Stop using quantum mechanics to science-wash your delusions
I am tired of hearing quantum mechanics invoked in support of nonsense.
You know the kind of thing.
Quantum mechanics therefore crystal healing.
Quantum mechanics therefore psychic powers.
Quantum mechanics therefore homeopathic medicine.
Quantum mechanics therefore universal consciousness.
Quantum mechanics therefore manifestation.
Quantum mechanics therefore reincarnation.
Quantum mechanics therefore free will.
It’s not just the crazies who do this. I hear otherwise highly intelligent, highly rational thinkers do it all the time.
Even physicists do it. As eminent a physicist as Roger Penrose argued in his book The Emperor’s New Mind...
...quantum mechanics therefore artificial intelligence is impossible.
It seems a silly argument now that artificial intelligence is here, but when I refuted it in my book The Human Computer...
...it was hard to get anyone to listen. Because, you know, quantum mechanics.
Please stop...
...with the “quantum mechanics therefore nonsense“.
Here are 7 reasons to stop using quantum mechanics to science-wash your delusions.
#1 You don’t understand quantum mechanics
I’m sorry, but if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you’re kidding yourself.
So you watched a YouTube video about quantum entanglement. That doesn’t mean you understand Bell’s theorem.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company. The physicist Richard Feynman once wrote: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
But just so you know, when you make confident claims about a theory you don’t understand, you don’t come across as clever, you come across as... well, the opposite of clever.
#2 You’re doing it backwards
And if you’re invoking quantum mechanics to lend credence to your beliefs, you’re doing it backwards.
Look, if you want to believe in crystals, or reincarnation, or free will, or whatever else takes your fancy, good luck to you.
But if you start with your belief and go out looking for a way to lend credence to it, what you’re doing isn’t science.
Science starts with reality and goes out looking for a model that might make sense of that reality.
What you’re doing is science-washing.
#3 Quantum mechanics is counterinuitive... so what?
What makes quantum mechanics so fascinating is that it’s counterintuitive.
It’s not the only theory of physics that’s counterintuitive. General relativity is counterintuitive. Special relativity is counterintuitive.
There’s a reason for this. Our intuitions were moulded over millions of years roaming the African savanna. Which means that they’re based on things about the size of sabre-toothed tigers...
...moving at about the speed of sabre-toothed tigers.
Quantum mechanics applies to things much, much, much smaller than sabre-toothed tigers.
General relativity applies to things much, much, much larger than sabre-toothed tigers.
Special relativity applies to things much, much, much faster than sabre-toothed tigers.
Our intuitions capture a narrow slice of the laws of physics. It’s no surprise that they don’t capture the full range of the laws of physics, because to survive on the African savanna, we didn’t need intuitions about anything as small as a molecule, or as large as a galaxy, or as fast as a photon.
If quantum mechanics seems counterintuitive to us, that has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, it has everything to do with us... and sabre-toothed tigers.
And if quantum mechanics is counterintuitive, well, so what? It doesn’t mean that your counterintuitive ideas are right.
I mean, the idea that there are ten trillion transparent teapots in orbit around the planet Neptune is counterintuitive.
Wait a minute... quantum mechanics is counterintuitive... my ten trillion transparent teapots theory is counterintuitive... so there must be something in it, right?
Seriously, please stop this nonsense.
#4 Quantum mechanics is a model
You’ve probably got the idea, from the YouTube videos you’ve seen, that quantum mechanics is about cats that are simultaneously dead and alive...
...photons that refuse to choose between two slits, and electrons that stay coupled to the ends of the universe.
It’s not.
Quantum mechanics is about this equation:
It’s an equation that predicts how electrons and photons behave.
(It does not predict how cats behave... but I’ll come to that.)
Quantum mechanics, like all theories of physics, is a model.
All the stuff you see on YouTube about what this means for spooky coupling, spooky double slits and spooky cats is... well, it’s commentary.
When you invoke quantum mechanics to support your nonsense, you’re not actually invoking quantum mechanics, which is really just a mathematical model, which you really don’t understand.
You’re invoking the commentary on the model.
This equation is science.
The commentary is interesting, but it’s not science.
#5 Quantum mechanics is wrong
Which brings me to that cat.
When Schrödinger told his story about the cat...
...it wasn’t to illustrate a truth of quantum mechanics.
Quite the opposite.
It was to illustrate how wrong it is.
Schrödinger was pointing out that quantum mechanics breaks in the transition from the small scale of atoms to the larger scale of cats.
If you ask physicists about that transition, they’ll mumble something about the collapse of the wavefunction, but they won’t be able to tell you what collapses the wavefunction, or how it collapses, or why it collapses, or even the scale at which it collapses: at the scale of atoms?
molecules?
cells?
cats?
what about kittens?
Quantum mechanics is wrong.
I mean, the equations aren’t wrong. To the contrary, the equations are extraordinarily precise. Quantum mechanics is an extremely effective model of small-scale phenomena.
But at other scales – at the very small scales around the Planck length and at the larger scales of cats – quantum mechanics is wrong.
And that’s fine... there has never been a theory of physics that has proved true at every scale.
So invoke quantum mechanics to justify your fantasies of kittens...
...fairies...
...and teapots...
...if you like, but know that you’re invoking a theory that, at these scales, is wrong.
#6 Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with your delusion
If it hasn’t become obvious by now, let me say it again.
Quantum mechanics is about photons and electrons.
At a stretch it’s about atoms and molecules.
It’s not about viruses, bacteria, tumours, neurons, brains, cats, humans or teapots.
I’m sorry, but unless your delusion is about sub-atomic physics, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with it.
#7 You’re delusional
All those things I listed at the start of this article – crystal healing, psychic powers, homeopathic medicine, universal consciousness, manifestation, reincarnation, free will – are delusions.
The worst thing you can do if you’re under an illusion is construct elaborate arguments, invoking quantum mechanics or anything else, to bolster your beliefs.
The best thing you can do?
Forget quantum mechanics.
Challenge your own thinking.
That’s what the most brilliant thinkers – including Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and all the other progenitors of quantum mechanics – have always done.
You have nothing to lose but your delusions.
Quod erat demonstrandum
So the next time you hear anyone other than a sub-atomic physicist make an argument of the form “quantum mechanics therefore...” rest assured that whatever follows the “therefore” is a delusion.
And if you’re ever tempted to make such an argument yourself... please, please stop.
