I've had some brutal conversations around "quantum", especially in undergrad when I made the mistake of mentioning that I was taking a semiconductor physics course that required us to learn quantum mechanics at at least an introductory level. Many people seem to make a wild leap from "at a deeply microscopic scale, we have to use statistics to predict what's going to happen because it's not nearly as deterministic as it is in the macroscopic world" to "at a quantum level, all of our brains are resonating in quantum harmony and that's why my cat is so intuitive"

Wonderful typo with "landmind" by the way. It's perfect!

Is there free will, or is the universe "deterministic"?

Quantum mechanics usually is brought up as a source of randomness or irreducible complexity that may debunk determinism, which therefore may or may not imply "free will."

I think what the author means is that quantum mechanics is:

1. a source of serious debates about what it "really" means for us, with the Schroedinger's cat being the most famous argument (it was appeal to intuition used against the Copenhagen interpretation).

2. Abused as a pseudoargument by proponents of claims like "you can heal other people with the power of your mind". As in: "how can you tell it's impossible? What about quantum mechanics?".

It’s the refuge of choice of the magical thinker.