Talk:Quantum brain dynamics
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Hello. To whom it may concern: I've focused the article on published work on QBD. I've removed text from the article which was dedicated to described a personal theory. QBD is a seriously proposed theory, and it is suitable to have a Wikipedia article describing that theory. However, original research is not suitable for Wikipedia. That said, the article is very brief on the current status of QBD, and it would be very good to extend it with further discussion, and citations. If I'm not mistaken, Roger Penrose has published some stuff about QBD; the article should cite that. The article can also benefit from basic editing to make the concepts clearer to the casual reader. Happy editing, Wile E. Heresiarch 21:31, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
- Roger Penrose advocates a different quantum mind theory, although I believe he mentions QBD in his books. Mporter 00:23, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I wonder what the copyright status of this text is? The full article seems to be at [1] (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001355/01/NQ.pdf) (pdf), and at PhilSci, I found the following in their policies:
- • All documents available from this server may be protected under U.S. and foreign copyright laws, and may not be reproduced without permission.
If it is the author himself who contributed the text this is of course cool, but otherwise we need his explicit permission to license the text by GFDL. — Sverdrup 14:14, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
There is, at the current time, no reason to believe that quantumn mechanics has anything to do with the human brain or indeed any neurological system in any lifeform, and to believe otherwise is wishful thinking, possibly trying to avoid the consequences of determinism on "free will". This sounds a lot like pseudoscience to me. Shouldn't it have a warning and/or disclaimer to that effect? --80.219.63.77 20:06, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Do not hurry to claim that all this is pseudo-science! I wished the things in neuroscience were clear as in the middle of the 20th century, but there are some problems that the neural net theory cannot solve (here I will only mention (i) the hard problem of experience posed by Nagel in 1974 and (ii) the binding problem posed by James in 1890). What about the free will and determinism, if I had to vote for banning a theory as pseudo-science it will be exactly determinism. If one wants to really understand the Universe he/she should study quantum physics. -- Danko_Georgiev_MD 23:55, 2 April 2004 (+2 GMT)
- Your writeup is far from NPOV. Some choice quotes: "Quantum mechanics is believed to be capable of explaining the enigma of consciousness" - Sez you. "This revolutionary theory was originated by Umezawa (Ricciardi & Umezawa 1967, Stuart et. al. 1978, 1979) in a very elegant and general framework" - revolutionary? elegant? Besides this, your article is incoherent and virtually inaccessible for a layman reader, which defeats the purpose of an encyclopedia. Finally, your quantum theory still does not explain consciousness. Consciousness as a phenomenon is likely to remain unexplainable, unless two conditions are met: 1)the proposed theory makes testable predictions on how to precisely manipulate states of consciousness 2)explanation provides a non-symbolic essence of consciousness. You call determinism a pseudo-science, but without determinism, science wouldn't have advanced far enough to reveal the quantum world. Your every experiment (and the equipment you use) *relies* on the assumption of inductive logic and the principle of determinism holding true -- Gyan 14:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)-
- Hey, Gyan, calm down. We need professionals, and we will fix the article to 'cyclopedia style in time. We can't teach everybody everything about NPOV and stuff in no time. Look below at my comment. — Sverdrup 14:17, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Hello, Danko, how excellent that you wish to contribute to wikipedia on a topic you know very well. We love to get experts reviewing the articles! :-) Now, you see Wikipedia is not a source of primary research, so we will have to transform the current article a little, to be less paper-like and more encyclopedic. But I see no wrong in your contribution!
- I wonder: am I completely lost, or is it OK for me to add a reference to Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind?
- — Sverdrup 13:32, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Oh, and an additional note: I'll have to ask you to sort out the References not relating to the particular content of the article. To declare sources is good, but The list is currently certainly in excess for this short encyclopedic overview. Thank you! — Sverdrup 13:36, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See also Quantum mind. Merge? — Sverdrup 13:57, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
O.K. I think that Q-mind and QBD can be merged, but there are a lot of versions of Q-mind theories and I stick to "hardest to understand" of all these theories (QBD). Indeed it is nothing but application of QFT to brain - a lot of mathematical concepts and calculations that I cannot still follow in their depth. The biological part however was not just "shrouded" with mystery, but also wrong in several points. So I was able to do a lot of neuro-molecular updates and even predict certain phenomena. If I have to consider myself "not having neutral point of view" then I would like to note that I indeed will try to experimentally disprove Q-mind [not only QBD]. I am one of the few scientists that follows Karl Popper's philosophy - "I cannot prove Q-mind, but surely I can experimentally disprove it". The experiment that I am currently organizing will have the strange property to challenge the neural net theories of mind, too.
What about Penrose's book it is interesting, but I still have to check the OR idea mathematically because a strange thing occurs. If Q-mind interacts with the environment [brain] it decoheres but also exchanges information via this interaction. Thus in the dissipative QBD that I discuss in the Wikipedia entry - Q-mind controls brain and inputs info from the brain via decoherence. In Orch OR Penrose & Hameroff need gravitational self-collapse and need the microtubules to be isolated. But this gravitational decoherence leads to destruction of info that disappears as if in a black hole [the info is not communicated to the environment] so I do not see way the microtubule to control the brain in Orch OR, because the "output" info as if seems irreversibly lost in the gravitational collapse [indeed the inspiration of Penrose is exactly the action of gravity in the black holes]. So I consider the idea Penrose to be linked to QBD not "good shot" untill all this is explained.
