When anyone other than a particle physicist talks about “quantum”, it is almost always a magic word used to project a pseudoscientific aura onto sheer raving lunacy. “Quantum” as a prefix is almost universally used to signify that the noun it modifies is about to be made crazy stupid. So you know when you see something called the Quantum Bible, it’s not going to be refined, elegant, coherent, or intelligent.
Here are the first bits of this rewritten version of the Bible. I’m being kind and sparing you the associated annotations, which are even longer than the text.
1 And behold the Great Singularity is everywhere and nowhere. 2 Without form nor mass and without space and time – It is, has been and will be, eternal. 3 An Eternity in space, an Eternity in time incorporating all that is known and then some. 4 But eternally restless and driven to manifest in form, time and space.
5 And so it is that manifestations cyclically occur and our worlds gain their existence. 6 But we are manifestations of the Cycle of the Great Singularity for we emanate from Its bosom and return thence in accordance with Its Universal Order.7 And so it comes to pass that the Great Singularity becomes pregnant with the energy for manifestation and in accordance with the Great Universal Order that lies at the heart of its existence there follows a mighty cataclysmic manifestation. 8 In that instant all the parts of matter materialize, each to become the building blocks of all form yet to be. 9 For at that instant the quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrino’s and all their anti-matter shall give rise to a world of form, a world of time and a world of distance; but yet all are imbibed with the stuff which is the Great Singularity – timeless, formless and Eternal.
10 And lo the great Illusion is initiated ; and for they who are blinded by form and distance and time there is no merging eternally of the form and the formless. 11 And wretchedly shall they live their days in the half truth and never connect with the Great Singularity which is their birthright and from whose bosom they emanate and exist and to whence they return unconsciously.
12 And so it is that the particles of form receive their kernel which shall determine all their interactions and all form that shall yet follow. 13 Indeed the kernel shall support the breadth of all form and being, all of the sea and the great land masses, all of life and of death. 14 For each kernel is complete as it imbibes all of the Great Singularity and indeed so is it also with the collective of all kernels of all particles of form. 15 Such is the completeness of the manifestation in form that no adjustment nor interference nor correction is required nor will be forthcoming by the Great Singularity.16 In the restlessness of the Great Singularity has a need arisen – to create consciousness of Itself. 17 And so form is manifest so that consciousness shall ultimately arise and lo the consciousness shall feed upon the great environments which are none other than the manifestation of the Great Singularity! 18 In this way shall the Great Singularity create consciousness of Self through the manifestation and they that shall be conscious of the manifestation shall be the consciousness of the Great Singularity in form. 19 And so shall they passage with consciousness as they de-form and reconnect at physical death with the Great Singularity. 20 For this passage of return has the Great Singularity manifest the black holes of de-materialization; both in form and in consciousness shall these be as a portal for passage from form to formless, and so shall consciousness disconnect from form to merge with the eternal formlessness which is the Great Singularity. 21 And so shall it come to pass that those who access true consciousness of all things will prepare their passage through the black hole, as they shed form and mass, time and distance, and disconnect their consciousness from that domain – so shall they pass through the portal and inherit eternity within the bosom of the Great Singularity.
In case you missed it in that great wallow of babble, the guy (who is a neurosurgeon! What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?) also doesn’t like evolution, and has a weird deterministic theory in which all the potential in every species was set within it at the instant of its creation by the Great Singularity. I am unable to bear the thought of reading any more of any of Ian Weinberg’s essays, though: my kernel is incapable of coping with any more Quantum.
If we bring this into contact with the Conservapedia Bible, will they anihilate each other?
“What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?”
Maybe these neurosurgeons need to stop practicing on their own brains.
I have but one thing to say about explanations quantum:
I don’t wantum.
“What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?”
You have to wonder what’s on their minds!
Uh-oh. After reading that I just felt the quantum thingies in my cranial whatsit start to fry. Quick, nurse – the screens!
This is the sort of thing I would have eaten up back when I was “spiritual but not religious.” It’s deep, and insightful, and consistent with science, and it just feels so true, there must be a Knowingness happening inside me. It’s like recognizing something you’ve known all along, only, there’s just so much more to it, it’s taking you out of yourself. A cutting-edge understanding of God.
No, it’s mostly gibberish. And in the places where it’s not gibberish, it’s wrong. And in the places where it’s neither, it’s not new, or saying anything extraordinary.
