Talk:Quantum mind/Archive 1

message: This discussion page has been flagged by Wiki for being too long. I see one entry on here from April 3, 2004. I propose that on January 1, 2007, that we (any Wiki editor reading this) be given the okay to begin deleting any entry over a year old to keep this page and discussion fresh. Also, after Jan 1st, any anonymous comment can be sent to the archive. Anyone with a new concern can post a comment again reflecting the current state of science on the issue. Deleting here only moves it to the archive section (click on the history tab and then click on the date you want to revisit to see past talk pages). 5Q5 15:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have learned how to create a talk page archive, have done it successfully. After the Thanksgiving holiday, I will create an Archive 1 of this page. 5Q5 19:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm pretty sure that it was invented by one of the theories detractors.
* I think the origin is put by Stuart Hameroff in a lecture of the webcourse "Consciousness at the Millenium - Quantum Approaches to Understanding the Mind", Lecture 9, FEASIBILITY OF MICROSCOPIC QUANTUM MECHANISMS IN THE BRAIN, chapter 3. Is the brain "warm, wet and noisy?", published online 1999, however my check in the internet showed that the original server is not available or the web course was deleted. If someone wants to read the lecture or the whole course I have perfect copy of it, and maybe I can upload it somewhere - for example in CogPrints, because it entered in the public domain. I am recently very busy, so I don't know when I will be able to do that. If somebody has specific questions on Q-mind he might use my Wikipedia user talk page. Currently my editing is on neuroscience topics, and not Q-mind. Danko Georgiev MD 07:45, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk Page in Need of Clean up - Proposal 

message: "This view is widely accepted among physicists or neurologists."
What are you claiming here? That microtubules are smaller than cells or that there are many biologists who think quantum efects account for consciousness?
-------
Left out a "not"
Roadrunner 02:01, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, then you've got a simpler explanation for it all?  linas 03:59, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What is widely accepted?

message: I haven`t read the article but wanna state the obvious: you cannot have it in pseudoscience and protoscience at the same time!
So please clean up the article as i figure that is the reason why it is in pseudoscience or vice versa.Slicky 19:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ahem

message: Large scale deletions of sections of articles are generally preceded by discussion or a justification in comments. If you have issues with these sections please come and talk and we will work something out. DV8 2XL 16:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletions of 'Quantum Mysticism ' and 'Criticisms' 

message: Could somebody please add a reference to the original Froelich paper on biological temperature coherence.  I think it was thr Int J Quant Chem but I can't find my reference to it anywhere.
:done. pulled it out of Shadows of the Mind  GangofOne 11:58, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for reference 

message: I deleted the rather long edit that attempted to answer a critical passage earlier in the text. It violated any number of WP policies and guidelines (see WP:NOT).
I also pulled the passage that provoked the edit as it too was in violation of NPOV. 
Please discuss this here before reverting DV8 2XL 20:27, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed Answers to criticisms 

message: What relation does this subject have to Holonomic brain theory? -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holonomic brain theory? 

message: This article needs to adopt a method for citing sources. Harvard referencing would be easiest, but if this page is trying to be a science article then the footnote system would be better. 
"Classical models view consciousness as computation" <-- Here is a place to start. What is a good source to support this statement? <BR>
--JWSchmidt 14:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Verifiability

message: The article currently says: Human thought, based on the Gödel result, is sound , yet non-algorithmic.
This seems to be the usual unsound leap people make from Gödel's theorem:
# Systems like computers can't think of everything. (paraphrase of Gödel)
# We can think of everything.
# Therefore, the human brain does not act like a computer.
The flaw is in step 2, which is usually glossed over. This kind of reasoning has been argued against by Douglas Hofstadter, by Alan Turing himself, and others.
Am I interpreting the statement right? If so, I intend to remove it as unverifiable. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ  05:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the whole passage. The section is making no claims, it is reporting on the foundations of the argument AS STATED BY proponents of quantum mind theory. The refutation of that argument follows in the next paragraph. 70.51.184.193 09:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A bold claim 

message: What are the functional quantum processes in molecular biology that have indeed been found? Is there a reference? They never came up in my molecular biology course. Could comeone clarify this please because I think it may be incorrect. Jefffire 14:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you clarify your question? Are you asking if there is any evidence that physiological processes (such as signal transmission in the brain) are sensitive to individual quantum events? --JWSchmidt 17:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Molecular biology 

