So it's a case of 'Take it from me, I'm an expert and it's nonsense' is it? Presumably no one needs to read any further on this topic. A relief to many no doubt.
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Basically… yes.
I mean I have an internal model in the making since I started my biochemistry bachelor in 1999, I moved through a molecular biology master into a biophysics PhD (where I also disrupted microtubules to investigate molecular processes of GPCRs), then into a professional career as a bioinformatician in the genomics field.
And when I read this:
“Wiest and his research team found that when they gave rats a drug that binds to microtubules, it took the rats significantly longer to fall unconscious under an anesthetic gas. The research team's microtubule-binding drug interfered with the anesthetic action, thus supporting the idea that the anesthetic acts on microtubules to cause unconsciousness.”
It certainly sounds probable microtubule disruption would do that but there are so insanely many ways that this could be explained using classical, non-quantum hypotheses (that need testing!), and microtubules serve so many different functions in cells, that the quantum theory falls completely outside of the possibilities of my internal models. I have no need of such an outlandish hypothesis.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this paper is not it. Sure there is a small chance I’m going to be wrong but Bayes would agree with me it’s an exceedingly small chance given all priors.
Just the scale difference between microtubules and whatever gives our brain that sense of consciousness is so unimaginably vast and complex that simple statements such as in TFA are really hinting at (feigned for attention?) ignorance.
Trust me.
I like your take here, but I just want to say, that I'm not sure claiming that consciousness has a quantum basia is that extraordinary.
We deal with lots of things that are quantum in nature on a daily basis. Once you get down to a certain size, it's essentially a guarantee, and nature has taken advantage of quantum effects before, like photo synthesis.
My take is that there isn't good evidence yet. One result doesn't make it.
Once I can plug my brain into a super conscious-net like the matrix with technology engineered on top of the theory, THAT'S when we have it figured out.
Consciousness must be much more high level than microtubules and quantum effects. I think the split brain "experiments" (not really experiments [0, 1]) are much more useful than the experiments presented in tfa.