Studying the Brain with... Quantum Mechanics?

My quantum theory is that there's only 1 electron trying really hard, but it has performance anxiety.

who'd a thought what is basically a blob of electrochemically charged fat could be so infuriatingly complex.

as an aspiring computational neuroscientist, this has been my favorite episode :)

While watching this I didn't really get why it'd be confusing that people's answers would change based on the order of questions. Maybe it's because I teach English so I focus a lot on how language is used to convey meaning, but for me it was a "no duh" in that the first question someone asks is going to be used to frame all subsequent questions. So if you ask about Someone's vacation, then they're thinking about it as a whole, while if you first ask about how they got on with their sister (and they had a fight), then the next question is actively being re-framed in reference to that fight having occurred. Our opening question is a way to focus the rest of the conversation or essay, or list of questions, giving context and a value system to how we should be evaluating the next questions. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we can't help but evaluate things based on the established rubric or framing device posed by the initial statement that set the scene so to speak. Even if all the information is "the same" we're re-contextualizing it. If I asked someone what their favorite color was, and then how they felt about purple, they're going to be comparing how much they like purple with their favorite color. If I asked someone how they feel about the color purple first, their answer may be much more positive, because they aren't being asked about it after talking about their favorite color, so there's no comparison taking place. I'm not sure how much this makes sense to y'all, but language is powerful, and definitely shapes our perceptions of reality by creating contexts and conceptualizing things in relationship to other things.

So, just to be clear: we are talking about mathematical models that describe the results of experiment, not explanations of why stuff happens.

My mental health is in superposition: I feel happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time

That is when the science shows its true beauty, when you are able to predict something without a single clue about how it works, lol.

The image at 4:57 is wrong. It should be two dark bands that get lighter as you move away from their two centers. Basically, the odds of hitting a spot is a bell curve around the straight line directly through the slit.

To apply occam's razor: A feeling that something is uncertain or unknown generates a reluctance to perform positive actions. Likewise, being provided addition information (including outcomes) tricks the brain into feelings of relevance, power, and control, as evidenced in video game huds.

This is absolutely correct. Especially when you take into account Nische's "Stare long enough into the abyss and it will stare into you". This is why elderly professors of quantum mechanics know what they are doing or where they are but never both at the same time.

And suddenly, mathematically inclined psychologists are looking to be an attractive hire for companies looking to predict people's interests in advertising. Gotta get that sweet sweet ad. money.

This was a super duper interesting video. One of the best episodes yet across all the Scishow channels! So much information about psychology and quantum models (both incredibly complex to the layperson) crammed into 11 minutes.

Just a little correction concerning the double-slit experiment: When a single electron traverses a double slit, it is not quite correct to say there would be some ambiguity through which slit it passes. That expression implies that it actually does pass through one specific slit, but we do not know which. The weird thing is, that the electron just has no defined point in space at a specific time as long as you don't measure it and there is no ambiguity in that. The ambiguity only is part of measuring the place where the electron is, but that does not mean that there was any ambiguity of where the electron was before measuring, because the electron simply did not have a location before, cause location is not a defining property of the state of the electron.

Why am I interpreting this as "quantum computing is going to make it easier for robots to impersonate us"?

As a Terry Pratchett character stated: "And then there’s quantum, of course... There’s always bloody quantum."

pretty amazing episode!! one of your best in a while. absolutely love it

If someone is in a bad mood, and expressing negative emotions, then you ask them about their vacation, if they respond emotionally, they’re simply going to respond based on how they feel. Which is a bad mood. Even if they may say “oh it was alright” it doesn’t change what they know. They still know they might’ve had a good vacation, they’re just not expressing their emotions that way, firstly because it’s awkward. And 2ndly I think the reason why it’s awkward is because it takes energy for us to change our mood, and we tend not to. If you were to ask me about my sister and then vacation or the other way around, it wouldn’t matter if I stopped thinking about the first question completely, to answer the 2nd.

i disagree that the best solution to the prisoner's dilemma is to snitch. this is only the best move if you want to "beat" the other player. if you think as a team, you must stay silent.

It's logical if you remember snitches get stitches

How could you detect which slit a single photon goes through without physically impacting it? Isn’t the actual act of measuring it causing it to react in some way?