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originally posted in:Secular Sevens
4/4/2014 3:07:49 AM
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Could the study of brain genetics help understand quantum physics?

I know the double slit experiment ([url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc]double slit experiment video for noobies[/url]) has been discussed to death but I still can't get passed the fact that mere observation determines the result of how a particle gets from point A to point B. We might not know how or why, but we can conclusively say that, based off experiment, our observation can mold the Universe. But perception is not reality. When it comes to understanding quantum physics (or any field of science for that matter) we have to recognize that we are looking at data through our brains, and our brains manipulate the truth. Take color for example. Color doesn't exist in nature; color is how our brains make sense of light. We take light waves and turn it into color. Another good example is video footage. Video footage is really just a bunch of pictures consecutively displayed very rapidly. But our brains see these pictures as movement. Our brains take what is really there and they change it. Now those were just a couple examples out of many. The question I'm asking in this thread is what else do our brains do to change reality [i]that we don't know about[/i]? And further, would we be able to answer that question through the study of brain genetics? Science has the entire human genome mapped (i.e. we have the full sequence of our genome separated into individual genes, sorted and named), but we hardly know what any of our 25,000 genes do. But if we did understand how it all worked (or at least the genes concerning how our brains function) then we could see in entirety all of what the brain does to flip, twist, or manipulate all of the information we take in. This next bit is just speculation, but what if we found out that our brains reversed time and played everything in our heads backwards? It's crazy and probably not actually true, but it would change everything we know about the Universe and physics. Or perhaps a more reasonable possibility is that time is actually a spatial property (like a fourth dimension), but our minds perceive it differently so that we can more easily make sense of it (for survival purposes presumably). There are so many ways in which the information we take in could be different from reality and we don't even know about it. So could our minds be manipulating how we see the results of the double slit experiment? Or is there yet an even larger mystery at play? And if not the double slit experiment, what else do you think could our minds be changing that we aren't aware of?

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  • Edited by Plasma Prestige: 5/14/2014 7:44:18 PM
    All of science relies on the fundamental assumption that our brains are capable of discerning the true nature of reality. This also means recognizing the inherent limitations we have as humans. Your assertions about "there being no color" are not true. Color is not simply the electrochemical signals in the brain, they are definite bands of electromagnetic radiation that are translated into visual feedback by our nervous system. Our assignments of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue may be an arbitrary construct of human language, but the visible spectrum is, without question, all electromagnetic radiation between 400 and 700 nanometers. Finally, it is very, very unlikely that our understanding of quantum mechanics will be strengthened through the understanding of the brain. Human consciousness is confusing and quantum mechanics is confusing, but that doesn't mean one must necessary elucidate the other. Anyways, endless self-questioning about the nature of reality is not really productive. Those conversations generally devolve into meaningless philosphical discussions that get us nowhere. We should embrace the scientific method and place enough confidence in our brains—the product of billions of years of evolution—to continue to ask meaningful questions.

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