message: In the last section about hidden variable theories, the link to one of the authors Peres leads to the page about Shimon Peres, but I think it should  lead to a page about Asher Peres (I am not sure), if there is such a page.
*Fixed, thanks --DV8 2XL 02:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A problem with one of the links 

message: I have seen that the whole article reflects exactly the current status of the idea Q-mind - a total mess, and my opinion on all this can be briefly summarized like that: from centuries there were quacks and charlatans, and since some of the QM results are quite strange at first glance and need good acquaintance with advanced maths, now in the area Q-mind is full with "self-proclaimed scientists" from various fields that write "revolutionary articles". Actually everything about parapsychic evidence, transferred potentials, telepatics, etc. is just "massaging of statistical facts until they fit to support the researcher's expectations" - this was told to me by one of the Hameroff's team, whose name I will not post here. Actually on the Q-mind conferences [I have attented the 2003 year event] is full with quacks, and I feel too sorry for the couple of researchers who were there to present something really interesting. So if someone needs to write a review of what is "Q-mind" as a whole it is impossible task. It stands for collection of ideas some of which are nothing but quackery, some of which are so advanced that you need to be expert in the field to understand them (such as Mavromatos & Nanopoulos string theory modeling of microtubules, all of the papers are peer-reviewed and published, preprints available at ArXiv.org). The recipe to easily understand whether a Q-mind proposal is pseudo-science can be done in this way - check and if the author proposes verification of some non-local influence between two separated humans, then this is quackery. Actually I am one of the few M.D.'s that when I hear the word "subconscious" or "paranormal" get sick. I have passed several advanced course in Psychoanalysis and I can assure you that all of those who work in this field lack any substantial knowledge in neuroscience, and live in their own imaginary created world in which the "subconsciousness of the patient" is "the perverted consciousness of the psychoanalitist itself"! As a final suggestion I think the whole article should be collapsed to a list with original approaches, and a short note that Q-mind as a whole is not a single theory because there is no peer-reviewing, and currently it is quitable cover for quacks. p.s. Somebody created entry about my work, and actually there is described a model developped by Stuart Hameroff et al., that I pursued for a year, but due to negative results I have dropped out. I will be glad that this incorrect entry is deleted. Best, Danko Georgiev MD 02:36, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This was the best information that I could find at the time the passage was written. My intention in this article was to provide an overview of the subject and a quick look at some of the theories out there. If I have associated you with a direction that you are no longer working on I beg your pardon. I knew from the begining that this topic would be difficult. This field is so wide open that no matter how fair and neutral a treatment I gave, I was going to rub some folks the wrong way. If you don't feel comfortabe editing the page directly, if you want you can post any changes to my talk page and I will put them in. --DV8 2XL 02:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed your name from the passage. --DV8 2XL 03:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: As a summary interaction between microtubules and local EM field is advocated by me in collaboration with prof. James F. Glazebrook, yet it is not part of the Hameroff's model. Why I am interested in this modelling is because of the Penfield's and Dobelle's work as explained above. Why Hameroff needs to insulate the interaction of the microtubule with nearby ions [i.e. external for the MT electric field] is to avoid decoherence for 25 milliseconds. I do not need to avoid decoherence because in my model the microtubule interacts with already coherent EM soliton pulses in the timescale of 15 picoseconds. Actually this is exactly the dinamyc timescale of protein catalysis, and in Hameroff's model it is quite bizzare to have a whole bunch of cellular protein catalysing various reactions for 10-15 picoseconds, while the microtubule itself is "frozen is superposition" for 25 milliseconds in a "long thought process". 
I hope this will help you to see that there is conceptual difference between the quantum soliton model and Hameroff's Orch OR. Hameroff personally responded that Tegmark's calculations on decoherence do not apply for Orch OR, because in Orch OR no solitons are taken into consideration. Please repair the entry, or delete it.Danko Georgiev MD 05:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Doctor: given the changes you are asking for, it would be better if you rewrote the passage yourself. I understand your consern that you would be accused of a POV edit, but I think in this case your input is warrented. Please try and keep the passage about the same lenght; this is all I ask. If you are still unwilling, then I will get to it over the next week, or if I cannot I will remove it. --DV8 2XL 15:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I understand your reticence Doctor, and I respect it. It's true that this field of inquiry has more than its fair share of montebanks, charlatans and the deluded, which is unfortunate for the handful of legitimate researchers who are trying to make progress. I will try to make some order here hopefuly with some other interested editors like Jefffire and others. --DV8 2XL 03:53, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is Q-mind? (opinion) 

