Showing posts with label magical thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magical thinking. Show all posts

Thursday, 9 October 2014

Quantum "Woo".

Quantum woo
 
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Quantum woo is the justification of irrational beliefs by an obfuscatory reference to quantum physics. Buzzwords like "energy field", "probability wave", or "wave-particle duality" are used to magically turn thoughts into something tangible in order to directly affect the universe. This results in such foolishness as the Law of Attraction or quantum healing. Some have turned quantum woo into a career, such as Deepak Chopra, who often presents ill-defined concepts of quantum physics as proof for God and other magical thinking.
When an idea seems too crazy to believe, the proponent often makes an appeal to quantum physics as the explanation. This is a New Age version of God of the gaps.
Quantum woo is an attempt to piggy-back on the success and legitimacy of science by claiming quack ideas are rooted in accepted concepts in physics, combined with utter misunderstanding of these concepts and a sense of wonder at the amazing magic these misunderstandings would imply if true. A quick way to tell if a claim about quantum physics has scientific validity is to ask for the mathematics. If there isn't any, it's rubbish.
Proponents of quantum woo are affected by the interaction of neural-energy and their natural bozon field, which results in the creation of one moron and the decay of two neurons. The moron has a half-life of 42 years.

Contents

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[edit] History

The New Age fascination with quantum mechanics seems to date to the mid-to-late 1970s and the booksThe Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The Dancing Wu Li[1] Masters by Gary Zukav.[2][3] Both books were received skeptically by most in the physics community,[4] with the Zukav book somewhat more heavily scorned.
The author of the first of these two, Fritjof Capra, has worked professionally as a physicist, but Zukav has virtually no formal training in the field. Capra's book had the occasional friendly physicist reviewer such as Victor Mansfield, who like Capra is also a proponent of Buddhist philosophy. Many who acknowledged Capra had described quantum physics fairly though his correlations between it and Buddhist mysticism were superficial and silly, and Peter Woit noted the book used quite a bit of out-of-date physics. Physicist John Gribbin described The Tao of Physics as the only purveyor of quantum-based mysticism that had any genuine grasp of quantum physics at all,[5] although the book's physics has been severely criticized by Victor Stenger.[6] In a joint review of both the Capra and Zukav books, physicist Jeremy Bernstein describe both collectively as not serious descriptions of quantum physics.
It should also be noted that Eastern religions do not have a single monolithic underlying philosophy, but that each one is divided into multiple schools of thought in ways not acknowledged by the sweeping generalizations about "Eastern religion" in Capra's book. It may be true that both quantum physics and Eastern religion view the universe as "a dynamic interconnected unity", but that does not mean that the details are the same.
Both books continue to be embraced by those who needed an all-purpose explanation for their woo.
Arguably some purveyors of quantum mysticism are entirely ignorant of quantum physics such as Deepak Chopra and the writers of the film What the Bleep..., while others may understand quantum physics but draw confused philosophical conclusions from it. Although Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose shared with Stephen Hawking the Wolf Prize for Physics in 1988, Hawking has vigorously opposed the attempts of Penrose to develop an explanation for consciousness from quantum physics (as has also noted physicist and atheist Victor Stenger and philosopher Daniel Dennett). However, Penrose does not engage in the massive distortions of modern physics that are found in Chopra and others.
Quantum woo is invoked by alties and woo-pushers in the manner that Nikola Tesla is by crackpot inventors. Popular culture movies such as The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? have also appealed to such concepts. Some of the less credible Neopagan authors, including Silver Ravenwolf, have begun doing the same thing.

[edit] Material that skirts the edge

Strong quantum woo might be defined as literature that pretends maintains that quantum physics has just proved what ancient mystics already knew all along. There is some literature exploring the intersection of quantum physics and religion which falls short of making such grandiose claims.
Quantum physicist John Polkinghorne later became an Anglican priest and author of books trying to synthesize science and the supernatural claims of Christianity. However, Polkinghorne mainly employs the standard apologetic arguments from the anthropic principle and Isaac Newton's claim that the laws of physics require a lawgiver and a creation requires a creator. Polkinghorne makes no strong claims about any metaphysical implications for quantum physics, although that was his field as a scientist.
The Buddhist-themed book The Quantum and the Lotus is by two authors, an astrophysicist (Trinh Xuan Thuan) and a Buddhist monk (Matthieu Ricard). It suggests that the discoveries of quantum physics and various Buddhist perspectives might by mutually supportive of each other, but this work makes far weaker claims than the Capra and Zukav books, and on several points the two authors visibly agree to disagree. The Vietnamese astrophyicists Trinh Thuan often adopts a more characteristically Western scientific outlook and the French Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, often adheres more strictly to the outlook of classical Buddhist philosophy.
Many respectable quantum physicists, including David Bohm, Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli, have noted the similarities between mystical and quantum worldviews.
Erwin Schrödinger wrote in What Is Life? that the world envisioned by quantum mechanics is monistic, as taught in mystico-religious traditions: "The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view."

