Quantum theory, string theory... sick of it all

[Michael L.]

Catching up on this week's show and all of a sudden string theory and quantum mechanics are being bandied about... why? What does that have to do with anything? If you are looking for ghosts you probably can not create a repeatable demonstration... but you shouldn't have to because you are not doing EXPERIMENTAL science. You are performing OBSERVATIONAL science. Trying to capture evidence of apparitions is much more akin to trying to find evidence of undiscovered species or searching the heavens for the first black hole or planets around another star. You are gathering data. String theory, quantum mechanics, grand unification theories have nothing more to do with data you are gathering at this point than they do if you are measuring the temperature and air pressure outside for the local weather station. Some system, be it string theory or something as of yet unexplored, is responsible for the physical universe but we do not need to know what that system is to prove that there is sound beyond human hearing or light beyond our visual range or Bigfoot or even ghosts. At this point you are not even proving that ghosts are spirits of the dead or echoes of the past or anything else. You have to establish that there is actual, impartial evidence that proves something is happening besides our minds blending explainable stimuli with imagination.

In all honesty, when I heard the guest, an IT guy with a bunch of measuring devices (no offense, just establishing that he is not a theoretical physicist), mention string theory it struck me that he may as well be using the psychics and pendulums and dowsing rods he was so proud his group avoids. If you are going to be a data collector, be a data collector and don't stray into areas that will get you in trouble when it comes to credibility.

By collecting the data at these paranormal investigations you are trying to first establish that there is something occurring. Leave it at that until it is clearly established and accepted. Don't try to tie it to something like string or GUF theory even in an analogy because it does not help and it is not a logical parallel.

Rant over. Enjoy your day.

 

[schticknz]

Excellent post.

I love the way that if some people can't explain something they start bringing out "string theory" just to keep things within a scientific paradigm. Its been around for how many years now in various forms ... 30 or so years ... and still its just a theory. Have there been any serious predictions made by string theory that have proved to be correct?? (forgive me for asking this but things change so quickly its difficult to keep up with all of it :-D)

And anyway ... what are the strings made out of anyway ??? :-D

(my new pet epic theory is that particles, matter etc is/are made up of spinning vortices in space-time/ether/zero point energy field ... i think its just as plausible in some ways as string theory :-D)

 

[Brian Now]

I get sick of it too. String theory, quantum physics...it's all very interesting and fine when discussed in the right context by someone who actually knows what they're talking. But I think New Agers (and others of the not-too-sophisticated persuasion) jumped on this stuff as a symbol of the "unknown". Nowadays if you want to give more credence to your own unverifiable beliefs/claims you can invoke the word "quantum" to remind people that the world is much stranger than we realized, therefore the strange crap you're selling might just work.

I don't think I have convincingly ever heard anyone explain how string theory or quantum mechanics actually relates to their pet belief/book..it's just sort of there as a distraction.

Anyway, that's my experience with all the new agey books and podcasts I come across.

and if I hear Schroedinger's Cat mentioned one more freakin' time...

 

[CapnG]

and if I hear Schroedinger's Cat mentioned one more freakin' time...

Hehehe... actually that reminds of a dream I had a few nights ago. I have a cat and in the dream she was running around the bedroom (as she often does) making a racket. Suddenly she "stretched" as she lept through the air and two cats appeared, one where she was and a duplicate where she landed. These clone cats immediately began to fight and I was yelling at them to shut up. Finally I backhanded one of them and it flew across the room, struck a dresser and slowly faded out of existence leaving the remaining cat. At this point I woke up, thought about the dream, realized that within it were two cats in a contradictory state of existence whom I had resolved into one cat and muttered to myself "Quantum physics?....wtf?!"

That would seem to illustrate how deeply and how overly referenced these things have become in our society.

 

[Aaron LeClair]

"I shaved Shroedinger's cat with Occam's Razor."

 

[schticknz]

and if I hear Schroedinger's Cat mentioned one more freakin' time...

Hehehe... actually that reminds of a dream I had a few nights ago. I have a cat and in the dream she was running around the bedroom (as she often does) making a racket. Suddenly she "stretched" as she lept through the air and two cats appeared, one where she was and a duplicate where she landed. These clone cats immediately began to fight and I was yelling at them to shut up. Finally I backhanded one of them and it flew across the room, struck a dresser and slowly faded out of existence leaving the remaining cat. At this point I woke up, thought about the dream, realized that within it were two cats in a contradictory state of existence whom I had resolved into one cat and muttered to myself "Quantum physics?....wtf?!"

That would seem to illustrate how deeply and how overly referenced these things have become in our society.

Blimey, all i have is dreams of grey aliens riding past my patio on bicycles (and no i haven't seen ET ... hopefully i never will) ... although i have had a few seriously cool UFO dreams where they land in the back yard or they're flying about outside at night ... very cool :-D

[Hmmm ... thinks: wouldn't Schroedinger's Cat be bloody expensive to feed??]

Quantum Physics is indeed all pervasive, but I also have the feeling that most 'scientists' don't really understand it (i.e. maybe i couldn't understand half of it at university because it was total nonsense ???) ... and so the layman gets to know it through a series of people ... like Chinese Whispers, it gets distorted and confused by the time it gets to people who sell all powerful healing amulets and the such like that work mysteriously, possibly using "quantum physics" ... or are they just snake-oil salesman trying to make a fast buck ... probably a combination of the two.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

I don't think I have convincingly ever heard anyone explain how string theory or quantum mechanics actually relates to their pet belief/book..it's just sort of there as a distraction.

That's becuase the lay people pushing that mumbo jumbo have no understanding of the actual subject. The math involved in areas such as M-theory or quantum mechanics interpretation (Copenhagen school, Everett Many-worlds, etc.) is utterly impenetrable to anyone but experts in the field. The average person cannot even begin to decipher the concepts behind theoretical physics.

Buzzwords like "parallel dimensions" typically filter down into the general public from the fields of legitimate science, but the general public does not realize that their colloquial understanding of those concepts are not what physicists are actually talking about. For example, the various string theories describe additional "dimensions" as quantum scaled closed-loop manifolds that have nothing to do with the 3 spatial dimensions of our own space-time. Higher dimensionality is more of a mathematical tool than anything else - One can readily describe spaces with an arbitrary number of extra dimensions - but that has nothing to do material reality.

So essentially, those "sexy" theories out there are just that - theories. Despite all the hype, string theory is nothing more than a hypothesis at this point. 100 years after it's development, physicists are still debating the implications and deep meanings underlying quantum equations. It's clear the math itself works (otherwise we would have no modern computers, lasers etc.) But what it all means on a metaphysical level is very much unclear.

So when new-agers latch onto buzzwords to justify their pet theories, it's usually about as plausible as your average Star Trek script from the standpoint of actual science.

 

[Don Keyhoe-Ti]

Yeah it always bugs me too. What it translates out to for me is "But science says some really weird shit... therefore whatever weird shit I happen to be talking about right now has all the authority of science."

String theory I happen to reckon is probably bs, & here's an easy collection of intros to that perspective...reviews of "Not Even Wrong"

As for the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum menchanics, well it's a lot harder to dismiss and quite hard to get one's head around, but I'm philosophically biased towards Realism, and I hold out hopes for common sense to be verified in this field eventually.