message: There are a lot of mentions of people in the field and their work within the article, but without any footnotes attached that lead to the published work itself. Some of the names are links to stubs or articles, some of which have scientific references, but it seems like a link to at least one primary source article per topic would be worthwhile, no?
Perhaps the article would benefit from a more formal set of reference annotations, e.g. numbered footnote references in the article pointing to outside-linked books and published articles in a "Footnotes" section below. Preferably something based on what's at the Wikipedia:Citing_sources , Wikipedia:Footnotes, and Wikipedia:Citing_sources/example_style pages. I admit that I'm not a huge fan of the Wikipedia:Template_messages/Sources_of_articles#Citations_of_generic_sources templates, but they could always be edited in once the basic references in proper format are in place.
The current References section seems to be missing nearly all of the relevent scientific articles published on the subject recently, and I could help a bit with that.
If they exist, ISBN for books, and DOI and/or PMID links for scientific articles really should be added to the footnotes and references, so that people can easily follow-up for greater detail.
If any of this sounds worthwhile, I could start that ball rolling, but I await some comments here first, please.
Here you are:
Chris C. King
Stuart Hameroff & Roger Penrose
Henry Stapp  	
: unsigned overwrite of above link by User:207.69.137.35 :  http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9808&L=quantum-mind&P=R27075 Stapp and Brain Flanagan in converstion. Restored by GangofOne 22:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's of special interest to YOU, but what does it have to do with the topic? GangofOne 22:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

text: This topic draws this sort of cruft all the time. Don't ask, be WP:BOLD and flush them away.--DV8 2XL 23:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  formal references arrangement 

message: ----
What do this ext. links have to do wth the topic?
*http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PLEEE8000066000006066605000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes  Noether's theorem and Lie symmetries for time-dependent Hamilton-Lagrange systems 
*  http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v22/i8/p2018_1 Nonlocal currents as Noether currents 
--GangofOne 23:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This topic draws this sort of cruft all the time. Don't ask, be WP:BOLD and flush them away.--DV8 2XL 23:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What, indeed

message: I don't know who is this clever historician, but Newton has nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics developped in the 20th century. Please don't enter bul..s.t in Wikipedia if you are not competent. Danko Georgiev MD 10:14, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is there for historical completeness and is referenced. --DV8 2XL 10:17, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What kind of historical completeness ??? This is a new history or what?? Danko Georgiev MD 11:21, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Newtons ideas on aether have nothing to do with quantum dynamics and modern belief in the aether. Jefffire 10:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I give up. Butcher the damned page up to suit your POV's I give up --DV8 2XL 10:20, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or... you could try verifying your additions from reliable sources. Jefffire 10:24, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Do what ever you want Danko I don't give a damn anymore. Others will come and fight and the article will be in shreds in no time. I've been protecting content from those who would have this article only deal with 'THE ONE TRUE PATH TO A QM THEORY' for too long. The insults and threats of lawsuits, the cranks and kooks, and the usual drizzle of vandals has got to me. This article can go to hell. --DV8 2XL 11:26, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Dear DV8 2XL, calm down. As you see in the discussion section I have provided links to various web sites and the home pages of original researchers who deserve to be mentioned in the article, but I have not created anything in the article myself. Also I have done cosmetic changes only in the references, and I don't understand the fact why you are annoyed that I have deleted some obvious nonsense. I came here just from curiosity to see how this article evolves, and do not intend to edit it in the future. Continue your guarding function, but please consider that there is disclaimer for clean-up and I don't see how you help in that. :-) Danko Georgiev MD 11:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Danko, you have no grasp of English idiom if you think the passage on Newton has anything to do with Quantum Mechanics or claiming that it has anything to do with aether theory - or did you even bother to read it? You want to drop in time to time and piss in the article and then magnanimously suggest I should "continue your guarding function" Gee, thanks. And guess what? Everything here is obvious nonsense. Not one bit of it goes beyond speculation at best overactive imagination at worse. I'm outa here. --DV8 2XL 22:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text:  Dear DV8 2XL, if you think that you can offend me personally you are dead wrong. What is speculation, and what is imagination and what is nonsense will be find out soon or later. I think that the Q-mind article is bad too, so it needs clean-up. It is good when person has clear position on a subject, but do not overestimate your knowledge of what science is, because it might be too narrow-viewed after all. Best, Danko Georgiev MD 04:26, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aether has nothing to do with quantum mechanics! 

