The Orch-OR theory: Where does it stand today?


Roger Penrose, Oxford mathematician and physicist, in 2011. Penrose will be 94 years old in August. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

First, a note on how I use AI

My writing is always my own. I never use AI as a writing tool. When I use AI for research, I will always say so. Occasionally, as with this post, I may post, or quote from, a report written by an AI. When I do that, I will attribute the report appropriately and say which particular AI wrote the report.

What is Orch-OR, and why does it matter?

What kind of universe do we live in? Is it cold and mechanical? Purely material? Or is there something spooky, even magical and caring, about the universe?

This is a scientific question now, though in the past it was a religious or philosophical question. Philosophy is helpful and can discipline our thinking, though ultimately philosophy cannot provide the answers that only science can provide. As for religion, it might have been useful to the ancients. But for us today, two-thousand-year-old ideas about the nature of the cosmos are primitive, useless, and misleading.

People often assume that scientists are all materialists. That is not the case. The development of quantum physics during the 20th Century did much damage to a material, mechanical view of the universe. Many scientists saw cracks in the doors of physics through which spooks could enter. It became hard to deny that there is something immaterial about the cosmos — though scientists could not make sense of it: Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Arthur Eddington, Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Roger Penrose, David Bohm, Max Tegmark.

Rooting for the spooks

It was Albert Einstein who first used the word “spooky.” He described quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” This troubled him greatly, though he had to recognize it. His guess was that there must be “hidden variables.” Many physicists have gone looking for such hidden variables, but whether they exist remains unproven.

So: Is the cosmos cold and indifferent, morally irresponsible, devoid of meaning, completely uncaring about good and evil and suffering? Or is the cosmos more than that?

Roger Penrose is almost certainly the Einstein of our time. Here is what Penrose had to say, as quoted in the Wikipedia article on Penrose:

“I’m not a believer myself. I don’t believe in established religions of any kind. … I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it’s not somehow just there by chance … some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along — it’s a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don’t think that’s a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it.”

Consciousness

The open door for spooks was just a crack for most of the 20th Century. Roger Penrose’s theory of consciousness throws the door wide open. ChatGPT 4.1 describes Penrose’s view of the nature of consciousness thus: “In this framework, the universe is not dead matter plus consciousness emerging later, but rather, proto-conscious events are woven into the very fabric of physical reality, occurring wherever quantum collapses happen.”

The standard theory of consciousness today is that consciousness is an electrical phenomenon that happens in the neurons of the brain. There is no proof of that! Rather, it’s a materialist theory and assumes that it couldn’t be anything else, that consciousness somehow just emerges in a neural network that is complex enough.

Penrose thinks otherwise. Penrose, in collaboration with the anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, thinks that consciousness is a quantum, rather than an electrical, phenomenon — that is, our brains are like quantum computers. The Penrose-Hameroff theory proposed thirty years ago that consciousness is generated by quantum effects in the tiny microtubules that provide structure to neurons. They call the theory Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction). During the past thirty years, many scientists have tried to shoot down the theory. None have succeeded. In fact I think it is fair to say that recent findings have tended to support, rather than weaken, the Orch-OR theory.

For assessing the spookiness of Orch-OR, it’s important to keep in mind that the theory doesn’t just propose that a human mind is a very fine, but isolated, quantum computer. Because of quantum entanglement — spooky action at a distance — Orch-OR also opens the door to the possibility that human consciousness can somehow connect with the larger cosmos. Yes, of course — religions and philosophies have long proposed such a thing. Orch-OR has proposed an actual mechanism that can be scientifically investigated.

For years I have tried to keep up with the ongoing research into the validity (or lack of validity) of the Orch-OR theory. I have found that an AI can be a huge help with this. I used the “agent” function of ChatGPT 4.1 to generate the report below. If you’re interested in this subject, you may find the links at the end of the report interesting and more accessible than the difficult science involved in investigating the Orch-OR theory.

Research on the Penrose–Hameroff “Orch‑OR” Theory of Consciousness (Updated July 2025, ChatGPT 4.1 agent.)

Background and Goals of the Theory

The orchestrated objective reduction (Orch‑OR) model, developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, posits that consciousness arises from quantum processes within microtubules (MTs) inside neurons. The theory proposes:

  • Quantum states in microtubules enable non-algorithmic computation, fundamental to conscious experience.
  • “Objective reduction” (OR) occurs when a quantum superposition reaches a critical threshold, governed by gravitational effects (as per Penrose’s interpretation of quantum mechanics).

