled, only a 50% scientific consensus

C) This market will resolve YES if Quantum Mechanics plays only a minor role in cognition.

@soweliSon I think it's pretty strong, since quantum entanglement is easily broken at temperatures above absolute zero. If we had any examples at all of stable quantum entanglement at higher temperatures, quantum brain would've been more plausible.

@soweliSon

There also isn't a plausible evolutionary reason why there would have been selection pressure to evolve a quantum computer. Ordinary computers are quite adequate at all the basics. Maybe if we lived in a world where being able to factor large numbers in your head was really sexy... Remember that consciousness cannot have been something evolution was aiming for. Whatever it is, it too was created via relatively mundane natural selection pressure.

Could evolution have lucked out and just happened to use an architecture that was "quantum"? No, because quantum states must be protected against decoherence. A quantum state isn't like a classical state, it can't be amplified due to the no-cloning theorem. This is ultimately what makes quantum computing so difficult, you can't make extra copies of your state for redundancy, nor can you remember them after using them. If your state can decohere from a molecule bouncing off it, then there's no way it can be used by evolution. The first mutation has to be at least slightly useful, in a way that will reliably repeat in your progeny. That could only be the case in a very low random-jostling (i.e. temperature) environment. On the other hand, if your state is insulated from random molecules bumping into it, how is that first mutation going to allow the organism to benefit from it? Congrats, you have an ion trapped in a crystal! Now something else has to interact with it in a meaningful way, and this has to happen for the first time by accident. Nothing like a laser with a very specific wavelength shining at exactly the right spot is going to happen. And it has to work without touching it (or else you go back to the first case).

AFAICT, the only reason this even seems compelling to people is
Consciousness = Mysterious
Quantum = Mysterious
So Consciousness = Quantum ?!?!

@adele

I think the “Conciousness = Mysterious, Quantum = Mysterious, then Conciousness = Quantum” is certainly not a flawless argument, but it certainly can be compelling.

What inspired me to create this market is the idea that quantum coherence could contribute to the efficiency of photosynthesis. While scientists may not fully understand how neurons and the brain function, I believe it's premature to completely dismiss the possibility of quantum processes influencing cognition. Though I lack expertise in these areas, I consider such scenarios possible, albeit improbable.

Tegmark goes brrrr

Similar question

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/is-the-brain-quantum?r=SXJpZ2k

I really don’t fully understand quantum computing and the current theories quantum consciousness, so if I made mistakes in the market description, please let me know so I can fix them! 🙏

All chemical reactions are quantum in nature. I suppose this doesn't count?

Does this question resolving as YES imply that a brain is a quantum computer, i.e. that it is not efficiently simulatable on a classical computer?

@OlegEterevsky Correct, this resolves YES if the brain is a quantum computer.

@OlegEterevsky "All chemical reactions are quantum in nature"

Are they though?

@Najawin I mean, chemical bonds are based on the wave functions of valence electrons, which are quantum by definition. Or am I missing something? (I'm not a chemist.)

@OlegEterevsky Gah, just saw this. Read the paper I linked - it's actually pretty famous. It's near impossible to recover a quantum mechanical notion of "shape" (which is crucial to our understanding of chemical bonds), rendering the conceptual conflation you're doing unfeasible.

(If you want another link b/c it's paywalled, here is a decent summary of the debate, though the original paper is the one that started the discussion, this is more of a recap as to where things stand -albeit, one that takes a side in the debate - about, uh, 5 years ago.)