CeriseLadybug
Rather than advancing any novel argument itself, this essay provides an accessible, if rather broad, popular overview of "the mounting evidence" for the hypothesis that:
living organisms might use quantum effects, such as quantum coherence and quantum tunneling, to improve processes like photosynthesis.... [which] represents a fundamental shift from seeing “quantum vs. environment” to embracing “quantum + environment. [sic]
ENAQT is presented as settled evidence of this “shift”, which perhaps overstates what, as far as I understand, is an ongoing debate in quantum biology. An exposition of the quantum processes involved in photosynthetic coherence is followed by quantum tunnelling in enzymes, avian magnetoreception, and the vibrational theory of olfaction (a contentious topic) — all with next to no quantitative discussion of the processes involved. Regarding magnetoreception being a “remarkable example of how a biological process can harness quantum entanglement and coherence,” my understanding is that entanglement is not required in the standard models?
There's a passing nod to Penrose and Hameroff's 'consciousness from microtubules' Orch-OR hypothesis, which is accepted as 'speculative' but again no real discussion of how or why it's germane to the 'decoherence-timescale problem' which is a major problem for ORCH-OR proponents. All of this evidence is then brought together in the rather generalised conclusion that quantum biology is a "fresh viewpoint" that involves a paradigm shift "to see the environment not as an adversary but as a vital partner", which I of course more or less agree with!
On more stylistic concerns, the reference list is poorly formatted and the 'Vibrational Theory of Olfaction' entry is truncated, while the essay itself contains no inline citations. There are typos and inconsistent capitalisation throughout, showing a lack of proofreading before submission, and the entire essay comes in at just 10,815 characters including spaces out of a submission cap of 25,000.
Which is to say, there was a lot of room for expanding the exposition, which the essay would have profited from, including the (LLM?) improvements suggested in the technical endnotes that correctly diagnose its key shortcomings (citations, nuance, cohesion).