Recent Supporting Research (2023–2025)

  • Microtubule Quantum Superradiance & Excitons:

    • Babcock et al. 2024 (Quantum Brain Dynamics): Demonstrated that microtubules can support collective quantum states (superradiant excitonic states) theoretically, with room-temperature persistence in simulated systems.
    • Oblinski et al. 2023 (Electronic Energy Migration in Microtubules): Experimental results show energy migration over ~6.6 nm in microtubules, reduced by anesthetics. This suggests microtubule quantum effects are sensitive to anesthetics, aligning with predictions of Orch‑OR.
  • Entanglement in the Brain:

    • Kerskens & Perez, 2022 (Phys.org coverage): MRI experiments reported non-classical “entanglement-like” correlations in human brains. The results are provocative but have been questioned due to interpretational ambiguity.
    • Saxena et al., 2020–2023: Experiments with isolated microtubules show scale-free resonance and long-range correlations. These suggest that microtubules may act as “fractal antennas,” supporting information integration.
  • Myelin Quantum Effects:

    • Grigoryan et al. 2024 (arXiv): Predicted generation of entangled biphoton states in the myelin sheath. Not yet confirmed in vivo.
  • Superradiant UV Emission:

    • Celardo et al., 2019–2024: Theoretical work on collective photon emission (“superradiance”) from tryptophan in microtubules, and observed long-lived room-temperature delayed luminescence, but direct link to consciousness is still debated.

Major Criticisms and Falsification Efforts

  • Decoherence Objection:

    • Tegmark (2000), Reimers et al. (2009), McKemmish et al. (2009): Calculated that any quantum state in microtubules should decohere (lose quantum character) in femtoseconds—far too fast for neural timescales or consciousness.
    • Penrose & Hameroff response: Argue that ordered water, tubulin geometry, and shielding effects can prolong coherence, and that certain experiments (superradiance, delayed luminescence) hint at greater stability than previously believed.
  • Collapse Model Experiments:

    • Diósi–Penrose (DP) collapse tests (Carless et al. 2021–2023): Underground experiments seeking “spontaneous radiation” predicted by objective reduction. No positive signals detected yet; does not strictly falsify Orch‑OR but narrows parameter space.
    • McQueen (2023): Critiques that many “collapse” experiments do not target Orch‑OR’s core biological mechanisms, and Penrose himself has noted most such tests are not definitive.
  • Failure to Replicate & Biological Plausibility:

    • Some key experiments on microtubule resonance and delayed luminescence have not yet been widely replicated. Others find evidence of energy transfer, but not quantum computation.
    • McKemmish et al. (2009): Argue there is no known mechanism to “protect” microtubules from environmental decoherence within neurons.
  • Lack of Unique Predictions: Many neuroscientists and philosophers remain skeptical, arguing that Orch‑OR’s predictions are not unique or distinguishable from other neural theories of consciousness.

Penrose & Hameroff’s Responses

  • They emphasize new evidence for quantum effects in biological systems (photosynthesis, avian magnetoreception, possibly microtubules) has eroded old “impossibility” claims.
  • Point to experiments showing that anesthetics disrupt microtubule energy transfer, not just synaptic activity, supporting a microtubule-based substrate for consciousness.
  • Welcome further “collapse” experiments and assert that any conclusive falsification would require demonstrating the impossibility of quantum computation in microtubules at physiological conditions.

Trajectory and Current Assessment

  • Supporting Evidence Trajectory:

    • There is growing experimental evidence of nontrivial quantum phenomena in microtubules (superradiance, energy transfer, delayed luminescence), though not yet direct evidence of quantum computation or OR events in vivo.
    • Entanglement-like effects in brains and myelin remain controversial, with interpretation and replication still pending.
    • Recent preprints (Mavromatos et al., 2025) propose microtubules as “QED cavities” with high-Q quantum states, but these are still theoretical.
  • Falsification Trajectory:

    • No clear-cut experiment has yet falsified Orch‑OR; most challenges concern decoherence timescales and lack of unique empirical predictions.
    • Some collapse models are now strongly constrained by negative results, but Penrose and Hameroff maintain their version is not ruled out.

Key References & Further Reading

Scotland will show Trump how much it hates him


Today’s front page of The National

The American media probably will underplay Trump’s five-day visit to Scotland. We can hope, though, that with Trump dogged by the Epstein scandal, the American media will keep up the pressure and give us a good look at the protests that are planned.

According to the best information I’ve been able to find, Trump will arrive at Glasgow Prestwick airport today at 8:20 p.m. Scotland time, which is 3:20 p.m. in New York and Washington. I believe he is to travel in a heavily armed motorcade from Glasgow to Aberdeenshire and Trump’s Turnberry golf resort.