But it’s not easy to recognize this, if you’re “seeking” a way to find God — and you don’t know how to tell a scientific expert, from someone who just sounds like a scientific expert. And it’s not easy to recognize it if you’re starting out with the assumption that Truth is going to be discovered from within, for we know, more than we think we know.
Despite the fact that this Quantum Bible just came out, it feels like I’m recognizing it. This was me, once upon a time. sigh
There isn’t even any quantum physics in it. Singularity is relativity.
Protons and neutrons consist of quarks, so there’s no need to mention them separately… once a singularity undergoes a Big Bang, it’s no longer a singularity, so to call it eternal is wrong… all that waffle about need and will are woo… the frontloading… it’s unbearable.
Quantum dickballs!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1841#comic
The Great Green Arkleseizure can kick The Great Singularity’s ass!
Quantum? Nah. You get moar lulz in the Lolcat Bible!
In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez an da Erfs n stuffs…
Srsly.
It said something about evolution? Guess I didn’t get that far, I can’t really read other people’s hallucinatory rants.
Is this guy trying to outbabble Deepak Chopra?
I feel reminded of that recent discussion he had with Shermer, Harris and that woman who occasionally spouted some random poetry.
Well it’s no TimeCube, but it’s still way off the scale on my P.K.E. meter :p
You’ll all be sorry at the coming of the Great White Handkerchief. It’s gonna be ‘quantum’.
The Deepak is strong with this one…
Anyway, a true quantum bible will only resolve itself when you open it. Hey ho.
The first sentence on his page says it all:
Yes, you select few who have the imaginations, that spark of enquiry, that special something that makes you curious about beginnings and endings and allows you to see farther than the rest of dullard humanity….
What an ugly webpage! It looks like he’s selling late 80’s home finance software or something…
“The application is based extensively upon the triangles model developed by Dr Ian Weinberg.”
And seriously, it actually makes it a bit more fun to imagine, too.
Can I strangle the Great Singularity now or is there a waiting line?
The funny thing about the crazy use of “quantum” is that it more or less means, “Can be reduced to finite bits, or quanta”, whereas it’s usually used to mean, “mysteeeereeeuuuuuuusssss”
Ramblin’ Dude #16 wrote:
Yes, I think you’ve just encapsulated one of the driving motivations of religion/spirituality as a whole. Even the traditional religions whisper this little promise to their followers: “you are one of the special few with the courage to see what others will not …”
The frustrating thing is that this is all packaged as having humility.
It’s why they don’t like science. Science is an objective way to discover and form the shared wisdom of humanity — and they don’t want to share. Other people are arrogant.
This is … there are no words for what this is.
For some reason I’m picturing the scene from Monty Python’s Hungarian Phrasebook sketch:
Customer: “I will not buy this record; it is scratched.”
Storekeeper: “This is a tobacconist’s.”
Customer: “Aaah, yes. I will not buy this *tobacconist*; it is scratched.”
Only it goes like this:
Christian: “Our Lord God created the universe, and we must worship Him.”
Physicist: “No, […] Big Bang […] singularity […]”
Christian: “Aaah, yes! Our Lord The Great Singularity created the universe and we must worship It.”
Physicist: *headdesk*
Nit: I’d say most physicists and an awful lot of chemists can legitimately talk about “quantum”.
It’s not just word salad it’s word puree.
I’m picturing neurosurgery students lined up like girls at a sleep-over doing one-another’s braids, but instead digging around with dental tools in their brains.
Could this be combined with the LOLcats bible somehow? I sense Ceiling Cat’s presence in the Singularity.
It looks to me like the guy needs to go see his neurologist. I’m actually quite serious about that.
Also: Cuttlefish, when you did you start channeling Ogden Nash? You should be very careful. That kind of stuff makes me all hot and bothered.
Oh, and @10: I have a picture with the caption “In the beginning, Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat were BFF.” on my desk at work.
I thought that the idea of a deterministic universe was refuted by the uncertainty principle? I’m not a physicist btw, just someone who reads a lot about it.
I would have been a neuroscientist if I hadn’t chosen the lucrative career path of University Drop-out…I don’t understand how anyone can look at the human nervous system and -doubt- evolution.
Also, in one of my city’s weeklies, they kicked off their Earth Day issue with a hair-brained article about how “Science” is holding back the environmentalism movement by ignoring “innovative” proponents of laying-on-hands healing and a perpetual motion machine. And, yes, the article used the word “Quantum”.
