Cells, visualization, and quantum consciousness nonsense

I'm a big fan of computer visualizations in science, both for the general public and for science students themselves (researchers, too). One project that I've been hoping to get off the ground soon is to build virtual worlds in special relativistic and quantum mechanical domains to help in building the modern "physical intuition" that all us students seem to lack.

Anyway, a couple videos caught my eye that were linked on Brain Windows: I enjoyed the videos by Drew Berry immensely (see Aptosis), as well as Harvard's The Inner Life of the Cell. Many more videos are available at the main site. Berry's videos were especially nice because of the use of environmental sound: there is a lot of useful information that can be effectively transmitted by sound. Accurate or not (and it's not, but neither is the visual information, since the scales of these videos are well below 400nm), it immerses the viewer in the environment.

One thing that kind of got me chuckling was the visualization of cytoskeletal microtubules and cytoplasm ions. Cytoskeletons are a nice modelling problem in physics (and under a lot of research at that), but I also came across them a lot in some light cog sci reading on quantum consciousness, or quantum computation in the brain (sometimes people, especially researchers in the field, confuse the two).

Yes, light cog sci reading. I could put the sum of physics in quantum consciousness theories on a napkin. I've seen two theories dominating the "literature" in this "field", with some overlap. The first is called Quantum Brain Dynamics (QBD), which asserts that applying the wave equations to the water in the brain creates a model for EEG signals while also creating quantum effects of wavefunction collapse and superposition. Then people decided a more convincing, less pseudoscientific mechanism for quantum processes than "water, ordinary water (laced with a healthy dose of LSD)" would be that computation occurs in the cytoskeleton of brain cells.

I won't say anything about the physics, because all the math that they do is probably fine enough, just not very interesting and certainly not enough to draw any conclusions from. But many good scientists (key example being Roger Penrose, a proponent of quantum consciousness theories) can fall victim to biasing their opinions based on how they think things should be. In spite of there being no reason for us to suspect quantum mechanics plays a role in cognition (no evidence for humans being capable of quantum computation, for example, and plenty of evidence that classical mechanics can model many cognitive processes), QBDers invoke it because consciousness is "exotic". I suppose it's an important idea to play around in just because any idea is worth investigating, but without even a mechanism for communication of quantum states between cells in the brain, the attention is very unwarranted. I shouldn't even be calling it a theory, since it has no basis in experimental or theoretical principles and makes no predictions.

Also, I will punch the next person who tells me to watch What The Bleep Do We Know?

Epistemology, logic, and a quantum universe

I stumbled on this old blog post about people who argue that not reducing something to self-evident truths is equivalent to having a foundationless theory of circular logic that doesn't explain anything.

Philosophically, we observe something nice about the universe: symmetry. That is, if I observe some kind of process, then set up the same process some time later (or in some other galaxy somewhere) and observe it again, there won't be any difference. Observed phenomena are invariant in space and time: our universe is consistent. This is great because it gives us the power of prediction - without it, Tom Hanks could never say that "Tomorrow, the sun will rise!"

We need that to do anything in science, and, as I argued in a philosophy essay, symmetry combined with entropy could give rise to deductive logic (a "learned" trait among animal species, perhaps not instinctual?). That gives us the power of evidence and hence experimental science. Maybe other people perceive a different reality (hell, with enough shrooms, you can't count on anything being consistent in the world), so as I said in the last post, the question of who's right is open.

The point I want to bring up is the origin of the universe, because such a scenario requires two assumptions (regardless of the theory used to generate it): quantum fluctuations and symmetry. Symmetry allows, by Noether's Theorem, all the a priori laws of mathematical physics (such as conservation of energy) to hold. But how are we so confident in the quantum nature of reality? I'd just look to the axioms of QFT for inspiration: anything that's not forbidden is required, or, you might say, "Sorry, but while you weren't looking, everything that could possibly happen, happened!"

I imagine the pre-universe to be completely undefined (because any definition means something specific is there), so of course there's symmetry in every metric you want (in any number of dimensions). Now it's just a matter of having something appear out of nowhere, and we have mountains of experimental evidence supporting the notion of a quantum reality. It's philosophically "nice" to have a free lunch appear in a blank-slate universe.

It's not a Q.E.D. moment, but I keep wondering what's Latin for "From nothing, everything," or perhaps more appropriately, "Science: it works, bitches!"

Note my possible circular logic: we observe symmetry, incorporate it in our logical thought, and then assert that it must always exist.

A question about life, the universe, and everything

Do regular people know that we're pretty sure what the origin of the universe is? Like, not the Big Bang - that's observational fact - but rather, the origin of the Big Bang and everything that we see and know? Do you realize that we don't need God as even a deistic first cause anymore (though we may need him for other stuff, as I'll explain later)?

I'll explain it all in the next journal post, but I'm curious what non-physicists have to say on this. Do you know that we know, and do you want to know?

(If you're curious and want to Wikipedia it already, I'm referring to Cosmic Inflation, which is a string-theoryless, Hawkingless, and thus very successful model)

Stephen Hawking is to blame for all science misconceptions

A couple weeks ago, I was discussing what I do with a friend. After the usual "wow, physics, that's intense" reaction, he asked how it was going. I told him how classes were becoming annoying, and he said...

"Yeah, I guess at that level it's mostly philosophy anyway."

What??? Is that what people think about modern theoretical physics? Well, I think if you did a properly-formatted survey, the answer would be yes. I doubt there are many people who know that all theoretical physics is applied mathematics and that facts and hypotheses are all in the equations. Who's to blame? who's responsible for this horrible misunderstanding of the most fundamental of sciences? Who wrote bestseller after bestseller implying that unfounded hypotheses in string theory were scientific fact, and that scientific facts could be effectively reduced to cute allegories without a single equation ever printed?

Stephen Hawking.

See - tech - astronomy

Bonus points for who gets the title of this post, a reference to one of the greatest movies of all time (with the greatest Sydney Poitier role of all time!).

So I finished teaching the last AST104 lab on Thursday, which was quite a lame but quick one. It's amazing how much we're able to cram into these non-science kids' heads in a 6-week summer course, but my hope is that they come out of this with two things: first that they appreciate the artistic beauty of what's in the universe, and second that they have some understanding of how science works. For most of these people, this will be the first, last, and only science course they will take in college, so it's absolutely critical that they get particularly the second point.

Now I love astronomy. Always have. But I'm also a physicist, so it makes it easy for me to appreciate it. How about the non-scientists who can get into this stuff - what motivates you? What is it about astronomy that you find interesting, that you'd like to learn more about? The students have a week left of class and then they're done with science for good, but many of them will still be coming to observation nights with me and turning in labs, so I'd like to be able to give them some final word to take home.

And as far as the tech goes, a college education cannot be complete without learning computer operation and basic programming. There is nothing more fundamental to the understanding of logic and scientific thought, and nothing more useful to every field. Programming should be a part of every student's computer education, especially since most students don't need basic computer operation in the first place since they probably know more about them than their teachers.