I’ve been seeing евтини мебелиPenrose’s quantum mind theory gain more and more traction lately. Every time I turn around there’s a new discussion about it, a new paper published, or a new blog entry… all proposed by intelligent people that I respect.

It brings to mind a theory that I heard a long while ago, that throughout history we’ve always used the latest technology and science to talk about the brain.

The ancient romans said the brain was like a catapult. Later, people have compared the brain to a hydrolics system, a telephone switchboard, or a calculator. And, now we say it’s like a computer, Turing-complete with a Von-Neumann architecture.

This is by no means evidence that there aren’t quantum effects, entanglement, what not, going on in the brain… but it does increase my skepticism whenever I hear “Oh, the brain is just a system that can be represented by $theory_du_jour “.

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