This is a huge personal pet peeve – I did my undergraduate degree in physics and applied math, and I really, really, really hate it when anyone who is NOT QUALIFIED to talk about quantum physics starts talking about the “amazing implications” of it. For some reason they tend to be people in philosophy (who appear to believe that since they’re in philosophy they therefore have an innate understanding of everything), fine arts, or English.
The next time someone does this to me, I am going to whip out a basic second-year quantum tunnelling problem and say “Solve it and I’ll listen.”
I’m kinda hoping we only have his word for it that he’s a neurosurgeon.
This abomination is not only a mockery of science but a butchery of the English language. Lo, I just threw up in my mouth.
Could it be an ego issue? We use brain surgery as the yardstick of Madd Skillz (hence the expression, “It’s not brain surgery” for something that isn’t terribly difficult), so perhaps the folks who do it for a living get an overinflated sense of their own brilliance? Which, if left unchecked and isolated for long enough, turns to woo-mongering?
I’m surprised. I thought it was impossible to make the bible any more confusing than it already was.
Re “neutrino’s”: I dismiss out of hand anyone who uses apostrophes in plurals!
Uh-oh. Watch out for hordes of Kurzweil-Singularity fans to attack with words like, “inevitable” and “proven”.
Even when at first glance I thought it was toungue-in-cheek Poe-try, I thought to myself “what a complete waste of time and space”. Now that I’ve realized he is serious, I try not to think at all, lest my brain will be eaten by quantum maggots.
Oh my God! It’s full of woo!
If the twit kept up with the science (starting about 31 years ago!), he would be aware that current models of cosmology include inflation that do not require a “Great Singularity.”
Hey. Not all physicists are “particle physicists”, and the non-particle physicists use the word “quantum” correctly and rigorously all the time, thank you very much.
PZ:
If someone who has nonsensical ideas is a neurosurgeon, they will use the perceived authority of their profession to promote their nonsense. Due to that perceived authority, their nonsense will get further than the nonsense of a typical non-neurosurgeon, so you will be more likely to encounter it. Furthermore, because combination of absurdity and promoter of the absurdity being a neurosurgeon is incongruous, you will find it memorable, and you will remember them better than kooks who are not neurosurgeons. At that point, confirmation bias sets in.
Perhaps an analogy would help:
Imagine The Great Singularity at t + 10^-13 seconds is this Twinkie…
PZ: What is it with neurosurgeons and goofiness?
They have to stay very, very calm. Function of religion #376: to contextualize a mantra, allowing yourself to minimize the external noize.
If it hadn’t come from a loon I would have thought it a joke made up by some bored college students.
Is this the start of religious beliefs?
…and this how the religious live there lives?
Cryptographers, too.
Was I the only one that was hoping they just meant they’d divided the thing into discreet parts? Something like: “Quantum Bible! Now with discreet word-energy-levels!”
@Richard Wolford (#27): As I understand, The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is about a measurement tradeoff on the very small scale between position and momentum. We don’t know for sure that it represents some fundamental limit on what’s “knowable” — perhaps someday we could could use something other than electromagnetism (nuclear force waves? gravity waves? total speculation here) to “shed light” (haha) on the issue.
Also, don’t confuse the uncertainty principle with the observer effect.
Its probably debatable, but I tend to view statistical mechanics as a reconciliation of quantum mechanics with a deterministic framework – we may not know all the particulars of all the pieces, but we can make solid predictions based on the mean behaviors.
I’m not a physicist either (I am a chemist so I have a vague idea of what I’m talking about, but I haven’t had quantum or statistical mechanics at the graduate level) so maybe one of them will correct me.
In fairness, the implications of, for example, quantum entanglement are amazing. I just don’t understand them.
Quantum Bible – definition: The end product of a neurosurgeon being locked in a room with paper, pens, 2lbs. of BC bud and a bong.
That’s not fair! I’m not a particle physicist, and I have a song I am working on with my band where I use the collapse of a quantum wavefunction as a metaphor for the perceived transition from uncertainty to certainty that many people experience when falling in love.
Still doesn’t demonstrate any understanding of quantum mechanics ;) But at least I am explicitly using it as a metaphor, and not trying to lend a “pseudoscientific aura” to anything. It’s just an image. Another metaphor I use in the song is an an echoed sound being phase-shifted until the echo and the original sound come into phase.
So it’s not true that it’s always for pseudoscientific lunacy!