Scottish media have reported that the presidential armed limousine, “the Beast,” has already arrive in Scotland. According to Sky News, “Turnberry, and its population of about 200 people, have this week witnessed a never-ending stream of Army trucks, terrorist sweeps, road checkpoints, airspace restrictions, sniper positions being erected and Secret Service agents roaming around.”

If the American media let us down on this spectacle, the British media won’t. You can check the web sites of at least four Scottish newspapers — Herald Scotland, the Scotsman, the National, and the Aberdeen Press & Journal. For video, remember Sky News, which you can stream from Pluto TV, and, as far as I know, on YouTube. And of course there’s always the BBC.

Update:

Yearning for hell to freeze over


Surely we must be in hell: March 19, 2025. Official White House photo via Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.

The news of late has been so surreal that it feels like living in a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, set in a fascist America from which there is No Exit. How the hell do we get out of this place?

A lifelong criminal, con man, and creep of the highest order struts on the world stage like a king, dispensing commands to hellify the world. Half the population, eager and true-believing citizens of hell, are so depraved that they see this king as God’s agent on earth, even as he hastens to light their little lives, too, on fire. The other half of us see what is happening, stunned, bewildered, and near paralyzed by the spectacle of it.

In this hell, freedom is the right to dominate and exploit. Truth is whatever serves the king. Virtue means doing whatever the king wants done. Empathy is toxic. Justice is retribution and persecution. Fairness is at the top of the list of things that must be reversed because fairness can no longer be allowed. Any act of fairness is a crack in hell’s foundation.

In philosophy and literature, there is a well developed idea that this world is hell (even before Donald Trump came along). Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.”

Time after time people like me have bought into hopes that this criminal, con man, and creep would be neutralized and brought to justice. Time after time he has slithered out of it, not least because there are so many who are afraid of him or who long for a piece of the perks and power in a hellified world — hell’s courtiers, sold souls, connoisseurs of the practice of domination, exploitation, and cruelty.

A new hope?

The Epstein scandal gets more interesting every day. Dare we hope that it will be the Epstein scandal that finally causes hell to freeze over? This morning, the New Republic has this piece by Alex Shepherd: Is This the Turning Point of Trump’s Presidency? It’s early yet, but the Epstein story has all the makings of a defining scandal that could grind Republican rule to a halt.

It’s asking a lot of MAGA fools to comprehend that reality is pretty much a complete reversal of all the lies they have believed. A thousand smoking guns pointed right at their tiny brains may not be enough. We can only hope.

Meanwhile, even if Trump manages to slither out of this, the subversive beauty of the truth trying to come out, while the king and his court struggle to keep the scam going, is a sight to see.

The media and some of the punditry, bless their timid little hearts, are ganging up now to come up with scoops that fry Trump’s ass in the grease of his own guilt. Here’s an example of a good one this morning, from Midas Touch. The link is below.


A screen shot from the video at Midas Touch.

Aux armes, citoyens!

Happy Bastille Day!

I scoured YouTube for a truly good performance of Hector Berlioz’ setting of La Marseillaise. The version above is poorly recorded and somewhat slimmed down, but it was the best I could find. Done properly, the piece requires a huge and excellent orchestra and a vast chorus with a separate men’s chorus, women’s chorus, and children’s chorus. In the above, we must settle for a single chorus, though it’s large and well trained.

I can easily imagine constructing an unserious but entertaining theory that the reason we Americans have such a factured political culture is that we don’t have a proper national anthem. If the day ever comes when we can actually fix the American Constitution to repair our democracy and take it back from the oligarchy, Christianists, and authoritarians, we also need a new national anthem to go with the new Constitution.

Slough again

A friend emailed me yesterday with more about Slough and how the English town of Slough punches above its weight, culturally. I have never watched “The Office,” and thus I don’t know what kind of treatment Slough got. I should add, though, to my mention of “Slow Horses” (Apple TV+) and the Slough House series of novels by Mick Herron that in “Slow Horses” and Slough House the reference to Slough is insulting. Slough House is a place where MI5 sends its failed agents, and this Slough House is said to be so far from MI5 headquarters that “it might as well be Slough.”

My friend’s email also included a link to this video, which is a kind of hymn to Slough — quite touching — by the main character of “The Office.”

Extra credit: From the New York Times, 2008: What’s So Bad About Slough?

