Is the brain a classical or quantum system?

[bombus]

Unless Tegmark's measurements are wrong, the decoherence time is too short for quantum effects to impact microtubule behavior. Penrose never tested his hypothesis experimentally. Tegmark did, and the results demonstrate it to be incorrect.

 

And what if someone does the same and gets different results. I'm not going to change my views on the basis of one paper.

 

 

 

If you're asking what's the source of volition, it's consciousness, which is ontologically distinct from the brain.

 

Semantics

 

 

 

No, particle interaction causes wavefunction collapse. "Consciousness" has nothing to do with it.

 

Have you seem the little film?

 

 

 

Yes, just like opinion is divided between evolution and creationism.

 

Hardly

 

Penrose's Godelian argument was in the form of a mathematical proof. There's no room for opinion in a proof. The proof is either correct or contains an error. Penrose's proof contains errors, as Solomon Fefferman demonstrated. It is therefore wrong.

 

We shall see

 

Penrose's microtubule hypothesis is predictive, and therefore falsifiable by experiment. Tegmark carried out the experiments, and they do not support the hypothesis.

 

I'm willing to wait

 

 

 

I've posted about Penrose extensively, including multiple threads about the Road to Reality and Shadows of the Mind. Have a look here:

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/search.php?searchid=352214

 

Penrose is a great example of why the opinion of a single scientist carries little weight when not expressed in the form of a peer reviewed paper. Don't get me wrong, he's done excellent physics work, but he's really gone off the deep end with this "science of consciousness" crap. As I said: it's intellectually dishonest.

 

You're just scared!

[pioneer]

The place where physics needs to focus its attention is the hydrogen proton. This is the basis for the physical properties of the majority component of life, which is water. It is also the backbone bonding force for all proteins, RNA and DNA. It is offers a weak but moderately strong binding force that is easily reversable. Hydrogen is also the fastest thing in water, able to move about 100 faster that any other ions within water. The hydrogen proton is something, one can look at using quantum considerations, as well as with a classical approach.

 

If you look at hydrogen protons, these are different that nuclear protons in that they have not undergone any type of nuke burn, but still can. In chemistry, movement into nuclear bonding is not easy, but it does not mean the proton can't be induced up the the activation hill, a few steps. It would take many more steps before fusion, but maybe these few baby steps has a connection to consciousness. One should not stop at microtubules, but go smaller and look at the hydrogen that binds these. This is the same type of hydrogen which binds, DNA, RNA, all proteins and water. It is the common link throughout life, should be investigated with a quantum analysis.

 

Hydrogen is the most abundant material in the universe. The fluid nature of life could not exist without hydrogen bonding. The DNA double helix and all its genetic template relationship would not exist without it. Water is based exclusively on it and is the majority component of life. Yet, the obvious seems to go right over everyone's head.

 

I think where the problem may be is, everyone is used to thinking in terms of electrons, especially when we look at chemistry. But water is a poor conductor of electrons. Conduction usually involves ions. While cells and the brain, prefer to move around postive charge within the water. The energy in the cell's membrane is due to Na+, K+. These are the same things, that move around neurons and which conduct in synapses. One really needs to look at things sort of backwards to see how life is different. Life is slow compared to electron conduction in metal wires. This is because protons have a 1000 times more mass, so things are slower. The bonding forces of secondary bonding H is weaker, allowing fluid life.

[iNow]

Penrose is a giant among scientists. I think to say he is misusing science is like saying that the Beatles ruined music!

 

Actually, it would be like saying that the Beatles were misusing music.

 

Bascule, I want to commend you on fine job in this thread, but some of the posts above seem to have gone from bad to worse despite your efforts. Goodonya mate.

 

 

HydrogenBond...ermm... I mean, Pioneer, is it possible that you've posted a pre-written set of words into the wrong thread?

[bombus]

Penrose answers back (including to Solomon Feferman):

 

http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html

 

Not to Tegmark though.

