Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 712

Somewhat related to various issues discussed in the NKS book -

Quantum fluctuations and life

P.C.W. Davies

http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0403/0403017.pdf

There have been many claims that quantum mechanics plays a key role in the origin and/or operation of biological organisms, beyond merely providing the basis for the shapes and sizes of biological molecules and their chemical affinities. These range from the suggestion by Schrodinger that quantum fluctuations produce mutations, to the conjecture by Hameroff and Penrose that quantum coherence in microtubules is linked to consciousness. I review some of these claims in this paper, and discuss the serious problem of decoherence. I advance some further conjectures about quantum information processing in bio-systems. Some possible experiments are suggested.

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Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 712

I am find attempts to link phenomena of consciousness to QM forced, and I think NKS offers evidence against the idea. Part of the motivation has always been trying to deal with determinism and unpredictability - when those can be explained by irreducible complexity. Arguments like those of Penrose seem to me to be based on misunderstandings about Turing universality and realizable computations. Some participants in the discussion seem to think without real number infinities everything will be reducible, simple, and predictable. Which just isn't so - irreducibility and intractability arises already, well on the near side of that cardinality divide.

Besides lacking sufficient motivation, I think QM-consciousness links predict characteristics of consciousness that I just do not see in the phenomena. Bump your head and you do not develop a new personality. Consciousness simply is not fragile, and QM effects clearly are. If entangled anything is to matter it can only do so in tiny details, because the basic system characteristics have an entirely different sensitivity profile. The sort of unpredictability any complex calculation shows before you follow it out, sure, but the sort that will change if leaf blows by, no.

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