I get that Roger Penrose is an incredibly smart guy, but I really don't see how he comes to the conclusion that there are any quantum effects in the brain. Even

I get that Roger Penrose is an incredibly smart guy, but I really don't see how he comes to the conclusion that there are any quantum effects in the brain. Even if there are, I don't see how they are necessary in any way for consciousness. It seems like he took ideas from an area he's an expert in (math/physics) and tried to apply it to biology without considering how much of a different level they're on. To put it in CS terms, it's like a genius electrical engineer who could design a complex circuit but doesn't know much about computers as whole saw a video of a kid playing Minecraft. He/she might assume that to be able to run such a complex system you would need specialized quantum/superconductor/graphene/whatever circuit, but in reality it's just the same classic building blocks at a higher level. Consciousness is just a biological process, but it's abstracted so far away from the physics it's built upon that a physicist might have trouble seeing it.