And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.

As you say, the way string theory requires all these extra dimensions and this comes from certain consistency requirements about how string should behave and so on.

Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

Roger Penrose Quotes