

Quantum minds: Why we think like quarks - soitgoes
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128285.900-quantum-minds-why-we-think-like-quarks.html?page=1

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swombat
A lot of interesting ideas there, but I think one of the main thrusts of the
article is poorly substantiated.

The author discusses an "interference term" as being a characteristic of
quantum mechanics (which is not exactly right, but nevermind), and then
proceeds to describe this so-called "Hilbert-space search" as a natural
consequence of that. But actually, the "Hilbert-space search" is just a search
algorithm with a bit of semantic fuzzing. There's nothing "quantum mechanical"
about it...

A bit of a shame that an otherwise enjoyable and interesting article was
spoiled by a poor central argument, but there is nothing in there that
directly links quantum mechanics to psychology, other than "ooh, it's weird
and unintuitive".

~~~
bootload
_"... This is not to say that the human brain or consciousness have anything
to do with quantum physics, only that the mathematical language of quantum
theory happens to match the description of human decision-making. ..."_

Read further. The writer is simply highlighting another scientific approach,
_"quantum logic"_ instead of or in conjunction with _"classical logic"_ , that
could be used to model human behaviour.

    
    
        'Quantum logic may be more suitable to 
        making decisions that work well enough, 
        even if they're not logically faultless'
    

It is also possibly an observable biological phenomena. [0],[1]

[0] _Aerts, D., Gabora, L., Sozzo, S. and Veloz, T._ (2011). Quantum structure
in cognition: Fundamentals and applications. Proceedings of the Fifth
International Conference on Quantum, Nano and Micro Technologies, ICQNM. ,
_"Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in
which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by
classical logic and probability theory. .... Inspired by a mathematical
formalism that generalizes quantum mechanics the authors have constructed a
contextual framework for both concept representation and decision making,
together with quantum models that are in strong alignment with experimental
data. The results can be interpreted by assuming the existence in human
thought of a double-layered structure, a 'classical logical thought' and a
'quantum conceptual thought'"_ <http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3344> &
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.3344v1>

[1] _Bruza, Peter D., Widdows, Dominic, & Woods, John_ (2009) A quantum logic
of down below. _"It is known that there exist mathematical models from the
cognitive science of cognition down below that have certain formal
similarities to quantum mechanics."_ ~ <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/18551/>