[edit] Pseudoscience

The reason for quantum woo is the almost mystical status of quantum mechanics in the collective imagination: almost nobody knows what it actually is, but it's definitely extremely hard science about very awesome stuff. Even having a basic understanding of quantum mechanics requires a working knowledge of differential, integral, multivariable, complex, vector and tensor calculus, differential equations, linear and abstract algebra, classic Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism. Such topics are waaaaaaaaaaaay out of the league of anyone who hasn't spent at least three years studying them, and this, combined with the efforts of pop science authors to make science accessible to the masses, inevitably leads to quantum mechanics being widely summarized as all the weird, wonderful properties of matter in the tiny nanometric scale—and all it takes to make something appear to be based on Hard Science™ is spouting a little bit of vague technobabble about quantum stuff.
The logical process runs something like this:
  1. I want magic to exist.
  2. I don't understand quantum.
  3. Therefore, quantum could mean magic exists.
Concepts such as "non-locality" or "quantum probability waves" or "uncertainty principle" have become social memes of a kind where people inherently recognize that something "strange" is going on. Practitioners of fraudulent and silly ideas can tap into this feeling of mystery to push their sham concepts, e.g.:
One bad habit often exhibited by pushers of quantum woo is throwing out the theories of Isaac Newton because his work supposedly has rendered obsolete by quantum theory. In actuality, Newtonian equations for motion work quite well when it comes to predicting the motion of a football, asteroid, or comet (in fact, the computers used in the Apollo mission were programmed with them).

[edit] Quantum woo and Christianity

[edit] Quantum Jesus...

A few people on the fringe claim that Jesus exhibits properties similar to those of quantum particles.
  • The idea of something being a particle and a wave simultaneously is weird and apparently contradictory.
  • The idea of Jesus being divine and human simultaneously is weird, and apparently contradictory.
  • Therefore perhaps the two are connected.
Ragnarok, a blogger who professes to be Catholic,[10] has co-opted ideas of wave/particle duality as an analogy to explain the dual nature of Jesus as both man and God:
If you can consider light being both a particle and a wave, then it also becomes reasonable to see how Jesus can be both a human and a God. Think about it. Jesus exhibits "human" properties like having a physical body, eating, drinking, and having emotions. On the other hand, He also has "God" properties like the power to resurrect people, controlling the weather, knowing future events, and healing. Like light, Jesus exhibits properties from His dual natures. You could say He is the true "God Particle."[11]
Anthony J. Fejfar takes this to an even more unusual level, proclaiming Jesus to be "The Quantum Field" (all capitals).[12] In his short tract he explains how Jesus "Quantum" himself in and out of the tomb and Mary's womb. Apparently he can dematerialize through "Quantum."
For the record, no quantum entity is "fully a wave and fully a particle"; rather, they are an entirely different type of thing which happens to exhibit some properties of each, somewhat like how liquids exhibit some properties of both solids and gases (although quantum particles are not "intermediate" to waves and particles). If Jesus is to be understood in this light, the result is a heresy akin to "modalism", whereby the Holy Trinity is understood as being one person with three different "aspects" or "masks", and not as one-person-and-three-simultaneously.

[edit] ...and quantum creationism

Desmond Paul Allen is a crank with a different kind of quantum woo, mixing it with creationism into some sort of incoherent word salad.

[edit] Real science

If you want to read a good book on quantum physics, scienceblogger Chad Orzel recently published a very accessible book called How To Teach Physics To Your Dog. Way better than anything Deepak Chopra might write.
For a popular science overview, check this New Scientist article.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ Some critics might be tempted to designate it "woo lee".
  2. ↑ The Tao of Physics (Shambhala Publications, 1975, ISBN 1570625190)
  3. ↑ The Dancing Wu Li Masters (William Morrow & Co., 1979, ISBN 0553249142)
  4. ↑ Reviewer Jeremy Bernstein of the New Yorker Magazine, quoted by Martin Gardner in a 1979 review for Newsday, described Zukav's and Capra's physics by saying "A physicist reading these books might feel like someone on a familiar street who finds that all the old houses have suddenly turned mauve."
  5. ↑ in the preface to his own work In Search of Schrodinger's Cat
  6. ↑ For example on the April 2010 episode of the podcast For Good Reason [1]
  7. ↑ vlad. "A New Quantum Flux Level Over-Unity Device is Discovered." ZPEnergy.com. 2003 February 01.
  8. ↑ "Quantum Stirwands™." Quantum Age.
  9. ↑ "Quantum Therapy." QuantumTherapy.net. 2009 May.
  10. ↑ Ragnarok's profile on Blogger.
  11. ↑ Ragnarok. "Quantum Jesus." The Dark Side of the Universe. 2009 July 24.
  12. ↑ Anthony J. Fejfar. "The Quantum Jesus: A Tract Book Essay." Scribd.com 2007.
Retrieved from "http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Quantum_woo&oldid=1361118"
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Monday, 29 October 2012

