entangled

We heard an interesting report from Will yesterday on reason, responsibility, Battlestar Galactica, Objectivism, and much else. Our classroom was his pulpit for 20 minutes.

The Q-and-A brought us to a discussion of the infamous double-slit electron experiment as featured in the film "What the [Bleep] Do We Know." One implication seemed to be that, because observations at the quantum level alter experimental results, "we're not supposed to know" reality. Or "magic is real," or "God exists," or... I'm not quite sure what. [bleeping banality...e-Skeptic review... debunked...Secret... Shermer vs. Chopra]



Steven Novella thinks this particular example of quantum weirdness is a species of a broader pattern of misunderstanding, often perpetrated by the likes of Deepak Chopra.  In the wave-particle duality of matter, illustrated by the double-slit experiment, "the collapse to a particle is not dependent on any observer – just interaction with other stuff. No observer is necessary." Chopra has interpreted this experiment as showing that the future can mysteriously alter the past. Novella says nonsense. "Physicists do not pretend to understand the fundamental nature of quantum entanglement."


Well, me neither. But Novella's observation rings true to me:

Chopra is using a common trick of the pseudoscientist – exploiting cutting edge science, which the public is not likely to understand, and pretend as if there is proof where there is uncertainty. Take some interesting experiments, then leap way ahead to conclusions that serve their metaphysical purposes, but which are not settled science.

In short – beware of anyone pretending to understand the ultimate implications of Quantum Mechanics  and that it supports their far out philosophy.

Don't get tangled up in woo: solid advice. And, reservations aside, a good provocative report, too.

bleeping banality

Interesting discussion of Rhonda Byrne's perennially-popular Secret this afternoon, especially with Holocaust survivors and liberators just outside our classroom door. Kristen was quite right to bring Hannah Arendt's perspective to bear on the conversation. The"banality of evil" comes as often through carelessness, critical inattention, and indifference, as through active malice. As Ingrid Smythe asked,

what can the believer in karma or The Law of Attraction possibly say about an event such as the Holocaust? Again, the believer in karma is forced to say that each and every individual got what he or she deserved and that karmic justice was served. “Whatever one deserves … he deserves by virtue of his actions and he gets all that he deserves and only that which he deserves. Nothing which accrues to a doer on account of his actions is ever lost and nothing accrues to him on account of anything other than his actions.” What about those who hold the belief that, through your feeling-state, you attract either positive or negative events? Here is a little visualization for the believer in the Law of Attraction: Imagine looking each of those six million Jews in the eye and telling every one of them that due to the negative feeling-states they were each projecting, they were all, in effect, asking for it. They got what was coming to them because, “What you think and what you feel and what actually manifests is always a match — no exception.

Like Byrne, I'm all for creating a better reality for myself and others. But like Arendt, I'm pretty sure we're going to have to do it together. The Secret, like its cinematic precursor What the Bleep Do We Know? ("debunked"), mixes physics and New Age ideas in an unsatisfying cocktail of confusion not much more stable than those serotonin concoctions Brandon told us about.