When something is both outside of your education and, at least on some level, outside of your interest, it will slide off your brain.  You will forget basic shit about that subject.  I think this is a natural ability most people learn in early adulthood that allows them to spend less effort being thoughtful in life.  It’s calorie efficiency, dammit.  But it is also the extent to which the average adult is less thoughtful than the average twelve year old, the extent to which most of us are grand fools.

Physics, like semiotics, just slides right off my brain.  I recognize those are things smart people know about, I’d like to think of myself as a smart person, but as soon as I learn anything about either subject, I start forgetting it.  I don’t, on a subconscious level, believe I’ll ever need that knowledge again.  So schrodinger’s cat occasionally hops out of a bush and surprises me, and I have to remind myself (with help of course) why that’s no cause for concern.

Why does the idea of quantum indeterminacy bother me?  It’s that phrasing about the observer collapsing the wavelength – the idea that by simply looking at something, a human being can have an effect on it.  It sounds like magic, like something that is discordant with anything else I’ve ever experienced in reality or learned of it.

That’s not a problem for a lot of people, but it is for me.  Why?  Many people -juggalo and less than juggy- believe the world is full of magical mysteries, and it does not bother them.  It’s the realm where a jesus might love you and a soul can live forever, or whatever their culture beat into them as an infant.  This is the real reason behind the post.  The quantum itch isn’t caused by an abiding curiosity about the nature of the world, or reality, of advanced math I have no interest in.  The quantum itch can only be scratched by taking the woo out of this last bit of ambiguous science – of squaring it with my heartfelt philosophical materialism.

I asked, Mano and his commentariat obliged, and I am again satisfied that the counterintuitive nature of the quantum world does not impute any kind of supernatural power to the conscious mind of an observer.  (Over)simply put, it’s not an observer that collapses the wave.  It’s interaction with the macroscopic world, which does not require any conscious entity.

There are still a lot of paradoxes and mysteries created by the weirdness of quantum physics, but I don’t give a fuck about those.  I don’t need to.  It’s not my job, nor my hobby.  The only question that bothered me was the one that Deepak Chopra took to the bank.  Fuck quantum woo.

That still doesn’t really satisfy as an answer to why this bothered me in the first place.  A creationist would say awareness of any possibility of the supernatural existing would cause me to fear hell.  That is patently untrue.  I have zero fear of hell, and for any of you who still have some of that fear leftover from childhood, I would love to extend my fearlessness to you.  Rest assured that without some jerk drilling it into you at the age of three, the concept of hell is so incoherent and foolish that it should not have any hold over you.  I wish it was that easy to cure, but eh.  Life sucks.

What other reason might I be bothered by the possibility of a supernatural phenomenon?  I read an article by Greta Christina a long time ago, don’t feel like digging for it.  Forgive me if my memory is wrong.  She said that she was bothered by the idea of Santa Claus as a child, and I was as well.  Miracle on 34th Street pissed me off when I was ten.

I had a lot of emotional development ahead of me.  For a child I was childish.  Still, I had realized that lies suck.  What was the most common type of lie?  Somebody telling you something you want to be true, as a way to get something out of you.  With children this was usually just to enjoy your humiliation when you fell for the lie.  With adults, it’s the basis of much con “artistry.”  I was bothered by the potential that the liar was being amused by any belief I showed, but more than that, I was bothered that they told me something which would be nice if true – a belief that could only end in disappointment.

I had a weird week when I was seven or eight, when I’d read bits of a cheap hotel bible and bought the bullshit.  I don’t remember exactly what snapped the spell, or what I was feeling in the aftermath of that moment, but I do remember this feeling followed me throughout my youth.  When some fucko told me I could live forever and that jesus loves me, my face would flush with anger.

In this world where I have to suffer and die, how DARE you fucking tell me that isn’t the case?  Fuck your false hope, and just fuck you in general.

I don’t know how to explain this in words that a christian could truly understand.  If you genuinely believe in an immortal soul, can you even begin to imagine what it’s like to feel that life is all we get?  Can you understand how much all the strife and struggle and dogshit we have to go through feels like we’re wasting precious time that we should be spending on love and happiness?  Can you understand how desperate I am to smash theocracy and the robber barons and seize rights and well-being for all oppressed peoples?

Even a progressive christian, if they well and truly believe their soul will last forever – and that my atheist soul will also somehow survive death – can they ever really understand me, or those like me?  I doubt it.

The possibility of the supernatural bothers me because it opens the door to other hopes I’ve had to shed in order to live my best life.  I do not hope for magic or immortality because I know quite firmly they are not real.  Those hopes would have me chasing ghosts, slurping down magic tinctures, praying for something more than what I’ve got, what nature’s nasty ass has meted out to me.  I don’t have time for that.  I could die at any moment.

Magic and immortality are fun dreams for fantasy -you know I love that fantasy- but don’t tell me that they’re real.  It just pisses me off.

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