Learning at the Edge of Knowledge

My existential rabbit hole of choice revolves around the edges of knowledge that we as humans have obtained. It first struck me when asking questions in a lab as a high schooler to the grad student I was working for. I don't remember the specific question, but she didn't know. The PhD who ran the lab didn't know. We (we as in humanity) didn't know.

I guess that's the point of their work as researchers, but it was the first time I realized that there were so many mysteries out there.

The knowledge we do have is funny. I am currently studying medicine and am continually coming across seemingly made up letters and numbers as names for very real things. Granted, these are real things that we really can't physically observe easily, so I guess esoteric names are the way to go. Some things are named after the people who discovered them, the people who first contracted them. Some things are named after a letter. Either way, it strikes me that at one point, this was new knowledge. Everything I learn is something that someone figured out for the first time at some point.

Topical to this week's studies: cholinergic receptors exemplify this:

• 1889 First, some guy called Lewandowski did some early work showing that nicotine stimulated some nerve cells.
  • This is built on a number answered questions: What is nicotine? What is a nerve? (this prompts another question below)
• Then, in 1905, Langley elaborated on the action of nicotine, showing that it stimulated, then obstructed the nerve (what we call biphasic action).
  • Basically he figured out where this acts and how it acts
• Fast forward to today, and you'll find me trying to figure out which G protein an alpha 1 receptor is associated with. All of these receptors, proteins, molecules, have been named, identified, and connected to different nerves in the body. We know what they do, when they do it, and how they do it on a microscopic level.

Crazy stuff.

It's easy to be inundated with the knowledge that we do have, because that alone is more than any one person can hope to obtain. But beyond that, in any given vertical, is the exciting part.

The question I alluded to earlier:
What do we need to know (of the things we know) to figure out what we don't know?

I don't think we will ever know what we need to know to figure out what we don't know. Historically, most of our discoveries have been accidental or reverse in nature. Even the drugs created to affect cholinergic receptors from above were preceded by plant medicine that was likely discovered on accident.

My favorite border of knowledge is consciousness. It's a question that the smartest, most unusual people, have been at since we've been conscious.

I read a chapter of a book last night by Roger Penrose: Shadows of the Mind. The book consists of 360 pages of DENSE quantum physics which I have tried and failed to wrap my head around, then a chapter tying that to biology, which I can wrap my head around.

The mathy part (I hope I get this right) comes down to an idea called R. R is for reduction, think Schrodinger's cat stuff. Claude's ELI5 says that its like a coin spinning on it's edge. The cat people would say that it is both heads and tails until it is observed. Penrose says that the coin becomes "heavy" at some point due to quantum gravity or something mathy like that and collapses into one of the two states.

Back to biology--he proposes that the structures in our cells called microtubules, specifically those of the neurons, give way to processes like this. One process wouldn't be enough, but many in connection with one another maybe could do something really cool. He calls his theory Orch-OR. Orchestrated being the connection between many microtubules. OR (objective reduction) being that 1) they collapse into a position, and 2) nobody needs to look at the electrons in your brain to make this happen.

Pretty cool and to a hopeful med student, this makes sense(??)!

This theory isn't without problems, but that's a longer conversation. I find it comforting, because if it is even partially on the right track, AI will probably not be conscious anytime soon.

I'm very grateful to be a part of science at a time like this, and I'm grateful to learn from all those before me (even if they phoned it in with their naming schemas).

It leaves me with hope that, if we've figured out all of this as humans, we can figure out a bit more. Cheers to figuring out things that heal and being a part of this crazy ride.