Re: more on `quantum evolution'

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 03:51:54 MST


Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com> writes:

> Was the article incorrect when it stated that they have gotten
> buckeyballs to function as waves? And it claims they are similiar
> in diameter to DNA (not of course in length :-).

I seem to recall that they accelerated the buckyballs to quite some
extent to get the effect. DNA are many many orders of magnitude
heavier than buckyballs, and that is what really matters.
 
> The article went on in another completely different direction
> speculating on em fields of the brain producing consciousness.
> Any comments?

It sounds like another variation of the idea "Neurons look simple and
boring, so consciousness must be due to something odd and
exciting". Since nobody knows if local em fields play any role in
brain activity (there are a few researchers promoting ephaptic
interactions in parallel axons, but the rest remain sceptical until
someone actually manages to show this occurs in vivo) it seems rather
premature blaming them for consciousness.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:08 MST