On Mar 3, 2005, at 10:25 PM, I wrote:
In short, once you drop realism...which is hard to reconcile with the
results of QM, and accept that the objects of our senses are not a separate
reality but the interface between that separate reality and our minds, a
lot of things fall into place rather nicely.
Sure, even more so if you accept the mumbo-jumbo that wishing something is true is sufficient to make it so. That's what really lies at the core of strong QM defense, I think.
What's funny is that I regularly sense a strong commitment to QM (not just in you), one that isn't comfortable with conceding that, since QM is incomplete, it's possible that some of its conclusions are false. Almost as though it's a religion.
That reads a little harsher than I intended. I was thinking of the nonspecific "you" in that first graf; I should have written it as "...even more so if one accepts the mumbo-jumbo that..."
The second graf isn't meant to be a slam on religion, but rather on the fervor with which I have seen *some* people defend QM. (That's not targeted at Dan either, BTW, and neither is the following.)
Sometimes I feel like Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope -- there's a vast outcry from a throng of individuals, not all of whom seem to have thought fully about what QM's suggestions really mean; the analogy is to the huge number of holiday Catholics who were up in arms because of Sinead's gesture, all of whom seemed to forget that they were really *Christians*, and not particularly devout ones either.
When there are nearly a dozen possible equally sensible interpretations of QM's effects on the universe, isn't it just a little odd? When QM says that the universe is the way it is because of how it's been observed in the past, doesn't anyone else get a yellow light?
Can the universe really be that plastic? Doesn't it seem just a little hubristic to suggest that reality is, quite literally, what we make it out to be? Is that truly the most likely case, or is it instead more feasible that we're not there yet, that we aren't fully clear on everything?
Just before Einstein published his paper on relativity, physicists were saying that there was virtually no research left to be done in physics, that it was soon to be a dead science. Boy were they wrong.
Isn't it feasible that we're just as wrong to assume that QM is really a fully legitimate, deeply descriptive and entirely accurate model of reality? Particularly when there still isn't agreement about how to interpret what QM tells us?
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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