At first the world was without form, and void.
And God said, “Shit, it’s dark in here!”
And it gets weirder; check out the discussion on evolution under quantum gnostics. Apparently, if you string enough ignorance and bad reasoning together, you end up with
James Sweet @50
No one is going to get that song :-)
Except Deepak Chopra… he’ll get it… just ask him.
Sastra @ 6: I’m glad you got better. I’ve walked that path myself.
“Quantum: you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Somebody please make this shirt; I will buy at least one.
I wonder how many iterations it would take for Dawkins’ “Methinks it is like a weasel” program to transform ‘XGreat SingularityX’ into ‘Great Arkleseizure’.
I think I feel a revelation coming on… something to do with ‘Quantum Stupidity’.
CE @54
Agreed. I could see him scoring a date with one of Schrodinger’s daughters (or grand daughters or great grandaughter or cat) and trying to serenade her with the lyrics only to get a drink poured on him.
I’m guessing it becomes impossible to distinguish quantum woo from parodies of it, much as it is with ID. When I looked at just the woo, I was thinking parody, not that anyone would seriously gibber away like that.
Btw, why don’t the IDiots pick up on quantum woo? Instantly they’d have a bunch of New Age types decide that it is science after all.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Ah Christ, can’t my fellow Saffers just keep their mouths shut.
Not at ALL surprised that he’s a neurosurgeon though – if he was clever he would have done neurology! :-)
(PS – seems neurosurgeons are big on denying evolution, this one from Johns Hopkins did the same… http://bit.ly/bi0qXW)
Aww, they beat me to the LOLcat Bible.
16 So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and he sez ‘Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeves him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!’17 Cuz teh Ceiling Kitteh not snd hiz son 2 take all yur cookies, but so u cud maek moar cookies 4EVAR!18 U beleevz him u getz cheezburgrs, but els you get invisibul error.
Duckphup @56
Is that waht you get when you put “quantum bible” into the translator?
There are so many good catch phrase for the quantum bible and the quantum God.
Quantum Bible- The smallest bible for the smallest God.
Quantum God- He might be there, He might not be there, or both.
Quantum Miarcles – So small they can hardly be said to have happened at all.
Quantum Relgion- Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you can abuse it.
Isn’t that more or less what the Bible Code is?
Yet I still feel compelled to add my quanta of scorn. Is it possible to distinguish virtual bullshit from real bullshit? To give him credit he has gone to the trouble of enumerating and identifying individual quanta of bullshit.
Peter G. @64
Please enumerate your scorn of quanta bullshit. It is hard to follow if you don’t.
Speaking of quantum religion, a co-worker just told me a great joke:
A Higgs boson walks into a Catholic church and tries to take Communion. The priest says, “I’m sorry, you haven’t been baptized, you’ll have to leave.” The Higgs boson replies, “But you can’t have Mass without me!”
Physics on acid…
This guy may be a brain surgeon, but he sure as hell is no rocket scientist!
Where is this church and where do I sign up?
I was looking around this guy’s site, and he seems to be heavily into psychoneuroimmunology, “the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body.” In his introduction, Weinberg contrasts it with “conventional medicine.” I did a quick read of the wikipedia entry, and glanced over his own description a bit, and I can’t tell if this is science-based, or woo, or (what I suspect) legitimate science which is easily co-opted by people who are into woo.
I’m currently reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. She takes care in pointing out that relatively benign beliefs in optimism have often been distorted into advocacy of dangerous and nonsensical magical thinking. Even if this area of psychoneuroimmunology is legitimate and important, given the rest of the crap this poor doctor is spewing, I’m going to vote that he’s translating it into magical thinking. Stop believing in your brain tumor, and it will go away.
A neurosurgeon promoting alt med is now more disturbing than a neurosurgeon who also happens to be a religious wacko. I’d love to see Orac’s take on this.
This guy is no L. Ron Hubbard. If he’s hoping to start his own religion (and get rich & famous) he’s going to have to do better.
And I can’t imagine someone spending valuable time writing such drivel. Agghhh, and I spent some of mine trying to read it. Damn.
The pseudo-Jacobean, quasi-Yoda writing style is almost great, but it’s the numbered verses that really give it an aura of somewhat timeless wisdomishness.