[iNow]

...

[Sisyphus]

I disagree. You say that because maybe you don't understand why I am saying what I am saying. I suggest you have a look at some articles on the subject. Start here:

 

http://www.imprint.co.uk/hardprob.html

 

And your generic brushoff and subsequent silliness prove that you don't understand what I was saying. I think you have misplaced confidence in this stuff because it's being said by an important scientist. And if it were actually physics being discussed, I would take it seriously, but it isn't. It's metaphysics. Scientists have a long history of trying to reinvent the wheel in this area in their spare time and failing spectacularly. Most commonly it takes the form of false dilemmas like this one. (Even Einstein thought - wrongly - that QM was impossible because it contradicted certain metaphysical necessities. They aren't necessities, and it doesn't contradict them, anyway.)

 

So yes, I am quite familiar with what you're talking about, and in fact I've had to put up with a whole lot of it in academia in both the physics and philosophy worlds. It really really has no merit. I swear.

[pioneer]

I don't pre-write. I try to do it off the top of my head, that way I might be able to add some new things that pop into my head, at the time of writing. Things I continue to say have reached a steady state. I am trying new angles so others can see beyond the bias of traditions.

 

To be honest with you, when I hear well known scientists, from other field, talking about consciousness, it sounds like amateur city. They don't even know the basics on how the human psyche is set up. It is like trying to talk about how computer software works, by studying the hardware. If the software tweaks the monitor, then the software is connected to the monitor?

 

I was trying to save them some time and point out a much better place to be looking The hydrogen proton is what makes life different than inanimate matter. Inanimate matter is not living because it is too stable. Life needs to be in a flexible state, so it can remain and but also change via a type of dynamic fluid state. What makes this possible is hydrogen bonding and the hydrogen proton.

 

The electron's role is for stabiliity. Electron bonding is what keeps the DNA as a long stable molecule. It is inanimate matter. The template relationships are only possible due to the hydrogen proton. The hydrogen bonding is where this stable inanimate molecule participates in life.

 

If you look at the surface of neurons, these are bathed in water. Nothing will exist in liquid water, unless water becomes part of its extended structure. The brain is 80-90% water, so this observation is important. Cations have hydration spheres, or extended water surrounding then, that is loosely bonded to the central cation. Whatever the water surrounds will affect the H within the attached water. If potential is moving over a neuron, this is conducted through the water. Even if cations are in motion, the hydrogen proton is the fastest thing in water. The hydrogen proton is the only thing in water that doesn't have a hydration sphere. The oxygen is highly electonegative, which means it holds electrons very tightly. The hydrogen protons of water float above, moving potential from O to O.

[bascule]

And what if someone does the same and gets different results.

 

That's the beauty of science. Experiments are repeatable because they're methodologically performed under controlled conditions. Just because someone writes some numbers in a paper doesn't mean they're real. However, the author describes exactly how they got those numbers and how you can set up the experiment for yourself and confirm the results are real. If someone performs an experiment and gets different data, that's cause for concern, and means you should scrutinize the original paper and attempt to determine the reason for the disparity in results.

 

However, when you have someone asserting a hypothesis, someone else testing it experimentally and determining it's false, things don't bode well for the original hypothesis until things can be demonstrated otherwise.

 

Here's a question for you: Why hasn't Penrose performed his own experiments and determined that the decoherence time isn't too short to have an impact in the brain's behavior?

 

Semantics

 

Semantics are important here.

 

The brain is physical. You can cut open someone's head, pull their brain out, and hold it in your hands, or slice it up and stick it under a microscope. You can stick someone's head in a variety of electromagnetic scanners and observe their brain using knowledge of the electromagnetic effects of various elements. You can cover the brain with sensors and observe the brain's electromagnetic emissions, etc. etc.