message: I don't mind that it is not mentioned the Eccles is Nobel laureate, but the original entry was speaking about Eccles as some kind of "quack" who "speculates". His model is fully developped biophysical theory and one can read the 1992 article in PNAS if is enough competent in QM. Also the Nobel Prize is relevant in the case because Eccles took it exactly for his breaktroughs in studying the synapse and its function. So, if one claims that Eccles' work on synapse physiology is speculation is midly said unserious. Danko Georgiev MD 11:31, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment on Eccles and synapses 

message: Apparently, it sounds a joke that "the British psychiatrist Ian Marshall" shall link to the footballer of the same name. Both may be actually the same person. Yet some clarification would help clear up either doubt or show up more "coherence". --kypark 13:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bose-Einstein condensates 

message: Who wrote this??? He is apparently ignorant in everything that Q-Mind suggests. It is the MIND (consciousness) that is causally effective - in some scenarios it chooses the preferred basis, in others the MIND selects one of many possibilities, but to say that it is epiphenomenal is very stupid. This is exactly to what the neural net theory will lead since all the function is performed by the neurons, and the mind is not causal "emergent phenomenon". Please someone to correct this wrong comment. At least the author should know that one of the basic features of Q-mind is that the consciousness is always causal. Danko Georgiev MD 10:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  If QM Mind applied then consciousness would appear to be epiphenomenal 

message: Wow!  You guys sure delete extremely fast any civil discussion you don't agree with even if its a good effort!! A true scientific mind doesn't do this and you're just following in lockstep with the growing control freakisness denying the rest of us true freedom of speech. The freedom here is a mere illusion and I admit you fooled me well.  You took out in moments a very valuable insight into the topic.  
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.101.236.168 (talk • contribs) 
: You say "You guys...". Why do you use the plural? --GangofOne 03:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  An explanation 

message: I have edited the topmost text on the page to more accurately reflect what people who come to the Quantum Mind hypothesis believe in, and why they come to it.  First and foremost, any encyclopedic reference must clearly state the premise of the topic matter for each Topic or entry.  If we fail to do this with Wikipedia, we will have done others a disservice by creating a useless document.  In my own writing, I am clearly on the wave-like team, rather than being a champion of the particle-like aspect in all things having to do with consciousness, but in my Wiki editing I hope to accurately reflect the consensus, as it pertains to each topic I edit.  I want to be objective, and I want to give the edge to real Science and accepted fact, but with a topic like quantum consciusness we must at least present what it is clearly, and why its adherents believe as they do.  If we can do that from a Neutral Point Of View, we have carried out our mandate in a satisfying way.  If we can't be informative, on the other hand, Wikipedia serves no purpose.
JonathanD 20:42, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Updates Made to Header

message: I am sorry to add to the rather heated debate on this article, but feel it should not be left in its present form.
My first comment refers to para. 3 of the introduction, where the main line of argument is stated to be, 'human thought is said to be sound, yet non-algorithmic.'
This idea appears to spring from Roger Penrose's first book 'The Emperor's New Mind. It is therefore relavant to Penrose but does not appear to have been advanced by the other exponents of QM.
The article and the subsequent discussion comment are also too sweeping with regard to what Penrose said. He claimed that the Godel theorem meant that humans were capable of non-algorithmic judgments. He did not claim that all human thoughts were non-algorithmic.
My main problem, however, is with the criticisms section. Criticism one is fair enough so far as it goes in pointing out the liklehood of very rapid decoherence in the brain. However, it seems that a neutral article, should mention that Hameroff has suggested ways in which the microtubules could be screened and Danko Georgiev has offered an alternative model in this discussion page.
The second para of criticism states the increasingly prevalent view in modern physics that decoherence takes place by itself without the need for the conscious observer and equipment of the traditional Copenhagen view. This may be a problem for some QM ideas, such as Henry Stapp's, which appears to require a conscious observer in the brain, but it is not a criticism of QM as a whole. Penrose in particular is very critical of Copenhagen, and Orch OR proposes a different view of the wave function collapse for physics in general, quite apart from consciousness theory.
The third section of criticism suffers from the assumption that QM models have to drive the structure of neuron assemblies. The Hameroff model, at least appears to look at the microtubules and condensates as a partly parallel system communicating via gap junctions. Yasue also appears to have an over arching model.
The sentence about epiphenomenism should be a fourth section as it doesn't really follow from the other. The idea has more often been tied to more conventional theories of consciousness. There are arguments the whole idea, which I won't go into here. However if QM did produce it doesn't constitute a criticism as such.
I don't understand the reason for the final 'Consciousness causes collapse' section, as this has been essentially dismissed by the second section of criticism relative to decoherence. Persephone19 19.56 6 October 2006 (UTC)
corrected section header - this discussion JonathanD 06:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms of Quantum Mind Article