Where is this church and how do I sign up?
quantum bible => tortured physics => tortured logic => tortured metaphors => tortured poetry => drunken ravings => barf………….creamed corn, fish sticks and sloe gin
I could not read all of that let alone go the the “source”
No, it is not just a “measurement problem”, but it is commonly presented that way as an analogy. But it is not just that trying to measure an electron’s position requires “hitting” it and therefore upsetting its momentum. It really is a fundamental physical limit on the certainty of two “coupled” variables, such as position/momentum, time/energy. Even with “perfect” measurement it is impossible to know precisely (to an arbitrary degree of precision) both a particle’s position and momentum. And by “know precisely” I mean that the particle really does not have a precise position and momentum simultaneously.
Electrical Engineering has an equivalent uncertainty principle is representing “signals”. A signal of finite time duration has an infinite frequency spectrum and vice-versa. There is a minimum to the product of a signals duration and frequency content that has exactly the same form as the Heisenberg equation. This is not a “knowledge” problem or a “measurement” problem, it is a result of the relationship between “time-domain” and “frequency domain” representation of the signal.
Within popular science “Quantum Mechanics” seems to be mentioned only when discussing very “strange stuff”, which is not related to anything practical.
For example I have never heard anyone mention that models of semiconductor materials(and therefore theoretical understanding electronic devices) are based on quantum mechanics.
Because it’s my job (as an “accommodationist”) to see the good in everything, let’s give this guy some credit. He’s clearly realized that the physical and evolutionary record have pretty much completely nailed any sort of creationism or ID to the wall, and that’s pretty good work for a theist, right?
So he has to reconcile this with his need that we have to be here for SOME REASON,or else he just wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
And so he comes up… with… well, with what is clearly one of the worst ideas of all time. Word puree indeed.
AJ Kamper @76
I too am seeing the good.
This guy has really good weed! I wonder if it is medicinal?
It is good to not be this guy since he is clearly a loon!
I gave up at the “pregnant singularity,” on the grounds that if there really is a singularity, we cannot know whether something on the other side of it is, was, or will be pregnant.
But I suspect he thinks singularity=black hole, and read somewhere that the whatever-it-was that expanded in the Big Bang was (like) a black hole.
–Vicki
That sounds a lot like Bruce Lipton’s books, which are definitely woo. He’s a real biologist, which he leans on pretty heavily, but he hasn’t published anything peer-reviewed since 1982.
Oh. For. Fuck’s. Sake.
You’ve heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? This, by itself, has created the beginning of a new Great Pacific Stupid Patch. Otherwise known as the Great Stupid Vortex. It threatens to absorb all thought processes that are unfortunate enough to drift within a mile of its rim.
Greta, you haven’t read this while you were listening to dark side of the moon (it totally syncs up)…that’s why you have these feelings. Come on and expand your mind man!!!
Is it just me or can you actually hear the bubbling from the bong in the background when you read this?
Wait… you mean this wasn’t a spoof? Someone actually believes this? DANG.
So. Wait. Just anyone can write their own BIBLE and put up a webpage and then the money starts rolling in?
This religion stuff is soooo cooooool.
This new religion though kinda raises more questions than it answers:
If you put your quantum bible inside something will it try to tunnel out? Or is there just by chance it will escape anyway?
Why is god emitting Hawking radiation from his blackhole?
And who knew the Great Singularity has a bosom and got pregnant despite being “…without form nor mass and without space and time”?
#75:
That was one of my first thoughts on reading this. When you believe the universe is all “quantummy quantum!”, you end up failing to appreciate just how fucking cool — and somewhat practical — quantum mechanics can really be. If this guy were told that, in part, his computer functions out of quantum principles governing the electrons, he’d just say “Sure! Everything’s quantum!” He wouldn’t get it. (Not that I’m claiming I really get it, just that I appreciate it.) I wonder how the Q-mystics react to Quantum Tic Tac Toe.
Whenever I read a science news story contrasting competing views on whether species X is more closely related to Y or Z, or which of X’s features developed first, I imagine an alternate world in which the theory of common descent consists of vague assertions that “we’re all connected, man, in this big tree”. Scientists actually say what the hell they mean. If they write stream-of-consciousness literature, on the other hand, they call it that.
Quantum mysticism reminds me of the nineteenth-century “electricity must be the Vital Force” stuff that inspired Frankenstein. To be honest, I’m actually surprised no one today asserts that electromagnetism is a thoroughly supernatural phenomenon which proves all woo. I mean, when you play with magnets, you know you’re dealing with Weird Stuff. And I wonder what will come to replace “quantum!” after that loses its novelty in the popular mind…
lenoxuss #85 wrote:
I once came across a complaint made by Henry James, presumably back before the details on the mechanism of transmission were known:
“Evolution is a change from a nohowish, untalkaboutable all-alikeness, to somehowish and in-general-talkaboutable, not-all-alikeness, by continuous somethingelsifications and sticktogetherations.”
