[thedoc (OP)]

International computer giant IBM has unveiled its vision for a "supercomputer in a sugarcube" powered by electronic blood...

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[woolyhead]

Nobody really knows the future but I think that computers will be required to operate at least as well as human brains work. At present we don't know how the intelligence structure works or the mechanisms involved to allow us to solve certain kinds of problems and so our intelligence cannot yet be pinned down to a mechanistic process. However, it is known that inside the neurons there are microtubules which contain very special type of pure water which may act so as to insulate the wavefunctions of quantum electrons, thus preserving their wavefunctions. The idea is that before every neuron signal occurs there are vast numbers of quantum calculations going on, whose final output either fires the neuron or doesn't (binary fashion). But exactly how this quantum computing works is very much speculation. With quantum entanglement there are obviously very many more paths in the network than is suggested by the number of neuron interconnections alone. The best people to answer this question is probably the quantum-computer designers. Does any such person read this forum? Would they like to enlighten us?  However, bear in mind that even IBM doesn't know how intelligence is done, because if they did, we would have intelligent computers by now, wouldn't we. I know that some people will point out that the wavefunction above will be lost as the wavefunction comes into contact with the water molecules. Based on this objection I don't know how this quantum computer is supposed to work, but it was suggested in the first place by Professor Sir Roger Penrose after Frohlich's 1975 idea for the possibility of quantum coherence phenomena in biological systems. It requires that "for quantum coherence to occur, the energy of the biological drive must be high enough before any coherence could be comparable in size to the large-scale behaviour shown in superconductivity". Apparently "there already exists evidence of oscillations occuring at 10 exp 11Hz in such biological structures". Ref Shadows of the Mind, page 367, chapter on quantum coherence in biological systems. The book was first published in 1995 so it may well be out of date by now and further advances may well exist.