<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Jun 26, 2010, at 5:46 PM, Ross Evans wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">All this is essentially pure speculation. </span></blockquote><div><br></div>It's speculation but not pure speculation, its a bit closer to an educated guess. </div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">We don't know how the brain encodes information</span></blockquote><br></div><div>I think just recently were starting to understand how memories are stored, Long Term Potentiation, that is to say a physical change in the connection between two neurons.<br><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></i></div><blockquote type="cite">and as such to even talk in terms of bits and bytes is to fall foul of the assumption, that the brain can be shoehorned into a conceptual framework, that sees it deemed to be little more than a digital computer.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>What's with this "little more" business? If the brain isn't a digital computer it can certainly be simulated by one, and that's all I need.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"> The other extreme is the promulgators of the quantum consciousness idea, which is little more than new age quackery dressed up as serious science. </blockquote><br></div><div>I agree. 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.</div><div><br></div><div>That said I must admit that it's possible, maybe even probable, that quantum principles can, not just theoretically but in the real world, exponentially speed up computation. In other words it may actually be possible to make a practical quantum computer; and that would change the world. With enough computation you can do anything. </div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br></body></html>