That probably falls under the all-encompassing mantle of “energy.” Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret invoked the “Law of Attraction.” What you think about, you attract — like a magnet.
The supernatural always involves some form of Mind over matter. Woo-meisters are interested in quantum physics not just because it is strange, but because of the way it is strange. It seems to have matter acting the way they think mental things like thoughts act. This is supposed to somehow demonstrate that matter ultimately reduces to mind, and some form of consciousness is the substrate of the universe. Energy = intention.
I’ve actually gotten traditional, mainstream Christians to admit that God (or spirit) could be a “form of energy.”
@Sastra #86
And this isn’t that much different from all magical thinking that we know about from the beginning of history. QM gives (superficial) support to the idea that matter itself is an illusion (or temporary/imperfect) and True Existence? must somehow be beyond what can be observed. Moreover, if we can change matter by mere observation of it, what more can we do by thinking about it really hard?
Quantum Magic=Sympathetic Magic. Same old stuff in a new bottle.
What: this was actually supposed to be taken seriously? At first I thought it was some sort of an elaborate joke something like “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s Hadron Collider”
@SteveM (#74): Thanks, that’s a better description of uncertainty! I understood loosely what Wikipedia says about particles being spread out as wave packets and having no single position, or as compressed waves with indefinite momentum due to the wavelength issues. But your clarification helps a lot more.
Is anyone else reminded of this exchange from Firefly?
tutone21 #81
No, it’s not just you. Whatever this guy’s been smoking, it is some righteous shit.
I read the entire incoherent mess while blithely assuming that it had to be some kind of hoax. Surely, here were a few jokers cooking up the most extreme example of religious pseudo-science they could imagine to poke fun at woo peddlers like Deepak Chopra. It seemed inconceivable that anyoner could actually spout this stuff with a straight face.
Then I read the comments here and looked about teh intertoobs a bit, and it dawned on me with growing horror that this abomination was put forth not only with a straight face but in all seriousness by…a neurosurgeon. It terrifies me that this chap’s profession is poking around in other people’s noggins. I had assumed that such a position carried some kind of sanity qualification, a basic level of non-nutbaggery that must be established before one could practice. Apparently I was wrong.
When I saw the phrase ‘…the Great Singularity becomes pregnant…’, I was immediately put in mind of the Futurama movie ‘The Beast with a Billion Backs’.
I wonder what ‘Sclee’ would make of all this…
So the singularity got pregnant after the Big Bang. Now I understand. Quantum Physics is so simple.
@ 30,
I don’t know, I’m not all that suprised; of all specialists I’ve dealt with, neurosurgeons are the ones as a group that would be quick to reassure you that they are just as wonderful and special as everyone tells them they are(with a few notable exceptions).
#66:
A photon goes into a confessional through two slits and says, “Father, I keep interfering with myself!”
Any Aquateen Hunger Force fans in here? If you read the passage and imagine Shake saying it to Meatwad then it makes sense.
Fritz Leiber, 1951 (redacted from “Poor Superman”):
Source: Heinlein, Robert (ed.), Tomorrow, the Stars, p. 207. SBN 425-01426-6, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
#93 Gregory Greenwood:
Since I didn’t actually bother reading the details, I only just heard of this part, and can’t help but think of the imagery in Monty Python’s Galaxy Song.
Here’s an astronomer’s analysis of its accuracy. (The song’s, not the Sexy Pregnant Space Woman’s.) It’s pretty darn accurate. Take that, woo.
I’m currently a research Master’s student in Psychological Research and Dr. Weinberg came and gave a guest lecture yesterday. I’m sorry to have to confirm that none of what he says is a joke to him. He’s deadly serious about it all.
http://www.naturalmedicine.co.za/cat6.php?catID=7&article=20080716105511197
This link is one I picked up via Google.
Ah, using buzz words to sound scientific. But remember, quantum means that things (such as energy levels) are quantized; that’s is, not longer continues.
Sastra: psychoneuroimmunology, “the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body.”
