The issue with Penrose's ideas in this area is that he worked backwards to get to them. He didn't want the mind of a mathematician to be shackled by Gödel's incompleteness theorems, which means he can't support the idea of an algorithmic mind. The general acceptance of Church–Turing–Deutsch principle backs him into a corner then, and quantum mechanics offers pretty much the only reasonable escape. The real problem then is that every time someone pokes a hole in his ideas for how that might work, he just switches it up how he thinks it might work. He is grasping at an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance with no real reason to do so.

What bothers me about all of this is that he writes books about it aimed at the general population, instead of proposing his ideas properly. Inevitably many of the laymen who casually encounter his ideas will misunderstand his point entirely and mistakenly think that Penrose supports a non-materialistic view of the mind (which of course he does not. A mind as Penrose envisions it, despite not being algorithmic, is still quite materialistic).

Roger Penrose is a brilliant man, but I think this is a case of the Nobel Disease (well, he hasn't received a Nobel prize, but even so).

I think some people mix "quantum" and "magic" definitions in their minds. Even mtgx kinda alluded to such above with would all be better served by a quantum computer than by anything else.

Everything will -- somehow -- be better. Just add quantum. (protip: go read scott aaronson's relevant articles, papers, monographs, course materials, etc).

I don't claim the effects aren't present. I do claim they are unnecessary for the emergence of human level consciousness and the reproduction thereof in silicon.