p.s. Feel free to modify this entry! Of course that it should be in encyclopaedic style and as simply written as possible -- Danko_Georgiev_MD 3 April 2004 (0:50 h, +2GMT)
Should Greg Egans series of SF short stories and books related to the brain as quantum processing be noted here? -- till we *) 20:26, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Copied from VfD:
- No vote. Random Googling convinces me that Quantum brain dynamics itself is not obviously nonsense or pseudoscience and there are a considerable number of websites, articles, and books, and one, in particular—"Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An Introduction (Advances in Consciousness Research, V. 3) by Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue (Editor) $49.95, Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co.; (December 1995) ISBN: 1556191839..." well, that's not a vanity press. The article itself is incomprehensible and I doubt that it's a good presentation. Probably the Right Thing would be for someone to replace the article with a short but accurate stub. Dpbsmith 13:27, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Reply:
This particular book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1556191839/103-6273743-4093413?v=glance#product-details) may or may not have anything to do with the theory we are discussing here. I don't have a feeling for an Amazon ranking of 462,646 - how many sales might that be? It does put it in the slowest (monthly) update bracket, but that's not surprising. At one extreme this book may validate the article, at the other it may share only the name. Most likely it would provide the information needed to write a good stub.
Interesting that it doesn't seem to be among the 102 references quoted by the paper on which this article is currently based (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001355/01/NQ.pdf) (PDF, almost a megabyte long), and also that the delivery time quoted by Amazon is consistent with it being part of the publisher's print on demand service (http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/show_html.cgi?file=/jbp/ordhow.htm#pod).
But unless someone is prepared to obtain the book and write the stub, I don't see how knowing of its existence helps us. Happy to be proved wrong, why don't you have a go at the stub yourself, using the information from your Googling? Or at least, add the links you find most helpful here. Andrewa 18:10, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
VfD
Article was listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion Apr 16 to Apr 21 2004; was kept as consensus was not reached within the time limit. Discussion:
Begin pasted discussion:
From Cleanup: Quantum brain dynamics - long but hard to understand, pseudo-science vfd?
- Keep (for now) - Is it backed up by any other source? The text sounds like a legitimate connection of the two. - Tεxτurε 17:42, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. A valid topic. Currently undergoing a paper -> encyclopedia style transformation. Will need cleanup, but will become something. ✏ Sverdrup 00:42, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. Although requires intro saying that this science is dangerously close to pseudoscience. Mikkalai 02:50, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Looks like original research at best, crankery at worst. Comments?
No vote yet.Wile E. Heresiarch 04:53, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC) - Comment: Agree. My guess is quackery, but it's a guess at this stage. The article is useless as is, most of the text is lifted straight from this paper (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001355/01/NQ.pdf) (PDF, almost a megabyte long) by the contributor, all of whose Wikipedia edits to date are to promote this article. Cleanup has been tried and has failed, the first paragraph still says the theory is proposed but not by who, the second is the introductory sentences straight from the paper and pure POV supporting the theory. Perhaps the author could write a Wikipedia article on Nambu-Goldstone bosons to help establish his credibility? The paper and article both refer to them, a layman's article should be easy for someone on top of the field, and they certainly exist (in that anything in quantum mechanics does) so that would be a good contribution. Andrewa 06:40, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Keep. Cribcage 06:43, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Either delete because it is nonsence or send it to Clean Up to turn it into something understandable. At the moment the language is so complex that I cannot judge the validity of the article and that means that it is not working as an Encyclopedia article; it fails to inform. ping 08:02, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Reads like something written to "baffle with bullshit", as the saying goes. Lasing water molecules? Ordered liquid water? Quantum entanglement of proteins? Photons with mass? This is pseudoscientific nonsense. Delete. -- Cyrius|✎ 08:27, Apr 17, 2004 (UTC)
- Delete. Whatever the value of the content (if any), it is completely unreadable in its current form. Tannin 08:36, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Delete: original research, personal agenda, speculative theory. User:Danko Georgiev MD has no edits aside from promoting QBD; he has pasted QBD stuff into Bose-Einstein statistics and microtubule. Aside from a conference poster [2] (http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/quantum-mind2/authors.html), Georgiev's work, which is largely the basis of his WP article, has not been peer reviewed; Georgiev has posted several papers to archives which are not peer reviewed (arxiv.org, philsci-archive.pitt.edu, cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk). It is quite clear that Georgiev views WP as yet another vehicle for promotion of his pet theory. Wile E. Heresiarch 14:50, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Delete. Agree. We have given it a fair hearing, and the silence is deafening. Andrewa 12:54, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Delete. -- Decumanus | Talk 14:58, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- No vote. Random Googling convinces me that Quantum brain dynamics itself is not obviously nonsense or pseudoscience and there are a considerable number of websites, articles, and books, and one, in particular—"Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An Introduction (Advances in Consciousness Research, V. 3) by Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue (Editor) $49.95, Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co.; (December 1995) ISBN: 1556191839..." well, that's not a vanity press. The article itself is incomprehensible and I doubt that it's a good presentation. Probably the Right Thing would be for someone to replace the article with a short but accurate stub. Dpbsmith 13:27, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Comment: See the article's talk page for some observations about this book, they got a bit long to go here. Andrewa 18:12, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
End pasted discussion
What about the book of Jibu & Yasue from 1995, I have used all their original papers presenting the mathematical formalism, so indeed the mathematics is not invented by me. I have never read their 1995 book, but I think it is with popular content, and its real scientific value is not so great. I also have based my 2004 paper on their work from 1997 and it is clear that it was not available in 1995 (even for Jibu & Yasue).
Considering that I was accused in unfair using of Wikipedia I would like the page to be deleted. If one wants to create another page with the same name I would like to ask him not to include my work there.
p.s. All cross-listings were removed by me.
Regards, D.G