Parapsychology in Skeptics Dictionary!


parapsychology

"...parapsychology is the only realm of objective inquiry in which the phenomena are all negatively defined, defined in terms of ruling out normal explanations." James Alcock (2003)
Parapsychology is the search for evidence of paranormalphenomena, such as ESP and psychokinesis. Most scientists try to explain observed and observable phenomena. Parapsychologists try to observe unexplainable phenomena. All the other sciences have led us away from superstition and magical thinking, while parapsychology has tried to find a scientific basis for such things asdivination and mediumship.
Much parapsychology today attempts to find statistical oddities that can't be explained either by the laws of chance or by any other known natural causes. Parapsychologists assume in such cases that they have found evidence for psi.
Scientific methodology in this field dates from at least 1882 at the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London, which continues to flourish. Its initial members sought to distinguish psychic phenomena from spiritism, and to investigate mediums and their activities. They studied automatic writing, levitation, and reports ofectoplasmic and poltergeist activity. In America, Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980) conducted psi experiments at Duke University in the 1930s. His work continues at the Rhine Research Center and at various labs across the country where experiments have concentrated principally on extrasensory perception (ESP),psychokinesis, remote viewing, and astral projection. There are at least half a dozen peer-reviewed journals of parapsychology. However, research in this area has been characterized by deception, fraud, and incompetence in setting up properly controlled experiments and evaluating statistical data (Alcock 1990; Gardner 1981; Gordon 1987; Hansel 1989; Hines 1990; Hyman 1989; Park 2000; Randi 1982). For a short history of psi research, see my essay on the subject.
Americans Charles Tart and Raymond Moody, among many others, continue to expand upon Rhine's work. The CIA and the U.S. military have hired parapsychologists and studied alleged psychics such asIngo Swann and Joe McMoneagle.  Parapsychological research has been done at several places in the U.S., including the Maimonides Hospital Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn, New York, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab, and the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. In Europe, the main center of parapsychology has been the University of Edinburgh, whose psychology department has theKoestler Chair of Parapsychology and publishes the European Journal of Parapsychology. Liverpool Hope University has a parapsychology research group and Goldsmith's University of London has an Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. (A list of research centers around the world is posted here. Another list of research labs is given by the Parapsychological Association.) Parapsychologists publish several journals.
Psi researchers often find evidence for psi, but a yearlong study done by the United States Air Force Research Laboratories (the VERITAC study, named after the computer used) was unable to verify the existence of ESP. A carefully designed study by Richard C. Sprinthall and Barry S. Lubetkin published in the Journal of Psychology (vol. 60, pp. 313-18) found no evidence of ESP. Some parapsychologists, e.g., Louie Savva and Susan Blackmore, have abandoned the search for psi after years of failing to find any significant support for paranormal phenomena (Blackmore 1987,2000).
Despite the fact that psychologists have been in the forefront of paranormal studies, a study of 1,100 college professors in the United States found that only 34% of psychologists believe that ESP is either an established fact or a likely possibility. Comparable figures for other disciplines are much higher: natural scientists (55%), social scientists [excluding psychologists] (66%) and for academics in the arts, humanities, and education (77%). Of the psychologists surveyed, 34% believe psi is an impossibility, while only 2% of the other respondents maintained this position (Wagner and Monnet 1979).
Parapsychologists who claim to have found positive results often systematically ignore or rationalize their own studies if they don’t support psi. Rhine discarded data that didn’t support his beliefs, claiming subjects were intentionally getting answers wrong (psi-missing). Many psi researchers allowed optional starting and optional stopping. Many psi researchers have limited their research to investigating parlor tricks (guessing the number or suit of a playing card, or “guess what Zener card I am looking at” or “try to influence this random number generator or the outcome of this dice throw with your thoughts”). Any statistical strangeness is attributed to paranormal events. Some researchers, like Dean Radin, write histories of the paranormal that make no mention of fraud (Soal) or cheating (Project Alpha) or embarrassing events like Rhine's declaring the horse Lady Wonder to be psychic. Radin is also fond of meta-analysis, which allows him to lump together numbers of studies of questionable worth and do a statistical analysis that makes the data seem like gold. In his latest book, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, Radin provides a mega-meta-analysis of over 1,000 studies on dream psi, ganzfeldpsi, staring, distant intention, dice PK, and RNG PK. He concludes that the odds against chance of getting these results are 10104against 1 (p. 276). He comments that "there can be little doubt that something interesting is going on" (p. 275). Maybe so, but what does it have to do with the paranormal?
