Interesting. The only arguably legitimate reason that I can think of would be if the Android web client API has some kind of anti-malicious-website functionality built-in, for which Google automatically checks for hostile or compromised websites. In any case, I have a couple of other tests that could prove illuminating, if you are interested in doing them:

1. If you access a new URL in your website from the same Internet connection but another device, does Google's spider scan it? If not, that would help to rule out factors other than Android, such as a link between you and the website, or possibly at the end of your website's hosting provider.

2. If you use SSL to access a new URL in your website, does Google still scan the full URL instead of just the hostname? (I would expect and certainly hope not.)

I have certainly experienced what I would consider to be partially conscious states, so yes, I would say that it is likely gradual and that things can be conscious to different and varying degrees. As to simply counting connections, I would guess that particular types of organization and weighting would also be required. (We aren't quite just a big pile of linear algebra.)

There are people doing actual research in this area. For example, some researchers have tried monitoring brain activity while a patient goes under anesthesia. Some anesthetics cause neuron firing rates across the brain to drop dramatically; everything sort of turns off. For other drugs, firing rates stay similar, but activity ceases to be correlated between normally related regions (sensory and motor, for example). Fascinating stuff, and I look forward to future results in this area.

Penrose, is that you?

Seriously, there is no evidence for any kind of "quantum consciousness", nor any convincing theory as to why a neural net would be insufficient to produce consciousness. I suspect that the main attraction of this idea is that it is a non-religious excuse for believing consciousness to be magical or special in some way.

"Complex" is the key term. Generally speaking, there is an optimal level of psychological arousal for performing given tasks. For tasks that are simple, rote, and/or well-learned, that level is higher than it is for tasks that are difficult or novel. In the specific case of knowing that you are being observed, it tends to decrease performance on difficult tasks and have varying results on simple tasks. See Social facilitation.

The question here is whether or not the job of train operator qualifies as simple and rote, or difficult. I could easily see it being the former, where the tasks are not difficult, and the challenge is to maintain attention or vigilance. If that is the case, then the awareness of being monitored could well improve performance in itself.

More like, "spoorious correlation".

...today would not be its best day. (As much as I wouldn't mind seeing a js alternative gain traction.)

Dr. Stephen T. Colbert has been telling us to think with out gut for even longer.

In 2013, the murder rate would have been about 13 lower. Source:

http://www.txexecutions.org/stats.asp

The answer to that question is always, always no. Except when it's still no, in which case it is no. No.

In conclusion, no.

You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive. You must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge but concrete and profitable applications as well.

...then why are we reading about it now? Is it really such an important and decisive finding that we can't wait a few months until it at least gains at least that level of credibility?

Certainly; with a high enough dose, the subject would die.

That aside, the finding is interesting. Based on the summary, I thought that it might just be helping the subjects get closer to the ideal level of psychological arousal for what is probably a simple, routine, and possibly slightly boring task. However, the article states that the subjects were given the pills after having been shown the images, not before, in order to control for that possibility.

There is still one alternative explanation that I can see to a direct chemical effect of caffeine. For the subjects given caffeine after doing the first task in the experimental setting, an association was formed between the setting and getting caffeine. When the subjects returned to do a similar task in the experimental setting again, they received a slight boost in psychological arousal in anticipation of receiving the caffeine. (This kind of effect is commonly seen with many drugs, although I don't know if 200mg of caffeine would induce the effect with a single exposure.) The increased arousal during the follow-up task could explain the increased performance. If they wanted to control for it, one way would be to administer the follow-up task in a different environment than the one in which they did the first task, thereby reducing the impact of any associations with the original setting.