I don’t completely disagree with the physics part but the brain part doesn’t make sense to me (as someone in the field). Quantum effects average out on a scale much smaller than a cup, that’s why Newtonian mechanics have been so successful in (mostly) describing the world we actually live in.
Even if picking up a cup technically involves collapsing the superposition of an uncountable number of particles/waves in the object, this is a completely unnecessary computation that’s definitely not implemented in the brain. Going with this line of reasoning, does each object pick up also involve quantum calculations of positions of your fingers, your arm, your trunk, the nerves connecting your arm to your brain? Does each neuron perform quantum computations to determine the position of each connected neuron and every surrounding ion that will drive its action potentials? This wouldn’t make sense and has no basis in reality. How many times do we try to use our hand and the quantum calculations in the brain determine that the hand is in some unexpected position? The neurons are either connected to each other and the arm is attached, and in a predictable position to your body, as is the cup, or things wouldn’t work at all and the entire build of our body would be an evolutionary failure, not the blueprint for the only kind of life we’ve been able to observe in the universe. If position of large objects and parts of your body was uncertain, no amount of quantum computation in the brain could correct for it, so why waste the energy of even doing it?
Thankfully, we have a pretty good understanding of the neural computations behind picking up cups correctly and we were able to design simple electronic circuits and programs involving absolutely no quantum effects that are easily able to pick up cups and move around our world. On a scale we exist in, we don’t manipulate probabilities, we manipulate objects with fixed physical positions and forms, because our biological machinery enables nothing else.
Respectfully, I feel like your line of thinking goes down a misguided path where a QM “observer” is equated to a conscious being, somehow isolated (or even deliberately harnessing) from the effects you propose drive every aspect of the universe. In actuality, an observation is just a particle/wave interaction, as relevant for particles arranged into non-living objects, as for those temporarily special arrangements we would call life.
Even if picking up a cup technically involves collapsing the superposition of an uncountable number of particles/waves in the object, this is a completely unnecessary computation that’s definitely not implemented in the brain. Going with this line of reasoning, does each object pick up also involve quantum calculations of positions of your fingers, your arm, your trunk, the nerves connecting your arm to your brain? Does each neuron perform quantum computations to determine the position of each connected neuron and every surrounding ion that will drive its action potentials? This wouldn’t make sense and has no basis in reality. How many times do we try to use our hand and the quantum calculations in the brain determine that the hand is in some unexpected position? The neurons are either connected to each other and the arm is attached, and in a predictable position to your body, as is the cup, or things wouldn’t work at all and the entire build of our body would be an evolutionary failure, not the blueprint for the only kind of life we’ve been able to observe in the universe. If position of large objects and parts of your body was uncertain, no amount of quantum computation in the brain could correct for it, so why waste the energy of even doing it?
Thankfully, we have a pretty good understanding of the neural computations behind picking up cups correctly and we were able to design simple electronic circuits and programs involving absolutely no quantum effects that are easily able to pick up cups and move around our world. On a scale we exist in, we don’t manipulate probabilities, we manipulate objects with fixed physical positions and forms, because our biological machinery enables nothing else.
Respectfully, I feel like your line of thinking goes down a misguided path where a QM “observer” is equated to a conscious being, somehow isolated (or even deliberately harnessing) from the effects you propose drive every aspect of the universe. In actuality, an observation is just a particle/wave interaction, as relevant for particles arranged into non-living objects, as for those temporarily special arrangements we would call life.