[ExI] few bits per second.

[Damien Broderick]

On 6/29/2010 6:49 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

>> >  The thinking, if you can call it that, is that Quantum Mechanics is mysterious and consciousness is mysterious so the two must be related. I don't believe it's anything more profound than that.

> Exactly my view.

I have no strong feelings about possible QT explanations for 
consciousness, but this standard retort is way too glib. The books and 
papers I've read that try to explain aspects of the mind by reference to 
QT go a long way past "wow, man, mysterious!" Their authors find 
themselves stymied when they are limited to macroscale physics, and 
sometimes detect possible paths forward when quantum behavior at the 
micro scale is taken into account, or scaled up. This is very different 
from proposing, e.g., that "planets move round the sun because angels 
push them," because we have no independent good reason to think there 
*are* angels--but QM's behavior is well established.

And those arxiv papers Serafino keeps citing show that serious 
non-mysterioso scientists are suggesting links between DNA stability and 
QT, photosynthesis and QT, etc etc.

Damien Broderick