I think a lot of people here (and the author of the article) are missing the obvious: an engineer is someone who works with engines. An engine is basically just a machine that does work. The question is really whether software can be considered "machines." They're certainly complex devices made up of different parts working in unison that perform work, so I think yes. If a bridge can be considered a machine then surely so can software. Therefore, programmers are engineers. All this talk about rigid specifications, certifications, math, respect for the title, etc. is very odd to me.
I'm not even that old and I completely agree with your point. One would think that easy access to beginner friendly programming languages and environments would be a boon to technically precious children. However I think for most kids, highly addictive and cheap video games and social media end up monopolizing all the time and attention. It's really sad to see all that neuroplastic potential being wasted on TikTok. Personally, I came up around the dawn of Facebook and was only (partially) saved by being too poor to afford many video games or an expensive computer, and being too much of a loner to care about Facebook.
I don't use a password manager and my email account is by far one of my most secure accounts so I actually love signing in to things like this. It beats having to remember another battery-horse-stapler type password. For more paranoid users you could add a 2FA option.
As part of the right routine and exercises, lifting weights can be very pleasant. Personally, I love doing a good set of dumbbell rows.
What keeps me (and I think a lot of people) from getting ripped is the sheer consistency needed. Doing anything that isn't strictly necessary for 1-2 hours 5-6 days per week every week for years is extremely difficult imo. I get knocked off course very easily, sometimes for months at a time, and I have yet to find a solution for this.
Does anyone know if we understand enough about natural, generally intelligent brains to dismiss the idea that they are using quantum phenomenon for computation? Is it unlikely for any reason?
I think people bring up this quantum phenomenon stuff a bit too often in an attempt to add a layer of mysticism to humanity. We should only jump to that conclusion if we have some kind of proof or reason to believe so. We don’t even understand a lot of how the brain works at the macro scale yet so it’s a bit early to start saying it’s dependent on those processes (other than in the same way all physical systems are dependent on quantum phenomena.)
I’m also not a neuroscientist or a physicist though, so this is just my relative layman’s take.
I believe plenty of "quantum phenomenon" are utilized in humans' biochemistry[0]. Whether the brain "calculates" things using a method that is particularly similar to the methods used in today's quantum computers is...unlikely. It probably is "quantum" in other ways though.
Yes. It's unavoidably "quantum" in the sense that, as a physical machine in our universe it's subject to the rules, including quantum physics. However there is no apparent mechanism by which "thinking" could harness any interesting properties of quantum physics, it's just not happening at the right scale, like the way kids sand walls on the beach don't alter the world's tides.
That proportions in that analogy seem way off. Every single neuron of the human brain could be utilizing quantum mechanical effects at the same time. Not very much at all like a kid's sand castle against the world's tides. I don't think anyone really understand "thinking" and quantum mechanics well enough for the mechanisms to be apparent. I mean, squirrels convert forest detritus into general intelligence. I don't understand the strong certainty against the idea that there's some physics based piece of the puzzle that we're missing.
Well, quantum computers are just fast but limited classical computers. So there is nothing actually very interesting to be gained by assuming that the brain could be a quantum computer isntead of a classical computer - at best, it would explain why the brain is more efficient at certain computations, but it can't explain how intelligence works.
To be clear, any quantum computation can be simulated on a classical computer, but it takes exponentially many steps. This is proven mathematically already, with the single exception that it's not proven that a better classical algorithm couldn't remote the exponential difference.
> I don't understand the strong certainty against the idea that there's some physics based piece of the puzzle that we're missing.
There is a missing piece of the puzzle all right, it's the huge role the environment and body play in developing intelligence. Everyone's focusing on quantum effects or just the brain forgetting that all they learn comes from the experience of the environment on the body.
The forces that shape and restrict life are the same that guide our learning process and evolution. We're looking too close to the brain and missing the big picture. Embodiment is the thing we're glossing over.
Quantum intelligence or consciousness seems like a detour, a blind walk into mysticism unless someone can prove there are things in neurology and AI that only make sense from a quantum perspective.
I think it’s a strong conjecture that quantum effects at the single neuron level in the brain are significant. Given how evolution has had billions of years to operate and “train” itself, I don’t think it would be surprising to discover quantum-mechanical processes were deeply intertwined with intelligence.
I think there is some definite upside to knowing the ultimate complexity of a single neuron.
Is it a detour? I don’t think we can say for sure either way until the question of how a single neuron works is settled.
