Thread

1. RagnarD · 1790489197 · focus · HN ↗

   So wearying to keep seeing people talk about biology, including the human brain, as though it were guided by Newtonian physics. No. All of the matter and energy in the universe is understood via quantum mechanics. Chemistry would make zero sense without it. "Biology might not be quantum" is therefore just ignorant at best.

   1. armchairhacker · 1790496007 · focus · HN ↗

      Really the question is, when will we discover a biological phenomena that can’t be explained by Newtonian physics, including the earlier “wrong” chemistry models?

      1. griffzhowl · 1790510775 · focus · HN ↗

         Photosynthesis was found to rely on a coherent superposition a few years ago

         1. alehlopeh · 1790536314 · focus · HN ↗

            Apparently that finding was itself found to be incorrect. The article doesn’t specifically debunk coherence as the mechanism behind photosynthesis, but it does imply that the real mechanism was discovered to be something else.
   2. dekhn · 1790543072 · focus · HN ↗

      The real question is whether biology exploits a subset of special quantum phenomena (entanglement, coherence, superposition). Just about everybody in the field acknowledges that biology, being made of chemistry and physics, is "quantum", but in a "boring" way (just the energy calculations), but the bar to convincingly demonstrate exploitation of special phenomena is much higher.

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