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Originally written by FZ:

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The example I was thinking of specifically was weather prediction. It's my understanding that in the early days of using computers to predict the weather, minor changes to the initial conditions quickly produced radically different results as one extrapolated further ahead (the famous "butterfly effect".) However, newer models which take into account a larger number of climatic factors tend to display much less chaos. (Of course, you could well say that meteorologists still get weather predictions drastically wrong on occasion, but given how limited knowledge of the initial conditions is in this case I'd still say they're doing a pretty good job.)

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Er... no. The chaotic nature of the system has not changed. What has changed is the accuracy of our measurements. What some literature overblows on chaos is the unpredicatability. Chaos does not make it absolutely unpredictable - rather, there is a prediction window that depends on the accuracy of the measurements, and the lyapunov exponent of the system. What chaos is about is systems exaggerating effects from what appeared to be insignificant. The butterfly effect still works, just that we keep better track of our butterflies, and learn to work around it, keeping to only certain limits of forecasting where it is not visible, for example.

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The key this is that quantum effects make things less a matter of actual instance, but more of probabilities. Thus, it is not certain whether something occurs, though we can work out how likely it is. That gaves us the "free" part of free will. Of course, as you corrected stated, it doesn't do the "will" part of free will. Perhaps nothing will, perhaps nothing is already enough. This is why I said there can be no decisive answer. We may find out if the brain has a freedom to act - whether that act is according to will is anybody's guess.

But the prevention of the firing of even a single neuron is very significant, because brains have no CPU which plans out everything, and so we have redundancy. One neuron fires, partially due to the influence of another firing. Take out the initial impulse, and a whole cascade may not happen.

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Yes, but you didn't click on the link. It is true that decoherence tends to remove the quantum wierdness in most cases. But the jury is still out on whether that is true of the brain. The links I gave are two articles giving drastically different assessments of this.

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Originally written by Sir Motrax of Exile:

Many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.

No matter where you stand on the scale, this is just a fact of life. There will always be people with more material possessions than they "deserve."

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The businessman and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.

There should be a spot here for "equal importance." A society of poets and painters won't last long with practical labor, and a society of machines and merchants promises to be rather empty and dull.

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And I beleive one can find beauty in anything if only willing to do so. It's really just a state of mind, seeing something as art.

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Originally written by FZ:

I don't see how this makes sense. You seem to be saying that quantum effects can't be significant, because they will be too significant. How about "just significant enough"? ;)

In essence, we don't know. We do know that the brain is pretty chaotic, and may in theory be able to pull up uncertainty through the scales, magnifying small quantum fluctuations. I think some recent research on rat brains found just that... though I can't find the article.

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