Is There Randomness in the Process of Falling Objects?

[Nikola Kolev]

Hey guys
Do you have some info about quantum...genetics? Cuz I've seen a book on it but it's £50 so I read an article about some professor at MIT interviewing his about this. So do you have any info, knowledge, material on that subject? Thanks.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Do you have links to the book or article? I have not heard of such a thing, and I am very skeptical of the claim that quantum effects would have effects on genetics.

 

[David Horgan]

Historically there has always been a strong link between Quantum effects and genetics. A good introductory place to start with this would be Schrodinger's 'What is Life'
http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf[/URL] .
The link between genetics and quantum mechanics is still very strong.

An interesting paper and an example of the type of work being done is: Quantum Effects and Genetic Code: Dynamics and Information Transfer in DNA Replication [URL]http://arxiv.org/ftp/q-bio/papers/0611/0611009.pdf[/URL]

A more recent example in this regard from Nature is 'On quantum effects in a theory of biological evolution' [URL]http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120306/srep00302/full/srep00302.html[/URL]

 

[rootone]

Genetic drift involves randomness,QM hints at what randomness is.
I go with natural selection being the main determinator in evolution, and therefore genetics.
Things going on at the subatomic level play a part in randomness, but I don't think it is greatly significant.

 

[Nikola Kolev]

Ygggdrasil,
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781578085088 is the link for the book

http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/03/were-genetics-and-quantum-mechanics-separated-at-birth/ for the article

David Horgan,
Thank you so much :-)
rootone,
Why exploring only the main stuff? Sometimes firstly insignificant concepts lead to much bigger picture.

 

[Pythagorean]

Genetic drift involves randomness,QM hints at what randomness is.
I go with natural selection being the main determinator in evolution, and therefore genetics.
Things going on at the subatomic level play a part in randomness, but I don't think it is greatly significant.

I don't know to what degree mutation is idealistically random in the QM sense; it could very well be pseudo-random - a complex system of deterministic behavior sensitive to perturbation. Both probably play a role.

 

[Gerinski]

I have this one too

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393323102/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Torbjorn_L]

Sometimes firstly insignificant concepts lead to much bigger picture.

Yes, but evolution is a process on classical large systems (according to population genetics tremendously large) so quantum effects are bound to be insignificant.

That said, there are quantum effects in specific functions, as chemistry is emergent on quantum physics. (E.g. it seems verified that oxidizing photosynthesis has quantum effects.) But those are traits rather than genetics. So while I wouldn't want to discourage anyone who asks for information, and/or make unwarranted claims, I would say that the expected information is limited at best. I think there are comments on this thread which agree.

I'm not even sure where to go with the larger idea. As shown by examples, the label 'quantum' is often used as a boondoggle. And the products end up disparate as here.

- The Ars Technica article _criticizes_ the use as boondoggle overreach.

- I would have to read the "Quantum Genetics" book of Stcherbic and Buchatsky of course. But do they really predict something worthwhile, or is it boondoggle overreach? In general the information content of protein functionality is unrelated to the sequence information of their genes, which is why people can't easily elucidate folding and function from sequence. And it is hence unrelated to evolutionary understanding.

- The "Quantum Evolution" book of McFadden seems to be boondoggle overreach for sure. The quoted Davies seem to be a deist [from his books, I don't know how he characterizes himself], and that is likely why he is interested in speculating in philosophic/theologian 'free will'* as opposed to our biochemical machine knowledge of the brain precluding any such magic action. The action of the brain/body complex is entirely decided by its physics, and as a classic system is deterministic. The same goes for consciousness. [If one is interested in the first, what I know of, biologically motivated and sound theory of consciousness, I would go to Graziano. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Graziano ]

* I should be careful to distinguish those magic 'intentional' ideas from the effective theory of folk psychology, where it works to interpret the complex outcome of social actions as "free will". It works, until you test it in fRMI and see how the brain-body complex sets up an action up to 7 seconds before it becomes "aware" of what it is doing.

 

[Nikola Kolev]

Yes, but evolution is a process on classical large systems (according to population genetics tremendously large) so quantum effects are bound to be insignificant.

That said, there are quantum effects in specific functions, as chemistry is emergent on quantum physics. (E.g. it seems verified that oxidizing photosynthesis has quantum effects.) But those are traits rather than genetics. So while I wouldn't want to discourage anyone who asks for information, and/or make unwarranted claims, I would say that the expected information is limited at best. I think there are comments on this thread which agree.

I'm not even sure where to go with the larger idea. As shown by examples, the label 'quantum' is often used as a boondoggle. And the products end up disparate as here.

- The Ars Technica article _criticizes_ the use as boondoggle overreach.

