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Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?
Every generation tends to believe that its views on the nature of reality are either true or quite close to the truth. We are no exception to this: although we know that the ideas of earlier generations were each time supplanted by those of a later one, we still believe that this time we got it right. Our ancestors were naïve and superstitious, but we are objective—or so we tell ourselves. We know that matter/energy, outside and independent of mind, is the fundamental stuff of nature, everything else being derived from it—or do we?
In fact, studies have shown that there is an intimate relationship between the world we perceive and the conceptual categories encoded in the language we speak. We don’t perceive a purely objective world out there, but one subliminally pre-partitioned and pre-interpreted according to culture-bound categories. For instance, “color words in a given language shape human perception of color.” A brain imaging study suggests that language processing areas are directly involved even in the simplest discriminations of basic colors. Moreover, this kind of “categorical perception is a phenomenon that has been reported not only for color, but for other perceptual continua, such as phonemes, musical tones and facial expressions.” In an important sense, we see what our unexamined cultural categories teach us to see, which may help explain why every generation is so confident in their own worldview. Allow me to elaborate.
The conceptual-ladenness of perception isn’t a new insight. Back in 1957, philosopher Owen Barfield wrote:
“I do not perceive any thing with my sense-organs alone.… Thus, I may say, loosely, that I ‘hear a thrush singing.’ But in strict truth all that I ever merely ‘hear’—all that I ever hear simply by virtue of having ears—is sound. When I ‘hear a thrush singing,’ I am hearing … with all sorts of other things like mental habits, memory, imagination, feeling and … will.” (Saving the Appearances)
As argued by philosopher Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, science itself falls prey to this inherent subjectivity of perception. Defining a “paradigm” as an “implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief,” he wrote:
“something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training there can only be, in William James’s phrase, ‘a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion.’”
Hence, because we perceive and experiment on things and events partly defined by an implicit paradigm, these things and events tend to confirm, by construction, the paradigm. No wonder then that we are so confident today that nature consists of arrangements of matter/energy outside and independent of mind.
Yet, as Kuhn pointed out, when enough “anomalies”—empirically undeniable observations that cannot be accommodated by the reigning belief system—accumulate over time and reach critical mass, paradigms change. We may be close to one such a defining moment today, as an increasing body of evidence from quantum mechanics (QM) renders the current paradigm untenable.
Indeed, according to the current paradigm, the properties of an object should exist and have definite values even when the object is not being observed: the moon should exist and have whatever weight, shape, size and color it has even when nobody is looking at it. Moreover, a mere act of observation should not change the values of these properties. Operationally, all this is captured in the notion of “non-contextuality”: the outcome of an observation should not depend on the way other, separate but simultaneous observations are performed. After all, what I perceive when I look at the night sky should not depend on the way other people look at the night sky along with me, for the properties of the night sky uncovered by my observation should not depend on theirs.
The problem is that, according to QM, the outcome of an observation can depend on the way another, separate but simultaneous, observation is performed. This happens with so-called “quantum entanglement” and it contradicts the current paradigm in an important sense, as discussed above. Although Einstein argued in 1935 that the contradiction arose merely because QM is incomplete, John Bell proved mathematically, in 1964, that the predictions of QM regarding entanglement cannot be accounted for by Einstein’s alleged incompleteness.
So to salvage the current paradigm there is an important sense in which one has to reject the predictions of QM regarding entanglement. Yet, since Alain Aspect’s seminal experiments in 1981–82, these predictions have been repeatedly confirmed, with potential experimental loopholes closed one by one. 1998 was a particularly fruitful year, with two remarkable experiments performed in Switzerland and Austria. In 2011 and 2015, new experiments again challenged non-contextuality. Commenting on this, physicist Anton Zeilinger has been quoted as saying that “there is no sense in assuming that what we do not measure [that is, observe] about a system has [an independent] reality.” Finally, Dutch researchers successfully performed a test closing all remaining potential loopholes, which was considered by Nature the “toughest test yet.”
The only alternative left for those holding on to the current paradigm is to postulate some form of non-locality: nature must have—or so they speculate—observation-independent hidden properties, entirely missed by QM, which are “smeared out” across spacetime. It is this allegedly omnipresent, invisible but objective background that supposedly orchestrates entanglement from “behind the scenes.”
It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive redefinition of what we call “objectivity.” And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this by pronouncing, “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”
The tension between the anomalies and the current paradigm can only be tolerated by ignoring the anomalies. This has been possible so far because the anomalies are only observed in laboratories. Yet we know that they are there, for their existence has been confirmed beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, when we believe that we see objects and events outside and independent of mind, we are wrong in at least some essential sense. A new paradigm is needed to accommodate and make sense of the anomalies; one wherein mind itself is understood to be the essence—cognitively but also physically—of what we perceive when we look at the world around ourselves.
This sort of thing fascinates me. We're touching on parts of our universe that are honestly incredible. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying: the realities science shows us are far more compelling and bizarre than anything pseudoscience enthusiasts would believe.
