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"the brain may very well be a quantum computer"

This is the minority view in neuroscience.

> In quantum terms each neuron is an essentially classical object. Consequently quantum noise in the brain is at such a low level that it probably doesn't often alter, except very rarely, the critical mechanistic behaviour of sufficient neurons to cause a decision to be different than we might otherwise expect... —Michael Clive Price




You may be right about that, and I don't think the quantum point is essential to what I wrote above.

But... I do tend to sympathize with the minority view here. The problem is that I don't think the majority are looking at the complete system. Yes, the macroscopic activation and conduction behavior of neurons probably can be modeled classically. But that behavior, as well as things like where the axons and dendrites connect, is governed at the meta level by the genetic regulatory networks and metabolic machinery of neurons and their support cells. All that involves at least thousands of genes and a lot of interactions that may very well extend down to the quantum level.

It's a living cell that grows and changes over time, not a simple gate that can be modeled by an equation. Modeling a neuron like that is like modeling a star as a single point source of light because it looks like that from far away. You can model the way stars look through a telescope like that, but that does not accurately describe what a star is.




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