 

Studies of the brain are scientific. The brain is formally defined by medical and neuroscience. The brain predictably structures itself and subcomponents of the brain operate in predictable and mathematically definable ways. Several of these pieces are the subject of mathematical / computational models, such as the neocortex and hippocampus.

 

Consciousness is not formally defined. Short of double blind studies of perception performed by cognitive scientists, it cannot be studied scientifically. It can't be observed in the way the brain can. Consciousness is metaphysical and ontologically distinct from reality. The "missing science of consciousness" that Penrose is supposedly searching for cannot take place until there first exists a verifiable definition of what consciousness is.

 

You're just scared!

 

If I'm scared of anything, it's people purporting the scientifically indefensible to be science. Fortunately Penrose has framed his ideas in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis, allowing Tegmark to come along and demonstrate it to be incorrect.

 

What remains isn't science. It's a metaphysical statement that Penrose failed to provide a scientific basis for.

 

Penrose answers back (including to Solomon Feferman):

 

http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html

 

Not to Tegmark though.

 

Penrose effectively concedes every one of Fefferman's points then goes on to say "But you didn't debunk my argument in Chapter 3!" This echoes a creationist who posts dozens of specious arguments and receives answers to a subset, conceding those, but continues harping "What about all my other arguments? You didn't disprove those!"

 

Don't get me wrong: I think there will eventually be a science of consciousness. Science can define what consciousness is if a 1:1 mapping between neural activity and mental activity can be demonstrated, namely that a specific set of neural events determines the content of a specific set of mental events.

 

This claim would be partly scientific and partly metaphysical.

 

Penrose is trying to dodge the issue entirely by arguing that the physical events which determine the content of mental events are inherently unobservable, therefore sidestepping the rather difficult problem of scientifically defining what consciousness actually is.

[Mr Skeptic]

I think what some are saying is that determinism is unsatisfactory for free will. After all, the choice has effectively been made in advance; anyone with enough computational power could compute what you would choose. And there is no way you could change your mind. Chance likewise is unsatisfactory, besides which it is obvious that we are not completely random. And what manner of choice is the requrement to flip a coin? If that were so, the coin would have free will. Finally, one might consider that free will could be a combination of laws and chance. Yet, if there is no free will to be found in laws and none in chance, where would the free will in this combination come from? Could you write a computer program with a random number generator that would have free will?

 

<Occam Razor mode = off>One might say that chance allows for a loophole into the metaphysical world. If God decided to play dice (apologies to Einstein) and fiddled with the "random" results of quantum mechanics (in such a way that the probabilities remain unchanged, of course), would that not allow for massive yet undetectable control over the physical world? Likewise, if someone's spirit could similarly control the quantum events inside "his" body, you could have someone controlled by a metaphysical spirit, rather than just his brain.</Occam>

 

And yet, even if it were so, scientists would then want to ask, what sort of laws does that metaphysical free follow? One might conclude that free will, as some wish it to be, is completely out of the realm of science.

 

On a more serious note, isn't random chance a total cop-out? Kind of like saying "God did it" but without the metaphysical implications?

[bascule]

Most seem to think of free will in terms of freedom from causality. I certainly believe this is not the case.

[bombus]

I think what some are saying is that determinism is unsatisfactory for free will. After all, the choice has effectively been made in advance; anyone with enough computational power could compute what you would choose. And there is no way you could change your mind. Chance likewise is unsatisfactory, besides which it is obvious that we are not completely random. And what manner of choice is the requrement to flip a coin? If that were so, the coin would have free will. Finally, one might consider that free will could be a combination of laws and chance. Yet, if there is no free will to be found in laws and none in chance, where would the free will in this combination come from? Could you write a computer program with a random number generator that would have free will?

