[dogprez]

> If anything, it appears that neural networks are far further along than any quantum mechanism for approximating whatever "consciousness" actually is? And neural networks are absolutely not quantum mechanical.

Neural networks are also way less power efficient. Quantum computing allows us to calculate things that would take a lot of power or time to calculate (not calculate things that are impossible). If one could create consciousness with classical physics it wouldn't prove anything about how the human brain works. In fact if it was wildly less power efficient it might even suggest non-classical physics in the brain.

[Nasrudith]

Wouldn't the scaling of time be a more reliable tell of quantum computing? If humans can marginally solve problems with a slower increase over time than conventional algorithms that would hint at a quantum algorithm being in use. It certainly wouldn't be faster compared to clocked silicon, and there would probably be a lot of noise and overhead involved.

[aeonik]

Thermodynamic analysis would actually be a really useful way to attack this problem, but unfortunately (though fortunately for stability) the brain and our computers are no where near the Landauer limit of computation.

I actually wonder if the Landauer limit applies to quantum computing.