[soup10]

i started writing a response about how the human brain is designed to operate in an environment where classical physics is the norm, so we need to bridge the deviations from that if we are to really understand the world. But I don't know how much that's really true if you consider neural biology and I won't claim to know where quantum stops and classical begins as it relates to brain function.

[perlgeek]

You need quantum physics to understand how chemistry works.

So, given that chemistry plays a huge role in how the human (or any) brain works, it would be quite a stretch to argue that the brain works with classical physics.

We are often sloppy and sort all the chemistry in with classical physics, but that's a very human-centric approach. In reality, the Universe doesn't have different "domains" with separate rules for chemistry and physics; it evolves according to the Schrödinger equation, and we use Chemistry as an abstraction to not have to deal with nasty mathematics to predict how certain reactions will work.

[anon84873628]

I think the parent was really referring to "mind" instead of "brain". It's not the hardware of the brain that's classical, but our sense perception and model of the world.

[kybernetikos]

I do think there's something to this approach though - our sensory organs and processing ability are not abstract powers of understanding the universe - they developed exactly to give us enhanced survival chances. We should not expect to even be able to detect (let alone intuitively understand) aspects of reality that can't be used for survival.

[hnlmorg]

I do understand the point you’re making but my counter argument to that would be that physics hasn’t relied on our sensory input for a hundred years or more.

It’s been almost entirely based on maths and careful measurements from machined instruments purpose built for observing phenomena.

So at this point you’d hope the limitations of our biological senses would have been long surpassed.

[anon84873628]

It's impossible to surpass the physical limits of our biological senses. Can a person blind from birth form visual mental images?

We can try to retrain and reuse the sense for other purposes though. I'm reminded of that film "The Zero Theorem".

[Xmd5a]

>our [...] processing ability are not abstract powers of understanding the universe

Neural nets are called universal approximators for a reason. If what you guys are discussing is true, then a neural net would not be able to learn from a dataset about quantum experiments. I doubt this is the case. Also there is quantum cognition, and by that I mean the fact some researchers figured out a lot of puzzling results from experimental cognitive science seem to make more sense once analyzed from a quantum perspective.

[GoblinSlayer]

Humans are affected by prejudice, so learning straight from a dataset is easier said than done, but possible, yes.

[Gravityloss]

Yes, though our cells have machinery that does use quantum phenomena.