Comment by PaulRobinson
5 days ago
We know that the brain is a structure that works through electrochemical reactions. Synapses transmit signals sent by axons to neurons. We can test this. We can measure it. There's nothing else going on that we can describe using known science.
Ah, we might say, maybe there is an unknown science - we did not know about so much before, like electricity, like X-Rays, like quantum physics, and then we did, and the World changed.
The difference is that we observed something that science could not explain, and then we found the new science that explained it, and a new science was born.
It's pretty clear to me - but you may know more - that we can explain all brain activity through known science. It might be hard to think of us as nothing more than a bunch of electrochemical reactions in a real-world reinforcement learning system, but that's what we are: there's no gap that needs new science, is there?
Scalp-recorded EEG does not measure action potentials, it can only measure the graded potentials of basically one type of neuron (pyramidal cells) in the cortex, which is a really tiny percentage of both neurons and electrical activity in the brain. Additionally, there is also the various roles neurotransmitters play in the brain, etc., and glial cells seem to also play an important role. So, it’s definitely not the case that there aren’t any gaps that need new science, and even if there weren’t, it’s a pretty big stretch from there to decoding all brain activity solely through the electrical component.
You're probably right, but that doesn't mean GP is wrong, just that they need to state their thesis more carefully. There's more science to be done there, but there's no reason to believe that new fundamental laws of physics are required to explain the brain.
It seems neatly organized to say "that we can explain all brain activity" and yet not necessarily bound exactly what is "brain activity." I think prior to recent research [1] people would have concluded that memory was solely the domain of the brain. But that sense/setting/environment would allow Clive Wearing to circumvent amnesia to access skills otherwise unavailable to his conscious mind [2] should raise questions of that understanding.
[1] https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2024/novemb...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing
Clive Wearing is some SCP-level nightmare fuel but at least he apparently isn't in constant distress each time.
No, none of this is settled. We cannot adequately explain brain function with current science.
There have been studies this year implying that some brain functions rely on quantum interactions.
> There have been studies this year implying that some brain functions rely on quantum interactions.
I'm not in the camp of "the brain is solved science", but come on. All of chemistry depends on quantum interactions and that didn't stop us from understanding a lot of it. It just means we're solving a different set of equations.
It's a big leap to go from "brain electrochemistry is described by quantum mechanics" to "the essence of consciousness / human soul is hiding in the quantum realm and therefore can't be measured or replicated".
> the essence of consciousness / human soul is hiding in the quantum realm and therefore can't be measured or replicated
I agree with you in rejecting this hypothesis. The point isn't that it's unmeasurable. Just that it should be clear, given we can't completely model a brain, that it's not currently measured or replicated.
There is a group proceeding on the assumption that the limiting factor is computation. I'm sceptical, given how badly we're failing at modelling simpler neural clusters. (Counterpoint: we're still shit at modelling a proton. That, too, may be computationally restricted.)
Two years ago we discovered astrocytes release glutamate, a neurotransmitter [1]. The same year we discovered creatine is also a neurotransmitter. We don't yet know what are the parts to critically include in a brain model, and which can be simplified. Do the number of neurotransmitters matter to the unit? Do the spins on their electrons? When? To what degree?
That is what I think GP is getting at by suggesting quantum effects. Less voodoo. More that we don't know what we don't know, and that which we don't know is vaster than popular science suggests.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/breakthrough-brain-cell-discovery-s...
> We know that the brain is a structure that works through electrochemical reactions. Synapses transmit signals sent by axons to neurons. We can test this. We can measure it. There's nothing else going on that we can describe using known science
But what we can describe using known science doesn't describe the system. That doesn't mean the vacuum is voodoo. It's just a strong hint something more is going on. (Like the photoelectric effect.)
We know more about dark energy and matter than the dark essence that separates our leading electrochemical models from consciousness.
Can we? We can only see whatever we can measure with the tools we currently have, which are based on the knowledge we currently have. Who's to say there isn't something out there we haven't discovered yet? There's more than enough we still don't understand in many domains of science
> Who's to say there isn't something out there we haven't discovered yet
Occam's razor? We should work with as few assumptions as possible to get a model with the largest scope. Otherwise we get stuck with a hard to falsify mess.
Occam's razor is just a search heuristic when we try to find something in the woods at night blindfolded. It's a rule of thumb that says "when there is so many possibilities to explore, start with the simplest ones first, otherwise we'll surely get lost." But it's a mistake to use the Occam's razor as a law of nature and think that if we can't see anything in the dark over there, then there must be nothing there.
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Yeah, but "we've been discovering new things for all of history, so there's likely more to discover" seems to a pretty fair assumption.
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considering our current physics can explain the vast majority of physical interactions in the universe, it just seems unlikely that there is some new fundamental force in the universe that helps explain how the brain works yet has no perceivable effect on the rest of the physical material of the universe.
Conceivably someone has said this at some point in every generation.
I think there is new science we need first. The brain very likely uses quantum processes. We don't understand quantum mechanics yet.
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