- I would have to read the "Quantum Genetics" book of Stcherbic and Buchatsky of course. But do they really predict something worthwhile, or is it boondoggle overreach? In general the information content of protein functionality is unrelated to the sequence information of their genes, which is why people can't easily elucidate folding and function from sequence. And it is hence unrelated to evolutionary understanding.

- The "Quantum Evolution" book of McFadden seems to be boondoggle overreach for sure. The quoted Davies seem to be a deist [from his books, I don't know how he characterizes himself], and that is likely why he is interested in speculating in philosophic/theologian 'free will'* as opposed to our biochemical machine knowledge of the brain precluding any such magic action. The action of the brain/body complex is entirely decided by its physics, and as a classic system is deterministic. The same goes for consciousness. [If one is interested in the first, what I know of, biologically motivated and sound theory of consciousness, I would go to Graziano. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Graziano ]

* I should be careful to distinguish those magic 'intentional' ideas from the effective theory of folk psychology, where it works to interpret the complex outcome of social actions as "free will". It works, until you test it in fRMI and see how the brain-body complex sets up an action up to 7 seconds before it becomes "aware" of what it is doing.

I have never said anything about evolution but asked is there such thing as quantum genetics, starting the thread.
You should've quoted Gerinski (#7), too. No self- esteemed scientist would fall into creationists/theologists/ deists or any other hardcore Christians understandings of
science. Don't try to fight over those, you only lose your patience and win stress. Thanks for the Wiki article, I reccomend you to read the the article about belief in the mazagine 'New Scientist', issue 3015 for the last para.

 

[Gerinski]

I just want to clarify about the book of McFadden I quoted on #7, it has nothing to do about deism, creationism, theology etc, whatever you may think from the Paul Davies quote.
What McFadden speculates is, roughly speaking, that we know that some steps in the supposed ladder of complexity increase from non-biological chemistry to biological one seem very unlikely to have happened by chance and at present we do not know of any plausible mechanism how some of those steps could reasonably happen in a relatively short time. He invokes quantum superposition and the anthropic principle as a possible mechanism. In quantum superposition, configurations which are unlikely are present in the mix. There is a small probability that they may become actual outcomes of an interaction. He then states that since only those unlikely outcomes give rise to life, it is not surprising that we find ourselves in a world where those unlikely events happened.

 

[pinball1970]

I will read these articles but I think other posters have already said that evolution, organisms living, dying reproducing cells and DNA are very large systems of particles
I am not sure how Quantum effects such as superposition, entanglement etc would feature or be measured as anything separate from the normal chemistry of the cell.
Perhaps one of the quantum guys on here could comment about decoherence nullifying any quantum effects?

 

[Nikola Kolev]

I'm more like to relate useful information from both genetics and qm

 

[Collin237]

• "I should be careful to distinguish those magic 'intentional' ideas from the effective theory of folk psychology, where it works to interpret the complex outcome of social actions as "free will". It works, until you test it in fRMI and see how the brain-body complex sets up an action up to 7 seconds before it becomes "aware" of what it is doing."

Such an experiment necessarily begins with dualism and ends without it. Even if you could argue that dualism is testable, the experiment still can't be a test because a test result can't be predetermined. Obviously the experiment contributed a result, but its label as a "test" prevents the result from being used.

To unlock the result, the experiment has to be retroactively assigned another purpose than testing. Going into the experiment, the prior assumption of dualism allowed "awareness" to be considered transcendent, and thus undefined and not directly measurable. So the time at which awareness was said to occur could only have been the time of some event that according to dualism was the corrolate of awareness. After dualism is removed, the label "corrolate" becomes invalid, and the identification of a particular event as awareness is up for grabs. Therefore, the newly assigned purpose of the experiment is as a search for a new definition of "awareness". According to dualism, it was argued that awareness was the first event that would be detected. We lost the argument, but in return we gained something even better: a free definition! We can now say that "awareness" is defined as "the brain-body complex setting up an action".

Free will was taken out of the realm of "magic" as soon as physical randomness was discovered. Free will is simply the ability to rapidly sift through a constant barrage of random thoughts to find snippets that remind you of something you might want to do. It should've been obvious for over fifty years that determinism is faith-based and randomness is evidence-based. But William Dembski, through his "Conservation of Information" campaign, pulled a switcheroo on the scientific community.

 

[serp777]

Well quantum effects do determine how chemistry works so obviously QM is extremely important for all molecules in the universe. QM properties presumably determine, for instance, the polarity of water by describing a probabilistic distribution of electrons across the molecule. There are also definitely QM processes that occur during photosynthesis as the energy of light is used to cause an atp or glucose molecule or whatever to form.

