[Sakos]

Agree. It's incredibly frustrating seeing takes on science by engineers on HN. It's as bad as, if not worse than, the takes I see about politics around here.

For context, this is what the paper itself says:

> In order to experimentally assess the contribution of MTs as functionally relevant targets of volatile anesthetics, we measured latencies to loss of righting reflex (LORR) under 4% isoflurane in male rats injected subcutaneously with vehicle or 0.75 mg/kg of the brain- penetrant MT–stabilizing drug epothilone B (epoB). EpoB-treated rats took an average of 69 s longer to become unconscious as measured by latency to LORR. This was a statistically significant difference corresponding to a standardized mean difference (Cohen’s d) of 1.9, indicating a “large” normalized effect size. The effect could not be accounted for by tolerance from repeated exposure to isoflurane. Our results suggest that binding of the anesthetic gas isoflurane to MTs causes unconsciousness and loss of purpose-ful behavior in rats (and presumably humans and other animals). This finding is predicted by models that posit consciousness as a property of a quantum physical state of neural MTs.

> Our study establishes that action on intracellular microtubules (MTs) is the mechanism, or one of the mechanisms, by which the inhalational anesthetic gas isoflurane induces unconsciousness in rats. This finding has potential clinical implications for understanding how taxane chemotherapy interferes with anesthesia in humans and more broadly for avoiding anesthesia failures during surgery. Our results are also theoretically important because they provide support for MT-based theories of anesthetic action and consciousness.

Let me emphasize:

> This finding is predicted by models that posit consciousness as a property of a quantum physical state of neural MTs.

If people here want to criticize the paper, I want to see some citations of passages from the fucking paper, and not some hur-dur quote from a popular science article meant to convey the paper to a lay audience. But you know, 99% of the paper would be indecipherable to most people here, so all we get is these surface level takes that wastes everybody's time.

The intellectual laziness in these comments is galling.

[kurthr]

I'm all for a rant on how computer science isn't, but this attack on only the comments seems a bit over the top. Why not attack the posting of the pop-sci article with quotes so bad in the first place?

My issue with the ScienceDaily and even the original eNeuro article isn't with individual quotes, but with the apparent motivated reasoning of the papers. I'm generally aware of the field quantum-consciousness, Orch OR, and with Penrose's theories. I'm also aware of the funding/publishing methods in science and this looks a bit weak. The evidence is, we didn't find another mechanism. That there had to be corrections on supporting research, which included the names of additional funders (Templeton Foundation) is also not a wonderful sign (if you know you know).

The actual article research covers the effect of epoB on tolerance and latency of anesthesia in rats, which support the action of isoflurane on microtubules (MT) as at least one mechanism. There is a bunch of other stuff about quantum consciousness that reads like a review paper. Quantum is mentioned 58 times and plays no role in their actual measurement or results.

https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024

I actually didn't find the paper that hard to read, it's mostly basic science and huge review of Orch OR. I don't consider it a big prestigious journal, and I don't recognize names on it, but the actual results (limited as they are) don't seem outrageous or unsupported. I'm also not sure they're that interesting unless you already have a fringe theory to support.

[pulvinar]

I'll bite.

This paper doesn't show anything beyond an anesthetic's possible effect on microtubules, assuming it's reproducible. I see nothing about ruling out other pathways that may also affect consciousness. That big leap from MT to consciousness is still there, for which there are plenty of solid criticisms [0] by other respected scientists.

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

[RaftPeople]

> I see nothing about ruling out other pathways that may also affect consciousness.

Especially given how many things are simply not understood about the neuron and other cells in the brain.

The discovered complexity continues to expand every year and each new discovery (e.g. dynamic tunneling nanotubes in vivo) takes a lot of effort to try to figure out the impact on computation.

[astrobe_]

OP's criticism was useful, because there is indeed a gap that needed to be filled and you did just that, thanks.

Conversely it would have been bad to take what the article says at face value - that's how you end up believing in astrology. Even Nobel prize winners can go terribly wrong, after all [1]. But as you said, not everyone has the knowledge or time to dig the connection between the two statements out of the paper.

I can only suggest to ask questions when one does not understand something; sarcasm in particular can backfire hard when you're wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

[roamerz]

>> It's incredibly frustrating seeing takes on science by engineers on HN.

That’s crazy talk. I personally find the various takes on topics here on HN valuable and insightful and sometimes it’s the out of the box thinking that you get when an engineer talks about science - especially when it’s broken down to levels I can start to understand.

[dartharva]

Your appeal is staunch but your own quotes from the paper fail to give a convincing argument for the jump to quantum physics.

[vinceguidry]

The abstract itself didn't assert such a thing. Just that it 'lends support' for that explanation.

[mewpmewp2]

How does it "support" or "lend support", wouldn't it be more correct to say "it doesn't rule out" and which likely seems a bit pointless statement so why bring it in, in the first place?

Support seems like an active statement kind of like if we realize that 2 + 2 != 5 it lends support to 2 + 2 = 6.

[vinceguidry]

You're doing an awful amount of nitpicking. I didn't find the abstract that hard to read. There's a big discussion in the scientific community about whether consciousness involves quantum effects or not, and this nudges that debate more into quantum territory. Unless you are part of that community, you're going to be reliant on others to characterize these kinds of results. That characterization was helpfully provided in the abstract, which is a good thing because otherwise we'd need to rely on profit-motivated journals to do it for us.

[mewpmewp2]

> You're doing an awful amount of nitpicking.

I'm absolutely not. I have a problem with science wording such as "suggests", "linked to", and "supports", since many times these findings could be just a complete coincidence or chance, but the way the titles are worded is implied it's actually somehow making a case for that. It's not explicitly falsifying the idea of A, but it doesn't mean it's supporting it either. Maybe it also supports the idea that God is behind all of that and is just trolling us.