I believe we've been able to model the processes behind neural firings for quite some time now, the issue is more mapping between that micro-scale understanding of how each individual piece in a 10^10 piece puzzle with 10^15 edges affects the macro-scale emergent properties of said puzzle. It's less a lack of understanding of the processes and more a complexity so great that it exceeds the grasp of our best modeling tools thus far.
We can barely model the humble nematode c. elegans with its 330 neurons.
Yes. The simple models are simple, the fast and large and useful models are simple. We have a lot of in vitro observations which can contribute to smaller, slower and more accurate models as your linked article mentions, observations which generally are ignored as being nth order effects when people are trying to make models which have a low enough computational complexity as to be useful.
What is not missing is metaphysical quantum woo[0]. We can, have, and do observe how neurons and synapses function; the issue is that the computational complexity with current approaches is great enough to make complete neurological modeling of a microscopic worm with under a thousand total cells difficult.
[0] and even if you want to take those effects into account in your electrochemical models, all they do is turn them into stochastic models. there is exactly zero evidence of that randomness being of any real value to the thing we care about, which is the emergent macro scale properties of these systems.
Does the modeled activity track any real world measurements, though? If we're going to claim any real veracity from a simulation then we need to crosscheck it against real measurements, right?
'Attempted' implies 'not succeeded', though? And 'just basic electrochemistry' triggers a massive "is it, though?" response. Sure, we know what theory tells us, I want to know if observations align with theory.
Succeeded within what level of precision? The project is called OpenWorm, they have hydrodynamic models for macroscale cellular behavior and electrochemical simulations for modeling ion channels needed for the neural network. I don't have a reference handy but you should be able to find ample papers discussing accurate electrochemical modeling of synapses. The issue is that the models are complex enough that simulating a couple hundred neurons is expensive. As far as having accurate synaptic data so that they're simulating a specific worm rather than a random one pulled out of the æther, I believe that's still a work in progress.
Specifically: thinking and creativity do not require the QM phenomena of entanglement, tunnelling, uncertainty, or interference, no matter how much Penrose wants it to be true.
By the butterfly principle, sand walls on the beach do alter the world's tides.
Quantum computers don't seem very useful yet, but brains are extremely useful (and they use much less power). Maybe current generation quantum computers would be better if they used quantum mechanics more similarly to the ways our brains use it. The article you linked mentions that entanglement and qubits are being "studied in human consciousness" but I'm not sure what exactly that entails.
Ass far as we understand, out brains use quantum mechanics only as much as our processors use quantum mechanics already - the world is quantum mechanical, so our brains are as well.
However, given the scale of known brain features, the temperature of the brain, and other sources of noise, it's very very very hard to imagine how the brain could be a quantum computer.
I had been doing a bunch of research on quantum biology around the time that I had the conversation I mentioned above, that's probably why at the time I wanted to discuss it with him. I think these two lectures are pretty good and I'd watched them around the time I was discussing this stuff with Jack.
Roger Penrose’s The Emperors New Mind proposed this in the 1990s. He gave circumstantial possibilities, and I don’t think we know more than that now.
As an amateur, my instinct is that the mystery of the observer "causing" wave function collapse is the best clue we have either way.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we are just weighted neurons, or if we do something quantum too. I doubt the something quantum will be the same as what our quantum computers do.
It's worth noting that it's not the observer causing anything, but a "technical observation" i.e. any interaction with the macroscopic environment; the analogy of "observer" leads to a misleading implication that there's something special if an agent or conscious entity is doing the observation, which it is not.
> Consciousness causing the wave-function to collapse isn't a very popular idea these days and there are alternative explanations, though as far as I know there isn't any evidence that it is involved or if it isn't. The wave function collapse happens regardless of whether a human or any conscious being is present, all that is needed is something does an observation. Imagine a scenario where a QM experiment is done, and the result is recorded by machines and stored as a data file. Let 100 years pass then distribute copies of the file to a million people. They will all see the same thing.
Actually I had just done a bunch of researching on Penrose around the time I was having that conversation with Jack, in fact I think I'd watched these two lectures within a few months of that conversation:
Not necessary. Quantum AI is basically explaining something mysterious by something else mysterious, even when there is no indication they are related.
There's actually a whole field of study that uses tools from quantum information theory to successfully model cognitive and social situations. This doesn't require any assumptions of "quantum physicality". It just makes sense to model probabilistic, reflexive, slippery-to-observe systems with tools that were designed for this. Quantum theory has really great tools and they work well.
