r/philosophy • u/eins_meme • 2d ago
Your Consciousness Isn't Binary Code; It's a Quantum Probability Field Waiting to Collapse Into Experience
https://medium.com/@meymeysbiz/quantum-cognition-beyond-binary-understanding-3951fb19412f[removed] — view removed post
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u/Anthrillien 2d ago
Computing metaphors were never really true reflections of the way our brains worked, but adding quantum babble into the mix obfuscates things further. Not to mention there's no philosophy here - the questions asked are qell within the realm of neuroscience. There are absolutely questions around consciousness, cognition and self that only philosophy can answer, but this isn't it chief.
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u/kompootor 2d ago
I believe this also makes zero sense in neuroscience. There seems to be a lot of references to some math concepts in neuron models and quantum mechanics but seemingly not understanding it, as just that whole section comparing the two is rather nonsensical. (Skimming a bit elsewhere, the explanations of quantum mechanics terms is also pretty messy.)
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u/Anthrillien 2d ago
Interesting. I don't imagine it does make much sense in neuroscience, but as far as I can tell, it's still within the realm of stuff that they can answer better than a philosopher can.
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u/kompootor 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is not meant to shit on a random blog post (although medium is a site where bloggers ask people for money behind a paywall, so I'll feel free to shit away), but to perhaps clarify an understanding of any empirical science.
The subject of the blog post, to my understanding as much as I was going to read of it, is not within the scope of neuroscience (which I have studied and research only a tiny bit in) nor biophysics (my jam) nor quantum physics (etc), nor even cognitive science (from what I remember of attending the colloquia). I could not identify a meaningful question there that was to be asked in any empirical science (aside from the partial references to what has sorta been done in those fields), so if it's also not philosophy then I dunno what to tell you.
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u/eins_meme 2d ago
You raise some fair points, and honestly, I had similar skepticism before reading up on this research a few years back - so if you want more context, here some clearer arguments based on my research if you are interested:
Yeah, the computing metaphor for brains has been problematic from the start. Robert Epstein's piece "The Empty Brain" really hit home for me - I remember reading it and thinking finally someone's saying it!; Our brains aren't running programs or storing memory files; they're messy, dynamic biological systems constantly reorganizing themselves. I think the article acknowledges this limitation, but I could have been clearer about it.
But I gotta push back on the idea that this is all "well within neuroscience." Look, I took neuroscience courses in uni, and there's this persistent gap between neural mechanisms and why we actually have subjective experiences that nobody in the lab could ever answer. Philosophers like Levine and Chalmers call this "the hard problem" for a reason - it's not just about mapping which neurons fire during consciousness, but why firing neurons create subjective experience at all. No amount of fMRI studies seems to touch that question.
The most interesting stuff to me isn't the speculation about quantum processes physically happening in neurons (which yeah, seems pretty far-fetched given the warm/wet environment of the brain). It's the experimental findings showing that quantum probability mathematics actually predicts human decision-making better than classical probability in specific situations. I was shocked when I first read Pothos & Busemeyer's work - like, these aren't fringe researchers, they're publishing in mainstream psych journals with solid methodology.
Take the classic "Linda problem" - you know, where people judge "Linda is a feminist bank teller" as more likely than just "Linda is a bank teller" (which is mathematically impossible in classical probability). I used to think people were just bad at logic, but their answers follow quantum probability math almost perfectly. That's weird as hell, but it's been replicated dozens of times.
More recently, there's this paper by Cervantes & Dzhafarov showing human cognition has this property called "contextuality" - basically our judgments depend on question order and context in ways that violate classical probability bounds but match quantum math. Again, this doesn't mean our neurons are doing quantum computing - just like using statistical mechanics to model crowds doesn't mean humans are actually gas particles! It's the mathematical structure that matters.
I completely agree we need scientific rigor here. I should not have jumbled together the speculative stuff about actual quantum processes in the brain (for which, yeah, skepticism is valid) with the solid experimental evidence about quantum mathematical models working better than classical ones for predicting human behavior. Thing is: the latter isn't "babble" - it's mainstream cognitive science with math that checks out.
The neuroscience section definitely needed more clarity about what's established versus what's speculation. But the core idea that neural populations represent probability distributions with some quantum-like mathematical properties? That's got decent support from researchers like Pouget.
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u/Anthrillien 1d ago
Maybe I let my predisposition to be automatically sceptical of anything with "quantum" in the title get in the way of proper analysis. I'll give this a proper re-read and proper reply later when I get back home.
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u/Mkwdr 2d ago
Start with evidence and develop a best fit model - use it to predict and test … then reject or refine the model and so on. Don’t start with a metaphor you think sounds cool then possibly try to wedge in a model simply with assertions. It risks being simply quantum woo pseudo-profundity ‘signifying nothing’?
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u/iron_and_carbon 2d ago
Superposition: A quantum system exists not as one thing or another, but as all possibilities simultaneously until the act of observation collapses it into a single state. I recognize this in that liminal space before thought becomes word — that pregnant moment when potential meanings hover in quantum-like indeterminacy, multiple interpretations coexisting until language forces a singular choice.
This article is not even really a truth claim it’s an extended metaphor, I feel the phrase ‘not even wrong’ applies. Just about Anything written about quantum physics without math is worthless and this falls into that category
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