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Quantum computation and the physical computation level of biological information processing
On the basis of introspective analysis, we establish a crucial requirement
for the physical computation basis of consciousness: it should allow processing
a significant amount of information together at the same time. Classical
computation does not satisfy the requirement. At the fundamental physical
level, it is a network of two body interactions, each the input-output
transformation of a universal Boolean gate. Thus, it cannot process together at
the same time more than the three bit input of this gate - many such gates in
parallel do not count since the information is not processed together. Quantum
computation satisfies the requirement. At the light of our recent explanation
of the speed up, quantum measurement of the solution of the problem is
analogous to a many body interaction between the parts of a perfect classical
machine, whose mechanical constraints represent the problem to be solved. The
many body interaction satisfies all the constraints together at the same time,
producing the solution in one shot. This shades light on the physical
computation level of the theories that place consciousness in quantum
measurement and explains how informations coming from disparate sensorial
channels come together in the unity of subjective experience. The fact that the
fundamental mechanism of consciousness is the same of the quantum speed up,
gives quantum consciousness a potentially enormous evolutionary advantage.Comment: 13 page
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