 

<Occam Razor mode = off>One might say that chance allows for a loophole into the metaphysical world. If God decided to play dice (apologies to Einstein) and fiddled with the "random" results of quantum mechanics (in such a way that the probabilities remain unchanged, of course), would that not allow for massive yet undetectable control over the physical world? Likewise, if someone's spirit could similarly control the quantum events inside "his" body, you could have someone controlled by a metaphysical spirit, rather than just his brain.</Occam>

 

And yet, even if it were so, scientists would then want to ask, what sort of laws does that metaphysical free follow? One might conclude that free will, as some wish it to be, is completely out of the realm of science.

 

On a more serious note, isn't random chance a total cop-out? Kind of like saying "God did it" but without the metaphysical implications?

 

very well said!

 

And your generic brushoff and subsequent silliness prove that you don't understand what I was saying. I think you have misplaced confidence in this stuff because it's being said by an important scientist. And if it were actually physics being discussed, I would take it seriously, but it isn't. It's metaphysics. Scientists have a long history of trying to reinvent the wheel in this area in their spare time and failing spectacularly. Most commonly it takes the form of false dilemmas like this one. (Even Einstein thought - wrongly - that QM was impossible because it contradicted certain metaphysical necessities. They aren't necessities, and it doesn't contradict them, anyway.)

 

So yes, I am quite familiar with what you're talking about, and in fact I've had to put up with a whole lot of it in academia in both the physics and philosophy worlds. It really really has no merit. I swear.

 

My subsequent silliness! You don't seem to understand the very basics of the argument. Yes it is where physics meets metaphysics - that's the big issue! That's the problem.

 

Metaphysics asks some very basic questions, such as 'What is the nature of reality?'. Does not Science try to use an evidence based approach to answer this same question? Now whether or not Penrose's orchOR theory is correct is not the point (he may well be wrong in the exact explanation at this stage), but the questions still remain, and I think that the effect of QM is the answer. Quite how I do not know, but I do not believe the answer has already been discovered via classical theory!

 

 

 

 

Bascule:

 

Have you watched the animated film about the double slit experiment? Do you agree that consciousness appears to cause wave function collapse?

 

Most seem to think of free will in terms of freedom from causality. I certainly believe this is not the case.

 

That belief is perfectly acceptable, but it is just a belief at the moment - a hunch, like my belief. Could you explain your 'hunch' a bit more?

 

Penrose effectively concedes every one of Fefferman's points then goes on to say "But you didn't debunk my argument in Chapter 3!" This echoes a creationist who posts dozens of specious arguments and receives answers to a subset, conceding those, but continues harping "What about all my other arguments? You didn't disprove those!"

 

That's not a very good comparison. All Penrose is saying is that the arguments/inaccuracies do not affect the meat and bones of his theories, which is the important bit!

[bascule]

Have you watched the animated film about the double slit experiment?

 

Yes, I saw that several years ago, shortly after What the Bleep came out. Made by the same people, and they were collaborators with Penrose, particularly on the What the Bleep book, which also featured Penrose's ideas.

 

Do you agree that consciousness appears to cause wave function collapse?

 

Consciousness had nothing to do this. Waveform collapse was initiated by the structure of the system, not a conscious agent. Granted this behavior plays an important role in the relationship between the observer and the observed when studying quantum behavior (and the inability of the experimenter to separate themselves from the experiment).

 

The problem of the observer being in the same system as the observed has immense ramifications for how modern theory is approached and reasoned about. It has nothing metaphysical to say about consciousness and quantum waveform collapse. As far as quantum theory is concerned consciousness doesn't exist. There's no "consciousness field" which can interact with the other forces.

 

That belief is perfectly acceptable, but it is just a belief at the moment - a hunch, like my belief. Could you explain your 'hunch' a bit more?

 

I espouse Dennett's compatibilism as advocated in his book Freedom Evolves. This thoroughly rules out any form of freedom from causality.

 

Instead, identity, which is shaped by our life experiences, serves as executor of our will.

 

That's not a very good comparison. All Penrose is saying is that the arguments/inaccuracies do not affect the meat and bones of his theories, which is the important bit!

