[extropy-chat] NEF tensor (was Psychogenic Fields)

[The Avantguardian]

--- Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:

> 
> The Avantguardian wrote:
> > I agree. It is truly bizarre that you can get such
> > macroscopic quantum behavior out of cells. I would
> not
> > believe in high temperature quantum coherence in
> > living organisms if I hadn't seen the
> photomicrographs
> > and published work of Mae-Wan Ho et. al. It's
> almost
> > as if cells were some kind of crazy aqueous
> mixture of
> > high-temperature bose-einstein condensates.
> 
> Hmm, checking out a bit about that character leaves
> me with a distinctly
> bad taste in the mouth. Rave reviews from new age
> and deep ecology
> magazines, very little science on homepage but a lot
> of science activism
> against biotech and nanotech (including the claim
> that nanomachines can't
> work because of quantum fuzziness, which we know to
> be wrong).
> 
> The only Pubmed citation was about energy production
> and has three self
> citations (to what appears to be a popular science
> book!) in the
> *abstract*.
>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed
> (ah, there are more citations, I was wrong. But much
> of the other sounds
> equally suspicious: acupuncture is explained through
> interaction with the
> "continuum of liquid crystalline collagen fibers
> that make up the bulk of
> the connective tissues" forming a body-soul).
> 
> This sounds like typical cosmythology intended to
> keep people happy about
> their existing beliefs.
> 
> So far there is no generally accepted macroscopic
> quantum effects in
> biology. There is indeed no shortage of people
> claiming there are, but
> just like quantum superpositions their claims tend
> to evaporate when
> people do an independent analysis.

Obviously I don't care much for her Luddite politics.
But I am not one of those people that believe the laws
of nature care about a person's politics. Have you
found anything using polarized light microscopy that
contradicts her findings? Damn. There are times when I
think that even in science if you want something done
right you have to do it yourself. When did science
become as filled with "noise" as politics is? I
thought the whole point of the peer review process was
to weed out bullshit. It is becoming truly ridiculous.
 


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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