Who says you have to believe it or pay attention to it? What does an average person gain by paying attention to unproven theories in any discipline. If it interests you, pay attention, if it doesn’t, don’t.
I just said you shouldn’t dismiss it as crank science.
He has good relationships and is respected by experts in many fields. If he was dismissed as a crank he couldn’t have found 3 incredibly respected scientists to debate his theories in one of his books.
Plenty of people think his theories are wrong or unlikely. The only people “dismissing them as crank science” are people in that have unwavering faith in the idea that consciousness arises from computable processes.
Paying attention has a cost so what’s the payoff?