 

Penrose doesn't have a theory. If he did he'd publish it in a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Instead, he wrote a book. He did make a number of arguments in his book, but the subsequent "peer review" that occurred when people scrutinized his book completely discredited the idea.

 

Penrose has a hypothesis, and every attempt to put it on scientific footing has been met with contradictory evidence or the discovery of logic errors.

 

Can you point to one argument for putting quantum cosnciousness on scientific footing which has not been discredited?

[bombus]

Yes, I saw that several years ago, shortly after What the Bleep came out. Made by the same people, and they were collaborators with Penrose, particularly on the What the Bleep book, which also featured Penrose's ideas.

 

Are you suggesting that they have twisted the results of this? I can assure you they have not!

 

 

Consciousness had nothing to do this.Waveform collapse was initiated by the structure of the system, not a conscious agent.

 

So why does the result change depending on what you are looking for?

 

Granted this behavior plays an important role in the relationship between the observer and the observed when studying quantum behavior (and the inability of the experimenter to separate themselves from the experiment).

 

A fundamental role, not just an important role.

 

The problem of the observer being in the same system as the observed has immense ramifications for how modern theory is approached and reasoned about.

 

Agreed.

 

It has nothing metaphysical to say about consciousness and quantum waveform collapse.

 

It might, it very well might, and that is what Penrose et al is hypothesising.

 

As far as quantum theory is concerned consciousness doesn't exist. There's no "consciousness field" which can interact with the other forces.

 

Agreed, but irrelevant to my argument.

 

 

 

I espouse Dennett's compatibilism as advocated in his book Freedom Evolves. This thoroughly rules out any form of freedom from causality.

 

OK, I shall look that up, however, Penrose's hypothesis does not require a total severence from causality.

 

Instead, identity, which is shaped by our life experiences, serves as executor of our will.

 

How can you make free-willed decisions in a totally deterministic classical system?

 

 

 

Penrose doesn't have a theory. If he did he'd publish it in a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Instead, he wrote a book. He did make a number of arguments in his book, but the subsequent "peer review" that occurred when people scrutinized his book completely discredited the idea.

 

Penrose has a hypothesis, and every attempt to put it on scientific footing has been met with contradictory evidence or the discovery of logic errors.

 

Apologies for calling it a theory. His ideas have by no means been completely discredited, that is an extreme exaggeration to the point of being wrong! Also, it took a long time before the mechanism of Darwin's theory was discovered.

 

Can you point to one argument for putting quantum cosnciousness on scientific footing which has not been discredited?

 

Yes, the fact that free will cannot exist in a classical deterministic system. Either free will is an illusion (and maybe it is) or it is real. If real it cannot be adequately explained by classical theory.

[PhDP]

How can you make free-willed decisions in a totally deterministic classical system?

 

You should read about compatibilism. In my opinion it's a flawed attempt to salvage free will, but I think it's still quite popular among philosophers.

[bombus]

From a review of Dennet's book:

 

The conventional arguments against both free will, on the one hand, and scientific materialism, on the other, rests on the belief that in a deterministic universe there is simply no room for freedom. If every state of the universe has been determined by a previous state then in what way could any act be said to be 'free'? Is it not simply the inevitable outcome of a series of causal links that goes all the way back to the Big Bang?

 

Not so, says Dennett. Such a view confuses determinism and inevitability. Suppose I'm playing baseball and the pitcher chucks the ball directly at my face. I turn my head to avoid it. There was, therefore, nothing inevitable about the ball hitting my face. But, a sceptic might say, I turned my head not of my own free will but was caused to do so by factors byond my control. That is to misunderstand the nature of causation, Dennett retorts. What really caused me to turn my head was not a set of deterministic links cascading back to the beginnings of the universe - though that certainly exists - but my desire at that moment not to get hit by the baseball. At a different moment I might decide to take a hit in the face, if by doing so I help my team win the game.

