Professor Philip Moriarty comes to Skeptics in the Pub at The Canalhouse to talk about The Wow and the Woo of Quantum Physics. If you’re Deepak Chopra, you might want to look away now.
Just because we don’t fully understand the implications of quantum physics doesn’t give us carte blanche to make things up. We’re not dealing in meta-physics or philosophy here. Part of the problem is the idea of an observer in quantum physics. But anything in the environment can be an observer, it doesn’t have to be conscious.
All of which has led to a situation where scientists are at least partially to blame for Deepak Chopra. Steve Fuller has suggested that Brain Cox should team up with Chopra to improve public discourse on science. That’s Chopra, a man who believes that “human beings can reverse their aging”.
Chad Orzel has written an article called “Physics of the Imbecile” based on an interview between Deepak Chopra and Michio Katu. No-one comes out of it well. In retaliation, Seb Pearce has come up with a Chopra-ism generator: www.sebpearce.com/bullshit
Mere hours before Professor Moriarty’s talk kicked off, Deepak Chopra was on Twitter – “the body is made of awareness, sensations, images, feelings, thoughts” No, Deepak, it really isn’t.
Why are so many people sold on this sort of nonsense though? We even have quantum life coaching and a book called The Secret that Oprah Winfrey advocates. Here’s an example quote from the book “quantum physics tells us that the entire universe emerged from thought”
It really doesn’t help when scientists come out with similar rubbish. Even Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, comes out with things like “the universe could only come into existence if someone observed it” It’s left to people like Lisa Randall to point out that quantum effects “mostly arise in very detailed measurements in controlled settings” After all we don’t live in a quantum world. However, Richard Feynman put it best “I can safely say that no-one understands quantum mechanics”
There is a very well defined mathematical framework for quantum mechanics called Hilbert Space and these mathematical concepts work. However, we cannot consider them to be a true model of reality.
One of the big things that most people know about quantum physics is that it’s something to do with particles and waves especially with regards to the double slit experiment. So, we have the localised particles and the delocalised waves. If we shine light through a single slit, we get diffraction of the light. When we do the double slit experiment, we still get diffraction but it’s different because we have added more pathways for light to interfere.
If we use electron waves instead of light, we still get diffraction patterns even though this is matter rather than light. The same thing happens with atoms, so what about molecules? Experiments have been done with C60, the so called football molecule. This is a molecule of carbon that looks like a football, hence the name. In terms of size, the relation of the size of the planet Earth to a real football is the same as a football to a C60 molecule. Yet, it still gives the same pattern as light in the double slit experiment.
However, molecules above a certain size no longer give diffraction. This is because once we get to that size we have too much interference so quantum effects do no scale up. At this point, classical physics rather than quantum physics describe what is going on and this is why Deepak Chopra doesn’t diffract when he walks through a door.
Then it’s time to discuss “that darn cat”. Erwin Schrodinger designed his most famous thought experiment to be a “quite ridiculous case” that was arguing against the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. As we’ve already said, the observer in quantum physics doesn’t need to be conscious, so the cat is already being observed by the box itself. Hence the state is undermined before a measurement is even taken. As Einstein himself said when arguing with Bohr “do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks at it”
Victor Stenger wrote about the “Hubris of Holism”. Meanwhile Michael Fleischhauer wrote “fortunately the existence of distant particles is for practical purposes, inconsequential” What all that means is that while everything may be interconnected mathematically but real life is different to that framework. The map is not the terrain.
The mistake that Chopra makes is that he makes a logical fallacy – quantum physics operates at the atomic level. We’re all made of atoms, therefore quantum physics must happen to us. While Hilbert Spaces predict the existence of multiverses, how would we actually test something like that in practice?
Fortunately, Chopra probably won’t really care too much about all of this as his understanding of quantum physics has given him a Panglossian view of the universe “At any given time the universe is giving you the best result possible”
Review by Gav Squires