Writers worth remembering


The Prisoner of Zenda was published in 1894. But it was very popular and went through many editions. This appears to be a book club edition, published, I think, in the 1920s. There were movie versions as late as 1979.

In every generation of writers, there are only a few writers who write classics that remain in demand and are kept in print. Everything else falls into obscurity. These books, some of which may even have gone through multiple editions, continue to exist only in the surviving copies, which no doubt become fewer and fewer decade by decade.

I am hardly the first to complain that I find the fiction that gets published these days to be pretty much unreadable. On June 25, the New York Times ran a piece touching on this, Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear? David Brooks’ column on July 10 was When Novels Mattered.

When looking for fiction to read, I rarely find book lists helpful. This neglected fiction is not on anybody’s radar screen, and besides my taste in fiction matches poorly with that of people who compile book lists. But I have found that an AI can be very good at finding neglected fiction to read, if you explain in detail what you like. I have been using ChatGPT’s 4.1 model for this. My to-be-read stack, which was empty for a while, has been replenished.


⬆︎ The Thirty-Nine Steps was published in 1915. Alfred Hitchcock based a movie on the book in 1935. The copy above was a Reader’s Digest book published in 2009. Though it’s a Reader’s Digest book, it contains the complete text.


⬆︎ Sword at Sunset was a bestseller after it was published in 1963. It’s one of the fortunate old books that has been reissued in Kindle format and a new paperback edition.


⬆︎ It seems that the biggest bookstore in Scotland for used books is in Inverness, not Edinburgh. That’s Leakey’s Bookshop. I will be in Inverness for a couple of days in late September, so Leakey’s definitely will be one of my stops. Before I go, I’ll ask ChatGPT to help me make a list of books and authors to look for.


⬆︎ I have been greatly enjoying Slow Horses, which can be streamed on Apple TV+. There have been four seasons so far, with a fifth and sixth season in the works. The TV series is based on a series of novels, Slough House, by Mick Herron. It seems there is no end to the humiliation heaped on Slough, a town about 20 miles west of London. I wrote about Slough in a post in April 2024, The magical threads from nowhere to somewhere. Be sure to read the comments!


⬆︎ I ran into a friend a couple of days ago who told me that he has completely cut himself off from the news, to protect his mental health. I don’t advocate going that far. But I do think that we need to keep our heads above it and realize that what we’re living through is a disgusting pig circus directed by idiots. The New York Times lifted the lid just a little in a recent guest essay, The Ruthless Ambition of Stephen Miller. In this piece, someone is quoted as saying that Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, doesn’t know or care much about policy and that “She’s producing a reality TV show every day.” In the photo, that’s Trump, of course, with Jeffrey Epstein. Though we know that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane seven times, we’re expected to believe Trump’s denials that anything naughty or illegal happened.

Trump proudly visits new concentration camp


Official White House photo via Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.

I wonder: Is it because contemporary Republicans don’t know anything about the history of Nazi concentration camps that they are so eager for photo ops in front of cages, and that thus they just don’t understand how foolish it is to strut their depravity for the historical record? Or is it something like the opposite, that they are truly proud to be what they are?

They own it now. They own everything that ever happens in these places. The fools who voted for them own it, too.

Often it’s impossible to get public domain photos for current events. For Trump’s visit to “Alligator Alcatraz,” though, dozens of official White House photos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The Trump regime, clearly, wants the photos to be seen by as many people as possible.

I find that I just cannot comprehend how people like this think. And I’m afraid we’re going to learn much more about what this kind of people are capable of.


Official White House photo via Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.

Cucumbers … and sesame


Asian cucumber salad with salmon pâté

The local summer tomatoes aren’t here yet. The cucumbers, though, are tiding me over. For the past three weeks, I’ve gotten three pints of cucumbers each week from my local farmers, Brittany and Richard. They grow four types of cucumbers. I love them all.

If I were asked to make a short list of the loftiest flavors on the planet, I’d include toasted sesame. Sesame is an ancient crop with a history that goes back at least 3,000 years. (Barley, by comparison, was cultivated 9,000 years ago!) I always have raw sesame seeds in the fridge, and every time I think to use them I wonder why I don’t use them more often. They’re easy to toast, in a skillet. As for storebought toasted sesame oil, I use that almost every day.

I haven’t seen it in ages, but health food stores used to sell sesame salt. That’s a Japanese condiment (gomasio) made from toasted sesame seeds (ground) and salt. It’s easy to make your own. Toast the sesame seeds in a skillet, and grind them in a blender.

