To: Physicist; RadioAstronomer; snarks_when_bored; Quark2005
I think the intention of the author was not necessarily to gloss over the philosophical problems associated with QM, but to dispel of the notion that it somehow means that we can't understand what it leads to, as well as the mystical New Age hippie crap that some people try to justify with an appeal to QM (note the article source). People think that wave-particle duality or non-locality is something mysterious, implying that reality is subjective and malleable; it doesn't. They're very real outcomes of physical laws predicted by quantum mechanics (and in the case of wave-particle duality, special relativity as well). The problem, to paraphrase The Bard lies not in the universe, but in our minds, as our cognitive abilities and reasoning skills are specifically adapted to the non-quantum world (there, I've hijacked this, and made it a crevo thread!). Just as our telescopes and microscopes, optical, radio and electron, are helping us go beyond the sensory impressions which limit us thank to natural selection, so will the next wave of advances in computation help us go beyond our limited cognitive faculties, evolved to respond specifically to casual reasoning.
95 posted on
09/16/2006 12:40:33 PM PDT by
RightWingAtheist
(Creationism is to conservatism what Howard Dean is to liberalism)
To: RightWingAtheist
I agree with you completely.
Too many people believe that quantum "weirdness" opens a window for the paranormal, supernatural, mystical uncertainty, etc. when in reality, it makes specific physical predictions with a rigor and accuracy unparalleled by any other scientific theory.
98 posted on
09/16/2006 1:07:52 PM PDT by
Quark2005
("Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs." -Matthew 7:6)
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