I realize this isn't quite the answer you were looking for, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
I personally think this idea that there is some obvious categorical distinction between hard "physical" quantum phenomena and classically probabilistic ones is a fallacy. Quantum theory is in some sense just probability theory with more features.
More and more researchers are catching onto this and I think that's really exciting.
Surely they'd just use tools from regular information theory and Bayesian inference? Quantum theory is just one particular application of information theory, where uncertainty is directly controlled by physical processes rather than simply due to imperfect knowledge.
Quantum information comes from Von Neumann entropy, while classical information comes from Shannon entropy. Regardless of where the "source" of information/uncertainty comes from or how "physical" it is, they're related but distinctly different tools which can each be applied to both "physical" or "non-physical" systems at any scale.
"Quantum" is turning out to have very little to do with how tiny or physical stuff is, and much more to do with assumptions about how observations emerge from interaction.
> rather than simply due to imperfect knowledge
That's the key right there... Quantum probability and quantum models don't rely on the existence of "perfect knowledge" or "underlying" objective states. States themselves are intrinsically probabilistic and contextually embedded. Measurements/observations cannot be cleanly decoupled from the states being measured, and are modelled as projections from a high dimensional space of possibilities onto some lower dimensional subspace.
This kinda thing works really well for social/cognitive systems which are incredibly sensitive to measurement process. For example, when conducting polls or surveys, the ordering of the questions is well known to impact the outcome. It turns out that this can be very well modelled using tools from quantum theory, and it has been.
Check out this book and all the books/papers citing it for a window into this fascinating world
Linear algebra (both for vector spaces and Hilbert spaces) is not really specific to quantum physics. What's specific to quantum physics is complex valued spaces, as opposed to ordinary statistics which works with real valued states.
And Von Neumann entropy is Shannon entropy, as applied to quantum states.
The quantum phenomena for calculations require strictly limited interactions as otherwise you just get decoherence. Quantum computations inside of our brain cells are unlikely because it's relatively very hot, having random interactions which would disrupt quantum phenomena.
Someone asked this question to Leonard Susskind once at a Q&A and he said the chances are basically zero. When the guy kept pressing on the idea Susskind got kind of exasperated and seemed like he was on the verge of calling the idea woo.
I don't think we know enough to know, I also don't think we know enough to rule it out, to me it's plausible, and that was generally the debate... is a quantum requirement there or not. Also as a note, this was conversation over beers with a buddy, so it wasn't HN scrutiny standard, we were getting philosophical. (I know very little about the subject so my opinions aren't much more than "fun ideas".)
nobody needs to "dismiss the idea", the null hypothesis is that brains don't exploit quantum phenomena. In the absence of any reason for them doing so, and the lack of evidence that the do so, the onus is on the quantum brain folks to come up with better falsifiable theories.
Even if they were (big if without really any evidence), we have no idea how, so adding a quantum computer to the mix won't get us any closer to general AI.
It would be like adding a classical computer we don't know how to turn on; it won't help anything if we don't know how to use it.
My gut feeling is that even if we use some probabilistic quantum compute it should be transferable to normal compute. Also animals vs human don't have enough difference to assume we are special.
I would also love a ground fish option, even if it's frozen. Fish burgers can be phenomenal when done right! I usually settle for canned, but the canning process definitely seems to have a pretty pronounced effect on flavor.
In particular, it took me a long time to a realise that for a lot of people communications is parsed by treating a series of requests or pieces of information as a FIFO. If you're lucky, it's fairly deep, but for some people it can only hold 1 or 2 entries at the time.
But when it's an e-mail or other interaction that they understand as "conversational", these people tend to not start acting on the output until the end.
So ask for 3 things, and chances are only the last one will still be in the queue by the time they've read your whole message. The rest will have just popped out of their mind and no longer exist in their world until they're prompted to re-read your message.
For people who act like that, seemingly the only way around it short of drip-feeding them questions one at a time that I've found is to present them with a document attachment and only one request: "Please follow the procedure in the attached document." And make them sign off. And provide a checklist if they're particularly difficult.
You basically need to make it clear that the list is not conversation. You can find people who are pathologically unable to process a list of instructions in an e-mail who are at the same time completely OCD about processing lists of instructions in a document, because they context-switch completely.
Of course in this context of "sabotage" this can be exploited to: Mercilessly attach all information in a bunch of separate documents, and add checklists and signoffs to everything. Especially to unimportant stuff.
