Untrue, because the reason the microtubule coherence was posited in the first place, at all, was as an origin of consciousness. There wasn't another reason to presuppose it. So the fact that the activity exists does have information content with respect to the central thesis. It certainly doesn't prove it, but it moves the needle.
Analogy: Suppose the Earth is covered with clouds and we have never seen the sky, we have not invented space ships yet, etc. Nobody knows why tides happen. Someday someone predicts there is a GIANT rock orbiting the Earth not too far away, and everyone says that is crazy. But eventually you send a rocket up with a camera, and you see this giant rock there! Whoa. Since the tides caused you to look for the rock, and you found the rock, you have reason to suspect the rock does cause the tides. Maybe it doesn't -- further verification is required. But the big rock is evidence, it moves the needle. That is what science is, is making testable predictions and then testing them and then letting the results of those tests help you understand what is going on in the world.
Invoking the FSM or discounting evidence, because it doesn't match preconceived notions, is in fact the kind of thing that is the bane of science and always looks embarrassing / shameful in retrospect. I would hope that people at HN understand science well enough to see this pattern and not participate.
P.S. Re the "according to the article's narrative" snipe, uhh, some of us have been following this issue since the 90s when the idea was proposed. "You guys are crazy" is an accurate description of the majority consensus.
That would be an example of science in action, and I'm certainly not denying that more evidence would make these theories more tenable. Considering that virtually every spare differential at every scale is taken advantage of by the body to conduct its work, it's not surprising at all to find quantum effects put to work all over the brain.
That's in the general, but we're talking about a specific theory. Your story is also about survivorship bias of scientific theories used as justification for a failure of imagination. Just because while looking for a place to seat consciousness they posited a phenomenon that turned out to take place does not imply that seating. Staking out a claim and adjusting it as information arrives is part of doing good science, but it does not follow that the initial or altered claim is then a good or likely scientific theory.
Penrose's theories are especially problematic in this area (as opposed to your analogy) because consciousness as a phenomenon is so poorly defined and because of the (many) changes that have been made wrt the physical structures proposed as the mechanisms of his version of consciousness over the years. Fortunately the "objective reduction" is a very specific requirement for consciousness Penrose has laid out, and I see no evidence here that suggests we're seeing it in action, nor the additional needed evidence that it itself is necessary for "consciousness". Implying otherwise is my objection.
> P.S. Re the "according to the article's narrative" snipe, uhh, some of us have been following this issue since the 90s when the idea was proposed. "You guys are crazy" is an accurate description of the majority consensus.
I was not denying that there were people saying "You guys are crazy", I was saying that I have my doubts that there was ever consensus around calling crazy a statement like "there is quantum activity in the microtubules". See dnautics's comment above. "Theory pilloried by scientific community turns out to be true" is a nice narrative, but again: survivorship bias. Most theories turn out to be wrong (and, more crucially, less usefully wrong than accepted theories).
Predicting the existence of a giant rock wouldn't be sufficient. The theory would also have to predict the tides based on the assumption of a giant rock.
In the article's case, only the rock is being predicted but the link to the tides is not established (except that the former somehow causes the latter).
Analogy: Suppose the Earth is covered with clouds and we have never seen the sky, we have not invented space ships yet, etc. Nobody knows why tides happen. Someday someone predicts there is a GIANT rock orbiting the Earth not too far away, and everyone says that is crazy. But eventually you send a rocket up with a camera, and you see this giant rock there! Whoa. Since the tides caused you to look for the rock, and you found the rock, you have reason to suspect the rock does cause the tides. Maybe it doesn't -- further verification is required. But the big rock is evidence, it moves the needle. That is what science is, is making testable predictions and then testing them and then letting the results of those tests help you understand what is going on in the world.
Invoking the FSM or discounting evidence, because it doesn't match preconceived notions, is in fact the kind of thing that is the bane of science and always looks embarrassing / shameful in retrospect. I would hope that people at HN understand science well enough to see this pattern and not participate.
P.S. Re the "according to the article's narrative" snipe, uhh, some of us have been following this issue since the 90s when the idea was proposed. "You guys are crazy" is an accurate description of the majority consensus.