Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedMichael Nielsen: belief
29 May 2024 Conversations with Tyler Michael Nielsen on Collaboration, Quantum Computing, and Civilization's Fragility
“An interesting, unsuspected way — that would be terrific and I think is not completely out of the question, but it probably doesn’t affect anything about consciousness or anything like that.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Michael Nielsen
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 29 May 2024
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Is there any chance Roger Penrose is right and the human brain is some kind of quantum computer? I would love it if he was right. I think the answer, unfortunately, is not really, no. [laughs] It’s certainly possible that there’s some very interesting structure in there that is quantum mechanical in some really interesting way. Lots of structure in there is quantum mechanical. The reason why atoms are stable has to do with quantum mechanics. All these sorts of things. An interesting, unsuspected way — that would be terrific and I think is not completely out of the question, but it probably doesn’t affect anything about consciousness or anything like that. I would be very surprised if that were the case. How are we going to make progress toward a theory of quantum gravity, a general understanding of everything? We seem to be stuck. Many people hate string theory. Many people hate Everett’s many worlds. Those seem to be two major contenders. Where are we at? And what’s going to happen next?…
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