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

[Anders Sandberg]

The Avantguardian wrote:
> 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?

Polarized light microscopy is widely used in science, but it has nothing
to do with "coherent energy fields" and biological quantum mechanics
beyond the normal energy and quantum aspects of optics. There is no
evidence for Ho's claim that living beings use quantum superpositions to
move large amounts of energy around quickly.

While my previous post was a bit ad hominem, I do think that extraordinary
claims require extraordinary proof. If someone claims that macroscopic
quantum states are important in organisms they better demonstrate it. It
shouldn't be accepted because it would be so cool. As long as there is no
experiment that rules out the simpler (and well tested) model that living
organisms do not use macro quantum states Occhan's razor tells us to keep
to the "classical" theory.

>From my understanding of her writings one of the claims is that the
benefits of these macrostates is that they can produce large effects with
very small causes. But this makes the noise problem even worse - how do
you prevent random pinpricks from redirecting the "energy fields" fatally?
Normal biochemical regulation theory has nice, tested answers to that in
the case of chemical signals (various amplification and transduction
cascades, levels of feedback inhibition), but invoking quantum physics
means throwing out the possibility of using these solutions.

> Damn. There are times when I
> think that even in science if you want something done
> right you have to do it yourself.

EXACTLY! Far too many people just repeat papers they have read and do not
think about the implications, even less repeat the experiments or do new
critical tests.


Now I'm off to actually do a bit of experimentation myself (OK, the data
processing part - but there was a rat involved at the start). No sign of
anything quantum in these brain slices at least (but voltage sensitive
dyes - wow! that is cool quantum mechanics!).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University