another hint of quantum consciousness

I wouldn't get too fired up. The researchers are undergrads, and the bit about microtubles originally came from Penrose, back before the Neurocomputation field had found plausible mechanisms in vector algebra over hyperdimensional parameter spaces.

Given that microtubules are very widely employed in all cells for all manner of purposes, blocking microtubules does not imply that quantum mechanics are or are not involved, as blocking anything that fundamental is likely to affect very many things.

Joe Gwinn

If consciousness is quantum mechanics, then things indeed get mystical and cosmic.

There has long been uncertainty as to why anaesthetics work, like small amounts of fat-soluble gasses like ether and chloroform.

Undergrads and amateurs often shake up scientific dogma.

Evolution seems to use anything that works, even if scientists disapprove.

I paraphrase: "Since we don't know how it works, it must be quantum". That's it then: Quantum-something is merely religion. The god of the gaps.

There's a lot of quantum nonsense about. This is just one example.

Jeroen Belleman

Or, more conventionally, "It can't be quantum because QM only works at liquid helium temperatures."

Well, explain how we can name one image out of maybe a million stored images, in a fraction of a second.

Face and voice recognition are similarly amazing.

Uncommon, but certainly not unheard of.

True, but unhelpful. It's not enough to observe that if A is blocked, B stops working, and therefore the mechanism is X. There are many mechanisms simultaneously in action. One must methodically rule out all but a single X to claim causality.

Joe Gwinn

I didn't claim causality, but it is possible.

Discoveries usually happen through accident and speculation. Slapping down speculation leaves only accident, which is unlikely in this case.

Designing electronics also benefits from being friendly to new ideas.

Yes, that's the typical comeback of religious believers.

I don't know how it works. Let's find out. AI seems to be getting there, and it requires no quantum theory. Just loads of data and a lot of matrix math.

Jeroen Belleman

Discoveries happen by diddling with the problem, trying out different things to see what happens. Once you have a collection of observations, some theory will form of how it all fits together. You test the theory by doing more experiments. If these experiments keep confirming your theory, then, and only then, can you claim to have discovered something.

Just throwing harebrained ideas around leads nowhere.

Jeroen Belleman

Sorry to bring the "vibration" down, but that just sounds like something some hippie that's smoked too much dope would say. This is the kind of thing that's destroying the West and has been for the last 55 years IMO. After that intro I thought you were going to cite 'Tomorrow Never Knows' but AYNIL is every bit as idealistically mystic BS.

In a way which is similar to the way this does it.

Also it's possible you might not know the correct spelling.

But it is becoming much easier to do them without a human brain as time goes by.

Certainly rejecting ideas leads nowhere.

Who gets to define "harebrained" ideas? Should they be made illegal?

Google quantum biology which was once agreed to be impossible.

No. If one imagines an equation that describes the period of a planetary orbit, and tests it in all available cases, it's rational to assume it's true.

Let someone else find a counter-case. They will usually try.

Ideas are the starting point of theories. Or circuits.

No ideas results in few of either.

I don't recall invoking religion here, or calling myself a believer. I was asking about image storage and high-speed matching. It's even more amazing when you consider all the optical distortions and viewing angles and changes in illumination and motion effects in real life; we don't match nice flat photos.

How are our collections of images stored?

When some people encounter an unwelcome idea, they call the people that they disagree with bible bangers, and assume they have won the argument.

You are determined to exclude the possibility that are brains use QM.

Given that most all physics and chemistry is fundamentally quantum mechanical, why would evolution refuse to allow cells to use quantum effects?

Most people don't really believe in evolution.

Of course, the machines and the code that do google's image matching were designed by people.

It would be pretty good packing, storing one bit of data per atom.

Nice possibilities for quantum correlation, pattern matching, too.

Does the lack of response here mean that you agree that I provided a valid explanation of how "we can name one image out of maybe a million stored images, in a fraction of a second." ?

No-one is suggesting that Google does it exactly the same way the human brain does but you asked for an explanation of how it is possible.

You mean like

If you're going to stick with the idea that something designed people then what designed the thing which designed people and what designed the thing which designed the thing which designed people?

What are you going to say when a thing designed by people becomes able to design electronic circuits better than you can?

Likely in a way which is similar to the way

So we may never know how the human brain stores images. We just know it does. It may not be possible to know how, and why would we need to know how? Not knowing how won't stop us making AI which is cleverer than us.

Even if that's true, it's likely because it doesn't easily map to the average human lifetime. Because it took rather longer than a human lifetime. So long, that even a human imagination can't begin to imagine how long it took and what happened over that time.

The same is true for a fair number of people I know.