Cold Numbers Unmake the Quantum Mind

摘要

Sir Roger Penrose is incoherent, and Max Tegmark says he can prove it. According to Tegmark's calculations, the neurons in Pen-rose's brain are too warm to be performing quantum computations—a key requirement for Penrose's favorite theory of consciousness. Penrose, the Oxford mathematician famous for his work on tiling the plane with various shapes, is one of a handful of scientists who believe that the ephemeral nature of consciousness suggests a quantum process. In the realm of the extremely small, an object with a property such as polarization or spin may exist in any of a number of quantum states. Or, bizarrely, it may inhabit several quantum states at once, a property called superposition. A quantum superposition is extremely fragile. If an atom in such a state interacts with its environment—by being bumped or prodded by nearby atoms, for instance—its waveform can "collapse," ending the superposition by forcing the atom to commit to one of its possible states.