That’s funny! I should start a field of kirchoffelectrostatics — studying the interactions between circuits and electrostatics. I’d bet there’s something connecting the two…
I’ve also noticed people in the media using it to refer to just about everything from Politics to how it will be rainy in a few days.
Chris
So, this is just a long-winded, drivelly way to say “We’re star stuff. We’re the universe made manifest.” Maybe this guy saw too much B5.
Yay! Quantum physics jokes! :-) :-) :-)
ROTFL!
Well, yes.
LOL!
Come on. That part is of course metaphorical.
…I hope.
Sastra
Still in my teens, I read “Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz. He was one of the pioneers in the “positive thinking” movement, and the book had a profound impact on me. Thing is, it wasn’t really about getting what you wish for by thinking positive and believing it will happen. That’s the comedy routine that positive thinking turned into. Maltz’s ideas were far more practical. It was about understanding how the brain works, and using that understanding to your benefit.
The most pertinent idea was that the brain was simply a computer processing information. It has no sense of humor, no ethics, no morality. It simply takes whatever input you give it and does its best to make it happen. If you keep telling yourself that you’re ugly, or stupid, or whatever negative suits your fancy then it proceeds dispassionately to make that your reality. Likewise, if you think positive thoughts then your calculator brains set about to create a positive experience. (I believe he said this was our subconscious at work.)
The thing that really made it snap for me, however, was the realization that it didn’t matter if you personally believed the input you were giving yourself. Your brain doesn’t care if you believe what you tell yourself, it sets to work on creating that reality, anyway. When I realized this, I began to change the nature of my thoughts. I told myself things I never had before, things like “I am intelligent.” “I am witty.” I am…etc….” I changed the input of my thoughts purposely. In the beginning, it felt silly saying those things, because I didn’t really believe them, but I understood the “method behind the madness” and kept at it. Eventually, it became easier until finally it seemed silly that I had ever had a problem thinking such things. This changed the nature of the beliefs I held about myself, and thus, it changed me.
I don’t know what current science says on the subject, but at the time it seemed very sensible to me, and still does. I suppose it was inevitable that it all got turned into pablum and magical thinikng like “The Secret,” but I often wish that people would understand the roots of positive thinking, at least from Matz’s perspective, because, really, it was pretty sensible.
I don’t know if this is the same person, but the Ian Weinberg mentioned in this report received a 5 year community service and suspended ban from practice for taking perverse incentives. Like I said I don’t know if it’s the same person or not:
http://www.perverseincentives.co.za/cgi-bin/perverse/pi-show.pl?1090409836
Hmm, it does seem that it is this Ian Weinberg:
http://www.pninet.com/Issue.pdf
More: http://www.quantumpni.co.za/
lenoxuss @ 99;
I absolutely love that song. There are days when I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment expressed at the end.
theflyingtrilobite (or anyone else)
I understand why saying it’s inevitable or proven is stupid but what am I not seeing? It seems possible that we could create a better than human intelligence, whether by “artificial” intelligence or genetics, and that such a thing would likely have an effect on technological growth. I guess you aren’t disagreeing with that?
RamblinDude #106 wrote:
It sounds pretty sensible: it worked on the psychological level, and did what you wanted. I once heard a talk by Daniel Dennett on how pseudoscientists and/or theologists will make a statement which has two meanings or interpretations: one of them is “true but trivial,” the other is “extraordinary but false.” They then try to trade on the similarity, to couple them together as both equally reasonable.
By “trivial” he doesn’t mean unimportant. Just, that it doesn’t rock the foundations of the modern materialistic scientific paradigm or anything.
I agree, I’m a fan of Kurzweil. Nowhere is there an assertion that things will turn out the way he predicts. Of course there are other alternatives, this “singularitarian” path is just one he thinks is likely and one I happen to like.
If the world moves in that direction, then awesome. For me anyway.
If it goes in another direction then also awesome.
So it goes…. :P
Ooh, more Weinberg:
http://www.harmoniousliving.co.za/Wellbeing/Alternative-Healing/From-Holocaust-to-Healthcare-Revolution/
Quantum mechanics is deterministic. Given a wave function at time t0 the Schroedinger equation allows to calculate it for all later times t>t0, nothing non-deterministic going on here. It’s its interpretation as a probability that brings about the random element which means individual measurements are unpredictable but the distribution of a large number of measurements is entirely predictable (and given by the square of the wave function). This is truly bizarre: Even though one cannot predict in, say, a double-slit experiment where an individual electron will be detected the electrons are detected in such a way that they will follow the distribution as calculated by quantum mechanics. (Or maybe it’s not that surprising. When one uses a dice, nobody is surprised that one cannot predict an individual throw but that the distribution converges to 1/6 nonetheless. Maybe it’s just difficult to imagine a probability that varies in space and time. In QM even probability current densities are defined, one of my favorite quantities in physics, imagine a current of probability flowing through space and time! But this probably simply means that one assigns to much physical reality to an entirely mathematical tool, but it sounds cool anyway.)