We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away. -- J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5
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I sympathize with Sagan. The realities science shows us are indeed far more compelling and bizarre than anything pseudoscience enthusiasts would have us believe. I'd like to say 'if they only had a clue', but alas, often times they do. But once you're stuck in "science press", as the author calls it (that is popular science magazines, of course. Not to be confused with scientific literature, publication journals and the like), it looks like one has to leave such things behind and write what people want to read instead. And they want something that is easy to conjure a mental image of, and a pretty one at that, that still has enough technobabble to sound scientific when it is nothing of the sort. People want pseudoscience...
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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Thirsting for knowledge? Drink up!
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You know, I think I completely glossed over his conclusion. But, if he's quoting philosophers that makes more sense.
Still, I don't think that there's anything necessarily wrong with the type of philosophical conjecture he seems to be working with -- though, reading through it again, I would say that the author is coming at this from a very specific set of assumptions, ones which I wouldn't personally agree with. Specifically, as you pointed out, the "old paradigms" aren't being destroyed in favor of new ones (this isn't another case of ether). We're learning more about why one model of the universe works, at a very minute level, with some really exciting work happening right now in the realm of quantum gravity that's trying to figure out how both models work together.
And, yes, Scientific American, just like all the other popular science journals, are guilty of padding themselves with less-than hard articles. I don't know if people "want pseudoscience" though, even if it appears that way at times. I found pieces of the article interesting, but you raised some solid critiques that made me go "whoops, I was paying attention to one very small piece of what this guy was saying. How the heck did I miss that the first time through?" And so I continue on my exploration of a subject that I'm grossly unqualified to understand (but I want to, because it excites me). I think that's the key. I think people want to be excited, and that's where popular science authors and the like could (can sometimes do) do a lot of good by, yes, framing these massive concepts in ways which laypeople can understand(ways which allow them to be excited about the grandness of the frontiers we're poking at). And that's important because we do need a scientifically-literate public. Badly. And it doesn't have to be a high level of scientific literacy either, it can be just enough to grasp the edges of what's going on.
Now, I don't suggest that this is what Dr. Kastrup is doing, here. I think he's got his own thing going (which is perfectly fine, in a sense). But, still... we're talking about things now. That's got to be good. Maybe we can have fun somewhere along the way?
We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away. -- J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5
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Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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So I keep pushing the envelope of my knowledge. There's always more to learn.
That said, there's a rather solid barrier to my total comprehension of these theories and concepts: my understanding of the mathematics behind them. But I recognize that I don't have the skills required to understand that and work it out for myself; I try to be cognizant of my own limitations in this regard. It's a tough road to walk because I am interested in some of the fringe stuff because, as a Sci-Fi writer that stuff is useful for me. But I also want to have as solid a grounding in the reality as possible so that what I write comes off well to scientists and science enthusiasts (and so I can actually hold a conversation with someone who is a scientist or is astutely scientifically-literate).
The thing is... I don't think all people who jump into an exploration of "science" are willing to recognize the limitations of only understanding at a conceptual level. So you get people who are carried away, either through their own excitement, their own preconceptions, or through the hoodwinkery of people who make their living plying the fringe lands for fairy gold.
I sort of moved away from the point you were making.
Now that I've finished my BA I'm considering heading back for an AA in Natural Science focused in Astronomy/Physics while I wait for my MFA applications to go through. Gotta keep learning.
We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away. -- J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5
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There are computers that operate on a Quantum Mechanical process. I would love to fully understand that but I'm not there yet. I would love to understand the complex theories and formulas behind AI but I'm not there yet. The problem isn't not being there yet. The problem is when other people who aren't there yet try to teach it like its something magical that doesn't need to conform to scientific principles because in their minds it breaks scientific principles. And that's simply not true. On the quantum level of particles QM explains things that normal physics has difficulty with. And maybe that simply because on that small level there are variables that we cannot see or have have the technology to detect. The smallest particle (unless this has changed) is not even one that is observed but one that exists in theory. So there's just too much we don't know at that level to then make QM into some kind of absolute game changer which many people (again, not speaking of anyone here) try to do.
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I'm not a QM guy, but I do know Kuhn pretty well.
Invoking the Kuhnian 'paradigm shift' is a tried and true method to bring attention to a research area. Plenty of guys call Scientific Revolution! when a number of anomalies emerge in a current theory's normal science practices. Some do it to sell magazines, others to legitimately call for additional focus in explaining something that doesn't quite make sense. Not all result in a classic radical theory change - they're accounted for in other ways that maintain the paradigm.
One thing to be careful of is thinking that a paradigm shift implies that all else previous to it is wrong - far from it. It's simply thinking about the same information in a new way. Same data, different context.
Do I think we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift? Maybe, but I think we need a larger body of data to bring in more anomalies - which may be what Dr. Kastrup is intending here: Attention -> focus -> testing.
If and when crisis does occur, we will definitely need those willing to tinker and play with new ways of thinking. That, I can absolutely get behind.
Jedi Knight
The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.
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