A colleague of Mr. Neville’s wrote this article. Seems I’m not the only one who is offended when the woo-woos say that quantum mechanics justifies their latest bit of woo.
I love the idea, from the latest woo-woo book, that you should write yourself a fake check from the Universe, look at it, and believe you have the money. Pretending to have money you don’t have is totally harmless, as we’ve all seen over the past few years.
Oy, don’t even get me started. Even semi-respectable pop science books are constantly mangling or mystifying quantum mechanics, and have been for decades. The fruitcakes just run with it a little further.
Personally, I blame Schrodinger’s Cat, which is nothing but a variant of “if a tree fell in a forest…” masquerading as science. Right there, you’ve led people down the path to quantum as something that lends magical powers to human beings and all of their interactions with their environment. Science instructors need to answer the question, not leave it as a “question”: the cat is either dead or alive. There is no superposition of dead and alive cat. Neither of those things are pure quantum states.
Goddamn cat.
Hey, it’s not the cat’s fault it got locked up in a death trap by some mad scientist!
Blame Schrodinger.
(Yes, I know, it was a thought experiment, no cats were harmed, etc., etc.)
More accurately, the cat is dead, because it’s sealed in a freaking airtight box.
I think he knows that, and his gripe is “Science instructors need to answer the question, not leave it as a “question”: the cat is either dead or alive.” Failure to do so has led to many folks going, “Haw damn, this science shit is crazy. All kinds of wacky magic is possible!”
Edit: But I’m not Giraffe, so I could be wrong.
Exactly. My quantum professors usually just explained the problem, and weren’t explicit about how obviously wrong it is (namely, the cyanide is the “observer” in this case, and the results would be the same regardless of whether there was a cat or not, or if the box was opened or not). As a result of this type of treatment, it’s been allowed to persist in as something scientific, instead of just a cute argument that was made in the early days (similar to Einstein’s famous “God doesn’t play dice with the universe” quote).
“As Deepak Chopra taught us, quantum physics means that anything can happen at any time for no reason.”
– Professor Farnsworth
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
I have it on good authority that trees do fall in forests when nobody is there to report if it makes a sound. As for my cat, Schroder, he’s just messin’ with ya.
I put a tape recorder in the forest to find out if a falling tree makes a sound when no one is around to hear it.
Quantum Mechanics confuses the hell out of me, but it really pisses me off when people who very obviously have even less understanding of it than me abuse it to promote their nonsense. Like the producers of the horrible “what the #&(#$ do we know” movies or much, much worse than that (and that’s saying something!): “Dr” Charlene Werner here, who doesn’t seem to have a grasp of even basic physics or math. Warning: this video will make your brain hurt.
The tape recorder does not record without batteries in it.
And I bet the tree didn’t fall until right after the recorder ran out of tape. Damn quantum physics…! 
It also made my eyeballs fall out. I’m typing this by feel. That was horrible.
I blame it all on Deepak Chopra.
Yes, but despite Schrödinger’s wishes, the Cat did not at all resolve the question it was addressed to. Read further–there are a few different working interpretations that take the Cat, including its “absurd consequence,” more seriously than Schrödinger did.
I’ve always found it a little odd that certain physicists seem unwilling to accept that their equations are real–that is, that they represent our incomplete but best-yet working understanding of a certain aspect of reality. For example, “wavefunction collapse is merely a physicist’s shorthand for saying that nature has chosen a specific realization of a physical system.”
“Nature has chosen”? What is that, if not a “woo,” or else a shorthand itself? Why can’t we try to accept what our best working theories say is true, as true, astonishing as the implications may be? (Investigate the cutting edge of other sciences, like astronomical cosmology and evolutionary biology, and you’ll likely find them even vaster and more amazing than you thought they were, too.)
Richard Feynman said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” Like the Cat, there are several ways this can be taken.
In none of them, however, is it at all likely that writing yourself a play “check” and thinking you have money is going to result in your getting actual money. There’s nothing in quantum mechanics that means that, if you wish and believe that you have what you want, you’re going to get it. There’s interesting, weird, and cool stuff in quantum mechanics, but it doesn’t mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.
[Morbo]Quantum mechanics does not work that way![/Morbo]
And while we’re at it, when I get to the end of something called “The Lady or the Tiger?” I’d better be told which goddamned one it was!
At least your hands, tongue, and head didn’t subsequently fall off due to the influence of some kind of weird mirror.
I started out in quantum mechanics. Then I found out that auto mechanics pays better.
So I switched careers.