We usually disparage the post-agriculture diet as inferior to the hunter-gatherer diet. No doubt that’s true. But, these days, when international trade and international shipping are so easy, we can have post-agriculture foods from all over the world at low prices — foods from other climates, and thus a much greater variety of foods. Then again, a purely local diet can be healthy, too — as long as one has, or has access to, some really good fields, pastures, and gardens.

Ugly media failure on “the Big Beautiful Bill”


Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The media have done an absolutely rotten job of saying what’s in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The stories will say something about the deficit, then revert to the usual he-said she-said political junk. It’s infuriating.

As is so often the case these days, we have to depend on refugees from the mainstream media to provide us with very basic information that the mainstream media ignores so that it can focus on the inane political yipyap that it loves so much.

Jennifer Rubin, who resigned from the Washington Post and is now a part of “the Contrarian” on Substack, provides a partial list this morning of items in the bill that the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said are in violation of the Byrd Rule.

You’d almost think that the media don’t want us to understand just how corrupt and repulsive Republicans really are. And, yeah, let’s talk about campus protests and trans teenagers instead — you know, those real threats to America.

Jennifer Rubin’s list:

• A provision selling off millions of acres of federal lands

• A provision to pass food aid costs on to states

• Proposed limitations on food aid benefits to certain citizens or lawful permanent residents

• Proposed restrictions on the ability of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions and temporary restraining orders

• A proposal for a funding cap for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and for slashing pay of employees at the Federal Reserve

• A proposal to slash $293 million from the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research

• A plan to dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board

• An effort to repeal an EPA rule limiting air pollution emissions of passenger vehicles

• An item allowing project developers to bypass judicial environmental reviews if they pay a fee

• A measure deeming offshore oil and gas projects automatically compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act

• A modified version of the REINS Act, which would increase congressional power to overturn major regulations

• A scheme to punish so-called sanctuary cities by withholding federal grants

• An increase on Federal Employees Retirement System contribution rate for new civil servants who refuse to become at-will employees

• A measure seeking to extend the suspension of permanent price support authority for farmers

• A requirement forcing sale of all the electric vehicles used by the Post Office

• A change to annual geothermal lease sales and to geothermal royalties

• A proposal for a mining road in Alaska

• Authorization for the executive branch to reorganize federal agencies

• New fee for federal worker unions’ use of agency resources

• Transfer of space shuttle to a nonprofit in Houston from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

Streaming hours well spent

“Zero Day,” on Netflix, is the political opus that “Mountainhead” was not. Robert De Niro is magnificent as a former president who is called out of retirement to investigate a nationwide cyberattack.

“Mountainhead,” by the way, started out with an interesting premise but quickly devolved into a rather silly black comedy.

In “Long Way Home,” on Apple TV+, Ewan McGregor and his old friend Charley Boorman, starting in Scotland, ride classic old motorcycles across seventeen countries of northern and eastern Europe. It’s good, lightweight fun. It’s also a fine travelogue that gets us into some places where tourists don’t often go — northern Norway, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

Drone photography has done wonders for travel documentaries.

After all, what is comfort food for?


Fried barley biscuit with fixin’s

Especially on a diet, there is only so much that a mortal can do to fend off the heathen craving for bread and wine. Yesterday, a friend in California who had no idea that I’m on a diet sent me this text:

“I got a loaf of organic sourdough batard, some organic avocado oil mayonnaise, some Irish Kerry Gold butter, and some prosecco from Spain. I also got a bottle of organic Merlot.”

That, and the news, sent me over the edge. I tried to work out how to get maximum comfort from, say, 900 calories or less.

Fried barley biscuits were the solution: flour made from hulled barley, a little olive oil, and nonfat milk. Frying the biscuits in a little peanut oil made the biscuits a little less dry than if I had baked them.

Ignorance and folly

One of the most horrifying images I’ve seen in months was the White House photo of Trump, Vance, Rubio and Hegseth lying their ignorant asses off for the cameras. It would be hard to find four greater fools and sicker souls anywhere on the planet, and yet there they were, in the White House.

MAGA types probably still believe Trump’s lies and triumphalism. But I give the media high credit for starting to get the truth out so fast that by Sunday morning, on the talk shows, Trump’s goons had to start walking things back.

One of my biggest concerns is terrorism. Iran doesn’t have the capability of a military response far from their own borders. They’ll have to retaliate on the cheap, and that means terrorism. The Washington Post took up that subject this morning: A weakened Iran could turn to assassination and terrorism to strike back.

I hope gasoline prices jump to $11 a gallon. Gasoline prices are one of the few things that the American ignorati can understand.


Fools, rushing in