 

[Evo]

To keep this within our current guidelines, please be sure to cite the accepted sources for any statements made. If it is an accepted textbook, please quote the specific page and paragraph, if it is a study, please link to the study in the peer reviewed journal.

Thank you.

 

[MacRudi]

Historically there has always been a strong link between Quantum effects and genetics. A good introductory place to start with this would be Schrodinger's 'What is Life'
http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf[/URL] .
The link between genetics and quantum mechanics is still very strong.

An interesting paper and an example of the type of work being done is: Quantum Effects and Genetic Code: Dynamics and Information Transfer in DNA Replication [URL]http://arxiv.org/ftp/q-bio/papers/0611/0611009.pdf[/URL]

A more recent example in this regard from Nature is 'On quantum effects in a theory of biological evolution' [URL]http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120306/srep00302/full/srep00302.html[/URL][/QUOTE]

I would not say that this has something to do with quantummechanics. He uses in his paper some words that let us think of quantummechanics. harmonic oscilator, tunneling etc. We use often modells for coupled pendulum as harmoic oscilators to get a non linear analysis to describe attractors and trajactors in determinstic chaostheory and can make a computer model with algorithm to describe some phenomena as approximation.

I think what is described there is more or less the normal physical chemistry of H* in a equilibrium system. Nothing really to call it quantum genetics. I think the authors want to call it Quantum ... because it is much more interesting especially for Esoteric People and God believers, who like the Quantumtheory as if it is a prove for scientific whatever. There are a lot books out there who call itself Quantum medicine etc but has nothing to do with Quantum mechanics in out physics view.

 

[Pythagorean]

Well quantum effects do determine how chemistry works so obviously QM is extremely important for all molecules in the universe. QM properties presumably determine, for instance, the polarity of water by describing a probabilistic distribution of electrons across the molecule. There are also definitely QM processes that occur during photosynthesis as the energy of light is used to cause an atp or glucose molecule or whatever to form.

In discussions of whether QM is significant or not, we dismiss cases that don't actually require QM formalism (because their classical formulations are sufficient).

 

[Torbjorn_L]

I have never said anything about evolution but asked is there such thing as quantum genetics, starting the thread.

And my response was that it is a boondoglle.

You should've quoted Gerinski (#7), too. No self- esteemed scientist would fall into creationists/theologists/ deists or any other hardcore Christians understandings of
science. Don't try to fight over those, you only lose your patience and win stress. Thanks for the Wiki article, I reccomend you to read the the article about belief in the mazagine 'New Scientist', issue 3015 for the last para.

Thanks for the reference, but I don't read NS for the same reason why I don't think "Quantum Genetics" is a descriptive term.

I just want to clarify about the book of McFadden I quoted on #7, it has nothing to do about deism, creationism, theology etc, whatever you may think from the Paul Davies quote.
What McFadden speculates is, roughly speaking, that we know that some steps in the supposed ladder of complexity increase from non-biological chemistry to biological one seem very unlikely to have happened by chance and at present we do not know of any plausible mechanism how some of those steps could reasonably happen in a relatively short time. He invokes quantum superposition and the anthropic principle as a possible mechanism. In quantum superposition, configurations which are unlikely are present in the mix. There is a small probability that they may become actual outcomes of an interaction. He then states that since only those unlikely outcomes give rise to life, it is not surprising that we find ourselves in a world where those unlikely events happened.

I would agree with McFadden on that emergence of life didn't happen by chance, since the best theory (in that sense) of emergence, the vent theory, show that evolution happened - we have homologous traits with Hadean Earth geophysical systems. So whatever happened, it happened by processes.

I would disagree with McFadden on the rest as he makes the same mistake that Koonin et al did with the corresponding classical idea in their paper. Selection bias ("anthropics") selects the posterior likeliest events, not the unlikely. The latter is the same idea as the religious anthropic idea, their confusing prior probabilities with posterior likelihoods in order to attack science. Maybe McFadden does not have religious sympathies as Davies, but he emulates them well!

 

[serp777]

In discussions of whether QM is significant or not, we dismiss cases that don't actually require QM formalism (because their classical formulations are sufficient).

So you're saying something like photosynthesis has a classical formulation that doesn't depend on QM formalism? The absorption of light by a molecule, which then causes a disturbance in the electrical properties and chemical bonds of the molecule, leads to the formation of a glucose molecule from two separate molecules; photosynthesis therefore relies on properties of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, simulations of protein folding, like the folding @ home project, has to take into account several different quantum phenomena in order to accurately predict how protein folding occurs, and a protein is significantly smaller that a strand of DNA.