In The Conscious Universe (1997), Radin uses statistics and meta-analysis to prove that psychic phenomena really do exist even if those who have the experiences in the labs are unaware of them. Statistical data show that the world has gone psychic, according to the latest generation of parapsychologists. You may be unconscious of it, but your mind is affecting random number generators all over the world as you read this. The old psychic stuff - thinking about aunt Hildie moments before she calls to tell you to bugger off - is now demonstrated to be true by statistical methods that were validated in 1937 by Burton Camp and meta-validated by Radin 60 years later when he asserted that meta-analysis was the replication parapsychologists had been looking for. The only difference is that now when you think of aunt Hildie it might be moments before she calls her car mechanic and that, too, may be linked to activity in your mind that you are unaware of.
Radin's latest book sees entanglement as a key to understanding extrasensory phenomena. Entanglement is a concept from quantum physics that refers to connections between subatomic particles that persist regardless of being separated by various distances. He notes that some physicists have speculated that the entire universe might be entangled and that the Eastern mystics of old might have been on to something cosmic. His speculations are rather wild but his assertions are rather modest. For example: "I believe that entanglement suggests a scenario that may ultimately lead to a vastly improved understanding of psi" (p. 14) and "I propose that the fabric of reality is comprised [sic] of 'entangled threads' that are consistent with the core of psi experience" (p. 19). Skeptics might suggest that studying self-deception and wishful thinking would lead to a vastly improved understanding of psi research and that being consistent with a model is a minimal, necessary condition for taking any model seriously, but hardly sufficient to warrant much faith.
From the standpoint of physics there seems to be a major problem with the assumption and alleged discovery by some parapsychologists that spatial distance is irrelevant to psi. Three of the four known forces in nature weaken with distance.* Thus, as Einstein pointed out in a letter to Dr. Jan Ehrenwald, “This suggests...a very strong indication that a non-recognized source of systematic errors may have been involved [in ESP experiments]” (Garder 1981, 153). The skeptic would rather believe that ESP doesn’t exist than that there is some very strong and powerful force that is undetectable even though we’re able to detect what must be a much weaker force, gravity, without any trouble at all.
Recently, the work of Charles Honorton and his ganzfeldexperiments have been put forth as examples of proper scientific studies whose integrity cannot be doubted. Maybe. But the data from these experiments illustrate another problem with much research in parapsychology: correlations don't establish causality. Finding a correlation that is not what would be predicted by chance does not establish a causal event. Nor does it establish that if it is a causal event, it is a paranormal event. Furthermore, even if there is a causal event, the correlation itself isn't of much use in determining what that event consists of. What you think is cause may be the effect. Or, there may be some third, unknown, factor which is causing the effect observed. Or, the correlation may be due to chance, even if it is statistically unlikely in a certain sense. Or the correlation may be illusory and due to an experimenter expectation effect rather than to any real causal event. The apparent chance correlation may actually be statistically likely over the long run. So, the fact that a group of test subjects identifies correctly which of four pictures someone else has seen at a .36 rate when .25 is what chance predicts doesn't establish a causal event. Nor does it, of course, establish ESP as the cause, if there is a cause. The event may well be causal, but the real cause may be something quite ordinary, such as fraud, unintentional cues, or some tendency to bias in the subject matters selected by chance. If other researchers can duplicate the results with more and more rigorous tests, then it will become highly probable that causal events are being measured. Then, the problem will be to find the cause. Maybe it will turn out to be a psychic force hitherto undetected by physics, but this seems unlikely.
Parapsychologists, such as Dean Radin, also point to the work ofRobert Jahn at Princeton University as an example of strong evidence of psychokinesis. Skeptics disagree. Physicist Robert Park, for example, called Jahn's lab "an embarrassment to science."* Jahn's work does seem to be a classic example ofpathological science, except that rather than make observations at the threshold of perception, Jahn and his team focused on statistical analysis at the threshold of significance.
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further reading
books and articles
Wagner, M. W. & Monnet, M. “Attitudes Of College Professors Toward Extra-Sensory Perception,” Zetetic Scholar, 5, 7 – 16, 1979
websites
KOESTLER PARAPSYCHOLOGY UNIT (interesting history of the origins of terms such as psi, ESP, etc.)

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