Statistical mechanics doesn’t have anything to do with it. The methods of statistical mechanics can be applied to classical systems as well as quantum mechanical systems. The reason to use them is that the systems under investigation simply have too many degrees of freedom so that trying to find the individual solutions for all particles involved is impracticable and useless (There is no use in knowing all 10^23 trajectories of the atoms in a gas, but it is much more useful to know its temperature). The methods used are also statistical in nature.
As others pointed out the uncertainty principle is not just an unavoidable measurement inaccuracy. The simplest solution to the Schroedinger equation is a ‘free’ particle wave, i.e. a wave that fills out all space. Its frequency (i.e. its momentum) is precisely known but its position is entirely uncertain. By superimposing such solutions with different frequencies a more ‘localised’ wave packet can be created, whose position is now better defined at the price that its momentum is now somewhat ‘smeared’ out. The more precise the position is defined, the more frequencies (i.e. momenta) are required. Similar equations (like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) are known in optics or Fourier analysis.
But this idea to ‘localize’ a particle by allowing a certain uncertainty in its momentum (in order to reconcile its wave nature with its particle nature) only carries so far. In quantum systems a ‘localised’ wave packet doesn’t stay localised at all times. It spreads out.
Back to the topic of the thread: Whenever I read ‘quantum leap’ in an article entirely unrelated to physics, this is usually a sure sign that what follows is nonsense and it is best to stop reading.
From the first sentence, it was so utterly meaningless, that it couldn’t really annoy me, but it did immediately bore me. I don’t see how you could get through the whole thing.
“In the beginning, puffy fluffs flew in space and magic and stuff and something.”
“Quantum God- He might be there, He might not be there, or both.”
Isn’t that Schrödinger’s God?
@Ron: Where is this church
Unfortunately, since the church has very little momentum, it is very difficult to determine its position.
Quantum physics is easy. Keeping down the urge to injure myself while reading this guys drivel is hard.
Wow, I was so sure this was parody… and then it wasn’t.
What also drives me batty is this: why do people writing something like this feel the need to use faux medieval English? “For lo, did the people look upon these words, and find that they were mysterious. And the people then believed, for such a syntax could only prove the words to be divine.” As if the great mystery that he thinks he’s uncovered is going to be less mysterious by being written out in contemporary English. It’s as bad as the sci-fi shows that make all their alien characters speak without contractions.
No, no…come to think of it, it’s much worse.
The quantum bible appears to be entangled with stupidity.
1. I believe in the commutation of simulateous observables.
2. I believe in the normalization of the wavefunction.
3. I believe in the orthonormality of the basis set.
4. I believe in the duality of the wave-particle.
5. I reject the doctrine of hidden variables as it leaves us in paradox.
6. The Hamiltonian is all things and all times.
7. I seek the unification of the great and small, the gravity and the quantum, for together they shall span all scales.
So it is written in the book of Dirac.
$ svn checkout $ svn://svn.inappropriate.use.of.physics.terms/bible/quantum quamble
$ cd quamble
$ ./configure –confdir=/null/dev –disable-hoax –disable-joke –disable-logic
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall -D –install=yes
$ make distclean
Congratulations. You have now installed the most pointless software ever written.
Lovely as fiction, but nothing more. Sad he believes it. I find it fun to try and trace mythology from science, although I wouldn’t want it to be taken seriously.
futility: Quantum mechanics is deterministic.
Yes — and no. Yes, you can deterministically calculate the wave function. But no, that only creates a relationship, an envelope, for actual measurements. Given that what exists is measurements, the world for our purposes is only statistically deterministic.
There is no God’s eye point of view.
That depends on your interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Well, that’s pretty much what I said, too. The mathematical apparatus is deterministic, the random element comes in as one interprets the wave function as a probability to find its associated eigenvalue as a measurement value. But granted, to say that QM is deterministic, might have been too a strong a statement. Since in QM one cannot divorce the math from its interpretation.