 

This appears to totally fail to address, let alone answer the problem! Dennet agrees that there are deterministic links cascading back to the beginnings of the universe, but manages to exclude his brain/mind from this. Maybe I'll have to just read the book.

 

Where does free will fit into all this? For most people, conscious will derives from what they would call the 'self'. But this notion of the self, according to Dennett, is an illusion. The self is not the entity that governs brain processes, but is the outcome of those processes. Echoing the neurologist Daniel Wegner, Dennett suggests that 'People become what they think they are, or what they find others think they are.'

 

 

I would agree with all of this. Dennet seems to be confusing free will with personality development. They exist at completely different levels IMO.

 

You should read about compatibilism. In my opinion it's a flawed attempt to salvage free will, but I think it's still quite popular among philosophers.

 

Thanks

 

Just read about Compatibilism. One explanation is:

 

For example, you could choose to keep or delete this page; while a compatibilist will not try to deny that whatever choice you make will have been predetermined since the beginning of time, they will argue that this choice that you make is an example of free will because no one is forcing you to make whatever choice you make. In contrast, someone could be holding a gun to your head and tell you that unless you delete the page, they will kill you; to a compatibilist, that is an example of a lack of free will. (The compatibilist account sometimes includes internal compulsions such as kleptomania or addiction.)

 

This is not free will IMO. This merely accepts that free will is actually an illusion. What is the fundamental difference between someone holding a gun against your head, being in the path of a falling rock, or having electrons in a certain 'place' in your head at a certain time. It's all things created by the universe affecting your mind.

 

This idea fails to address the problem.

[bascule]

OK, I shall look that up, however, Penrose's hypothesis does not require a total severence from causality.

 

How can you make free-willed decisions in a totally deterministic classical system?

 

So here you're defining "free" with an implicit "from causality"

 

Are free events acausal? If so, what makes them free? What is acausal but non-random?

 

Apologies for calling it a theory. His ideas have by no means been completely discredited, that is an extreme exaggeration to the point of being wrong! Also, it took a long time before the mechanism of Darwin's theory was discovered.

 

Evolution by natural selection was based on evidence in the form of catalogued observation. What evidence is the quantum mind based on?

 

Yes, the fact that free will cannot exist in a classical deterministic system.

 

That's not science

 

If real it cannot be adequately explained by classical theory.

 

Again, as far as science is concerned consciousness doesn't exist. As soon as you can provide a testable definition for what consciousness is, then consciousness can become part of science.

 

So, again:

 

Can you point to one argument for putting quantum cosnciousness on scientific footing which has not been discredited?

[Sisyphus]

This is not free will IMO. This merely accepts that free will is actually an illusion. What is the fundamental difference between someone holding a gun against your head, being in the path of a falling rock, or having electrons in a certain 'place' in your head at a certain time. It's all things created by the universe affecting your mind.

 

This idea fails to address the problem.

 

That is a poor description of compatiblism, actually. Replace holding a gun to your head with physically grabbing your hand and forcing it onto the delete button, and it works. The difference is that with the gun, you're still choosing not to get shot, and the deletion is an act of will. The other way, your will doesn't enter into it.

 

The idea is that "free will" is defined as the capacity to make conscious choices, i.e., the capacity to be aware that you are choosing between two alternatives, and then making that choice. It is an experience. The fact that you experience it, obviously, proves it is real.

 

You'll notice, here, that it does not matter whether there were specific reasons you made one choice over the other (i.e., strict determinism), or not, (i.e., some element of randomness). Free will, defined in this way, is secure from any such discoveries in physics. For that matter, it is immune from "spiritual" alternatives, as well. For example, if it is not the brain but some intangible immortal soul that is really calling the shots, the situation is still exactly the same: either there are reasons the soul makes a particular choice, or there aren't.

