<story><title>Too much serendipity</title><url>https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oA23zoEjPnzqfHiCt/there-is-way-too-much-serendipity</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jdewerd</author><text>&amp;gt; there may be quantum effects involved&lt;p&gt;Quantum Mechanics is why atoms and molecules exist and form bonds. QM is the physics of chemistry. Without QM, chemistry does not happen. The universe would just be a big churning mess of particles and you would never get little lego pieces that snap together according to repeatable rules that, when repeated, form macroscopic substances of innumerable description up to and including life itself.&lt;p&gt;So QM is no doubt involved, but on this scale it is either a trivial fact or an indication that someone tried to lean on a classical approximation, it broke, and they had to revise it (which arguably says more about the approximation than it says about the underlying behavior).&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the nitpick. It&amp;#x27;s a pet peeve of mine that discussions of QM tend to focus so hard on the strange behavior that they forget to mention where QM fits into the bigger picture and leave people with the impression that it only matters under special circumstances when in fact it matters so much that you can hardly have &amp;quot;matter&amp;quot; without it.&lt;p&gt;------------&lt;p&gt;Re: anesthetic, a large fraction of simple halocarbon compounds have intense neural effects, so anyone doing halocarbon chemistry would quickly be put on the &amp;quot;scent&amp;quot; even if they weren&amp;#x27;t tasting everything in the Sigma Aldrich catalog.</text></item><item><author>johngossman</author><text>I recently learned that anesthesia is the same. Not only has no anesthesia ever been developed except through &amp;quot;serendipity.&amp;quot; Not only that, but anesthesia that works for humans also effect a wide range of things including plants and bacteria. But why is an active area of research. There are even speculations that there may be quantum effects involved. Biology and chemistry are insanely complex.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akoboldfrying</author><text>I would say everyone understands that &amp;quot;quantum effects&amp;quot; refers to situations in which classical approximations break down.&lt;p&gt;Likewise when we say &amp;quot;numerical issues&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s understood that we&amp;#x27;re talking about situations in which the usual approximation of real numbers by floating point representations breaks down. &amp;quot;Disk corruption&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean anything is physically wrong with the disk, only that its contents have become inconsistent with the filesystem abstraction it normally supports, etc.</text></comment>
<story><title>Too much serendipity</title><url>https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oA23zoEjPnzqfHiCt/there-is-way-too-much-serendipity</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jdewerd</author><text>&amp;gt; there may be quantum effects involved&lt;p&gt;Quantum Mechanics is why atoms and molecules exist and form bonds. QM is the physics of chemistry. Without QM, chemistry does not happen. The universe would just be a big churning mess of particles and you would never get little lego pieces that snap together according to repeatable rules that, when repeated, form macroscopic substances of innumerable description up to and including life itself.&lt;p&gt;So QM is no doubt involved, but on this scale it is either a trivial fact or an indication that someone tried to lean on a classical approximation, it broke, and they had to revise it (which arguably says more about the approximation than it says about the underlying behavior).&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the nitpick. It&amp;#x27;s a pet peeve of mine that discussions of QM tend to focus so hard on the strange behavior that they forget to mention where QM fits into the bigger picture and leave people with the impression that it only matters under special circumstances when in fact it matters so much that you can hardly have &amp;quot;matter&amp;quot; without it.&lt;p&gt;------------&lt;p&gt;Re: anesthetic, a large fraction of simple halocarbon compounds have intense neural effects, so anyone doing halocarbon chemistry would quickly be put on the &amp;quot;scent&amp;quot; even if they weren&amp;#x27;t tasting everything in the Sigma Aldrich catalog.</text></item><item><author>johngossman</author><text>I recently learned that anesthesia is the same. Not only has no anesthesia ever been developed except through &amp;quot;serendipity.&amp;quot; Not only that, but anesthesia that works for humans also effect a wide range of things including plants and bacteria. But why is an active area of research. There are even speculations that there may be quantum effects involved. Biology and chemistry are insanely complex.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PakG1</author><text>As a non-physicist and non-chemist who keeps running into quantum mechanics only through headlines, extra thanks for pointing this out. It&amp;#x27;s quite obvious in retrospect to acknowledge that quantum mechanics is the physics of chemistry, and I don&amp;#x27;t know why I didn&amp;#x27;t see that before. It certainly helps to view a lot of things in a new light.</text></comment>