 

[Evo]

So you're saying something like photosynthesis has a classical formulation that doesn't depend on QM formalism? The absorption of light by a molecule, which then causes a disturbance in the electrical properties and chemical bonds of the molecule leading to the formation of a glucose molecule from two separate molecules would 100% rely on properties of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, simulations of protein folding, like the folding @ home project, has to take into account several different quantum phenomena in order to accurately predict how protein folding occurs, and a protein is significantly smaller that a strand of DNA.

Please cite your sources.

 

[Evo]

And my response was that it is a boondoglle.
Thanks for the reference, but I don't read NS for the same reason why I don't think "Quantum Genetics" is a descriptive term.
I would agree with McFadden on that emergence of life didn't happen by chance, since the best theory (in that sense) of emergence, the vent theory, show that evolution happened - we have homologous traits with Hadean Earth geophysical systems. So whatever happened, it happened by processes.

I would disagree with McFadden on the rest as he makes the same mistake that Koonin et al did with the corresponding classical idea in their paper. Selection bias ("anthropics") selects the posterior likeliest events, not the unlikely. The latter is the same idea as the religious anthropic idea, their confusing prior probabilities with posterior likelihoods in order to attack science. Maybe McFadden does not have religious sympathies as Davies, but he emulates them well!

No idea what you are talking about, please cite your sources.

 

[serp777]

Please cite your sources.

Hhere you go:

" In 2005, Folding@home tested a new quantum mechanical method that improved upon prior simulation methods, and which may be useful for future computational studies of collagen. Although researchers have used Folding@home to study collagen folding and misfolding, the interest stands as a pilot project compared to Alzheimer's and Huntington's research."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

I cited wikipedia since i don't have complete access to some of the articles which require a monthly fee."
Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way."
https://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=4431

The famous Arrhenius relationship states that things happen faster as they got hotter. In chemistry, that’s generally true but there’s an important exception: the speed at which proteins fold into their functional shape."

And here we have quantum mechanics explaining the efficiency of photosynthesis:

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-quantum-mechanics-efficiency-photosynthesis.html

 

[serp777]

And my response was that it is a boondoglle.
Thanks for the reference, but I don't read NS for the same reason why I don't think "Quantum Genetics" is a descriptive term.
I would agree with McFadden on that emergence of life didn't happen by chance, since the best theory (in that sense) of emergence, the vent theory, show that evolution happened - we have homologous traits with Hadean Earth geophysical systems. So whatever happened, it happened by processes.

I would disagree with McFadden on the rest as he makes the same mistake that Koonin et al did with the corresponding classical idea in their paper. Selection bias ("anthropics") selects the posterior likeliest events, not the unlikely. The latter is the same idea as the religious anthropic idea, their confusing prior probabilities with posterior likelihoods in order to attack science. Maybe McFadden does not have religious sympathies as Davies, but he emulates them well!

How did it not happen by chance? Unless you believe in predetermination, which is basically disproved by QM, that seems like an incredibly big claim. At some point its likely a bunch of large organic molecules were frothing around with some high temperatures and or reactive chemicals, which caused one molecule to form with another to form the first self replicating molecule. This process happens purely by chance it seems like.

 

[Pythagorean]

So you're saying something like photosynthesis has a classical formulation that doesn't depend on QM formalism?

I didn't say that. In fact, photosynthesis is one of the rare cases that we do actually see a significant quantum effect in biological systems.

 

[serp777]

I didn't say that. In fact, photosynthesis is one of the rare cases that we do actually see a significant quantum effect in biological systems.

Ok fair enough, but i also provided some evidence that protein folding depends on quantum mechanics; projects like folding @home use quantum physics in their simulations in order to get better results like using QM to make improved predictions like my collagen example. And if protein folding relies on quantum physics then a logical conclusion would be so does DNA since proteins are just expressions of DNA chunks. Given the small scale that genetics works on, I can't imagine how quantum mechanics doesn't play an integral role in many bodily systems. I mean quantum mechanics has important implication for computer chips of the same size naturally so its a reasonable assertion to say qm has implications for genetics as well.

 

[Pythagorean]

Honestly, the protein literature you sourced wasn't very definitive and there were challenges in the comments. One paper usually isn't enough; give it ten years and 20 papers.

 

[Torbjorn_L]

How did it not happen by chance?

It happened by process. Does a dropped object fall by chance? The question is how much contingency, i.e. stochasticity, is in a process.

 

[Pythagorean]

It happened by process. Does a dropped object fall by chance? The question is how much contingency, i.e. stochasticity, is in a process.

Right. You drop a handful of tic tacs on the table and you won't be able to repeat the pattern the next time you drop a handful. The physics of falling, colliding tic tacs is quite classical, but it's so sensitive to initial conditions that you'll never get the same result twice.