 

So what is the point of defining free will in that way? Well, the idea is that we already do, really. What do we mean when we say free will? We mean conscious choice. The only problem arises when we assume that certain other things have to go along with it. Most commonly, people erroneously associate determinism with "being forced" to make a particular choice, and so it is "not free," since in other contexts "being forced" means "enslavement." This is pure equivocation, however, since we're taking "free" and "forced" to mean the same thing when in fact they mean different things in different contexts.

 

So ask yourself this. What do you mean by free will? Don't tell me "non-deterministic." That's what (you think) it isn't. Tell me what it is. More specifically, is "free will" different from "will?" How?

 

Also, think about what determinism and non-determinism actually mean. Determinism means there is a reason one thing happens and not another. Non-determinism means there is not a reason one thing happens and not another. Non-determinism, then, is synonymous with "randomness." Is that really what you mean when you say "free?" That there is no reason you make one choice over another? Doesn't that seem a little bleak and meaningless to you?

 

And as for that last question... does it really matter? Do you really believe that the universe is obliged to be a certain way simply because we want it to be so? When you say it "fails to address the problem," is the "problem" that you don't like what you see? If that is the only reason for pushing this, then surely you must admit that it's pretty bad science. And if there is another reason for pushing it, say, that we experience free will, then surely you can admit that free will is the experience?

[Osiris]

I agree with that. I think conciousness itself is intrinsically linked to QM. It's the mechanism that allows free will. I'm with Penrose and Hameroff.

 

Uhh... what would be your definition of free will?

 

Because QM, indeterminism or randomness, in my opinion would not be any much better in proving freewill than determinism does.

[pioneer]

In another topic, someone talked about how the body is constantly rebuilding itself. About every seven years, all our atoms are new. The brain is not like semi-conductor memory, which can sit inert for years. The brain is constantly in a state of recycle and replenishing, with food, water and air, shifting the atoms. If one moved to another place and lived off the land, we would be composed of atoms from that place in about seven years. There is a continuity to us, but our atoms are now from that place. The body changes only a little at a time, so we maintain, continuity.

 

The reason I bring this us, for memory to remain stable, in a state of constant molecular and atomic flux, the basic units need to be relatively large. For example, the membrane of the neurons is a lipid sea, that is flowing. The neurons take out lipids, and then replaces them. Somethings they replace them faster, so the neuron can branch. Other times, they replace them slower, so the branch can shrink. If the memory affect gets too small, it would be swept in the flux of constant change. It never stays 100% percent the same, but is always trying to adapt.

 

The constant flux of life, actually explains many things. Say we have a memory from youth. Although many of the details remain, the story sort of changes based on the perspective we achieve as we learn and mature. These memories are large enough to maintain, during the flux, but small enough where the water under the bridge allows them to mature. The very nature of regeneration, causes memories to advance with time.

 

Quantum affects would have a hard time maintaining steady state, since they are too small and the constant flux changes things at that level. That is why I suggested the metaphysical phenomena. This was not to be funny, but these are things, that are not easily reproduceable, yet appear to happen in a flash. Exactly, what small things do in moving waters.

 

This is sort of ironical. Currently we are experiencing very heavy rains. It has been raining for several days. The pond is starting to flood, due to this last band of very severe thunderstorms. I lost my internet connection a few hours ago due to the lightning. Some of the trees on the bank are already hip deep in the water but holding steady. But it is hard for small things like debris to stay put. Nature likes to recycle things, that seem to work well.

[bascule]

Quantum affects would have a hard time maintaining steady state, since they are too small and the constant flux changes things at that level. That is why I suggested the metaphysical phenomena.

 

Neuroscientists generally understand that long term memory is encoded in the connection structure of the cerebral cortex, although the nature of specific mechanisms of memory storage is still a matter of various interpretations and debate (e.g. are memories statically represented by particular groups of neurons or do they flow freely throughout the cerebral cortex)

 

There's no need to involve a non-physical mechanism for memory