[ExI] few bits per second

[Stefano Vaj]

On 27 June 2010 00:02, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 6/26/2010 4:46 PM, Ross Evans wrote:
>
>> The other extreme is the promulgators of the quantum consciousness idea,
>> which is little more than new age quackery dressed up as serious science.
>
> You might well be right, but how do you know this? You're a neuroscientist,
> I take it? Or perhaps a quantum specialist on the order of Roger Penrose?

I am neither.

OTOH,. it is certainly true that everything in principle has a
"quantum" nature, including steam engines and biological brains and
asteroids, but the problem is that nothing exists in the features of
organic brains that seems to suggest that they may be profiting from
quantum effects any more than steam engines or asteroids themselves.

If I try for instance to factor a long integer, I quickly realise that
I am even worse at that task than the PC sitting under my desk.
Actually, psi is to the best of my knowledge the best but probably the
*only* candidate which would allow to infer some interference between
the ordinary working of bio brains and quantum effects, admitting of
course that one is persuaded that we have evidence of psi phenomena
which cannot be explained within classical physics.

Moreover, even if this were true for some psi phenomena, such
conclusion would remain perfectly consistent with an *ordinary*
working of the brain in a 100% classical fashion.

But, who knows, we might profit from prosthetic quantum computing in
some future...

-- 
Stefano Vaj