Thinking About Consciousness in the Meat Only a Blogpost not a Paper 8 min read The Quantum Connection I was getting pulled into the fascinating intersection of quantum mechanics and consciousness again, (it happens from time to time) and I realised, I can't articulate this stuff verbally to anyone. That's why I started typing it. It was Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's proposal in their Orchestrated Objective Reduction ( Orch-OR ) theory that hounded me. They say consciousness emerges from quantum processes in microtubules—the structural frames inside our brain cells. It's quite heavy. Anyhow, those guys say consciousness occurs when probability waves (superposition: in every state it can be in at the same time) collapse after reaching the threshold inside our microtubules. This is what sparks moments of consciousness. Fair enough. Think of living things as quantum collapse interfaces, microtubules like a radio receiver—breaking down bigger waves so we can appreciat...