message: Discussion here
--Awesome 03:20, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction 

message: This edit seems to have added text that is also at http://www.thymos.com/tat/consc3.html <BR>--JWSchmidt 01:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  copyright violation? 

message: This refers to the material than can be found via the contradiction note. The definition of a scientific theory as opposed to pseudoscience or metaphysics appears to be that the theory can be falsified by experiment or observation. Penrose/Hameroff have suggested at least 19 ways of testing or falsifying their theory. In principle, it should be possible to show that Bose-Einstein condensates do not exist in the brain, in which case it's back to the drawing board for Penrose and Hameroff. But at least it's not pseudoscience. Persephone19 16:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bose-Einstein condensate says that a Bose-Einstein condensate exists at low temperatures. How can a Bose-Einstein condensate exist in a brain? --JWSchmidt 19:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply to Contradiction

message: Hameroff suggests that the microtubules could be screened by the ordering of water and actin near their outer surface.The condensates are suggested to exist in the hollow core of the microtubules. Experiments are supposed to have artificially induced quantum coherence in the brain for periods of up to 25ms, which is interesting in relation to the so-called 40Hz thalamus-cortex oscillation seen as a likley correlate of consciousness by more conventional players such as Crick and Koch. 80.194.237.97 10:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Experiments are supposed to have artificially induced quantum coherence in the brain for periods of up to 25ms" <-- This is our chance to start a numbered reference list for the article. Please cite a peer-reviewed source for this scientific claim. --JWSchmidt 13:49, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "The discussion about this is on Hammeroff's web site, www.quantumconsciousness.org, under the archive for the former e-mail discussion group for October 2000. The experiments referred done by WS Warren and others at Princeton and Pennsylvania, mainly in the 1990s, were to do with brain scanning rather than consciousness as such. They may not involve entanglement and definitely don't involve the microtubules, but they were seen as significant in demonstrating the possibility of coherence over extended time in the brain. The references given by Hammeroff are as follows:
Generation of impossible cross peaks. (1993) Richter, Lee, Warren, He Q Science 262: 2005-2009
Imaging with intermolecular quantum coherence (1995) Richter, Lee, Warren, He Q Science 267: 654-657
Homogeneous NMR Spectra (1996) Vathyam, Lee, Warren (1996) Science 272: 92-96
Image contrast enhancement and zero quantum coherences (1998) Warren et al, Science 281: 247-251
Intermolecular zero-quantum coherence imaging in the human brain (2000), Rizi et al, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 43: 627-632 Persephone19 13:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: "The main description of the idea appears to be Hameroff's book, Ultimate Computing, Elsevier Science Publishers (1987)  but can be downloaded free from www.quantumconsciousness.org. There is a long list of references and bibliography. The ones most into coherence in living tissue are probably groups of papers by both E. Del Guidice and H. Frohlich. In addition, James Donald on www.eff.org has an article mainly on the problems of perception and quick decision making relative to classical as opposed to quantum computing. Daniel Dennett has an essay, the Frame Problem of AI in his book Brainchildren, which describes essentially the same problem. Persephone19 20:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest that we start with a single peer-reviewed article that explains how quantum coherence plays a role in brain function. --JWSchmidt 05:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "I doubt that such an article exists. Hameroff was preceded by H. Frohlich and E. Del Guidice. The latter with others has an article in 'Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, 24: pp199-210, 2005. He argues that classical physics has a problem with the second law of thermodynamics in describing living matter, and he argues for a description using Quantum ElectroDynamics. He also describes how he thinks water would form into ordered layers along a protein chain. This appears relevant to the suggested shielding of microtubules. The article can be obtained from www.taylorandfrancis.metapress.com, although unfortunately there is a payment for this. Persephone19 20:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Condensates in the brain 

message: No clue why, but someone created a temporary page for this topic, for which the article already exists.  If anything is salvageable from here, it needs merging into this article from those who actually understand the content. --Czj 02:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temp. page needs merging, somehow