Scientific Senselessness: Day 31

[B] Please keep your limbs inside the ride at all times (31,684 / 1,000,000)

Did you know there’s a little door to your head that nobody, including yourself, can see? You don’t believe me? Well about 10 seconds ago I kicked that door down, and now here I am, admiring the décor on the inside of your mind. I’m conveying messages to you, and yet I’m nowhere near you. I’ve fragmented a bit of my being, and astral projected it into your thoughtspace. Hey there.

Okay, I have to come clean. This is not a wholly original analogy on my part. I have to give credit to Stephen King, who likened writing to sending messages through time. His is an interesting take, and probably better than my door analogy, but whatever — he’s Stephen friggin’ King.

Anyway, back to the interior of your head — oh look, here’s a chalkboard. So, I’m Professor Dude-in-Your-Head, and today I’ll be substituting for the regular Person-in-Your-Head. Today’s subject is “How quantum theories can apply to real-world ideas”. Before you ask — the answer is no, I know absolutely nothing about positrons, Megatrons, or any quantum whatchamacallems. Nor do I really know anything about the world, besides the coincidental data points that I’ve acquired passively in my journey through existence. This is simply an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head, which won’t go away until I regurgitate it onto a page.

Normally, when an idea pops into existence, an anti-idea pops into existence alongside it. Sometimes, an idea and its respective anti-idea collide, and they cancel each other out. But this particular idea’s anti-idea was sucked into the event horizon of — hey, quit dozing off!

I’m writing “Superposition” on the board.

Superposition

So, in normal, everyday life we usually think of things as being one way or another, but never as being two contradictory ways at the same time. That is to say, you could crack an egg, or you could leave it whole, but you’ll never see an egg that is simultaneously cracked and completely whole. However, quantum stuff (scientific term) doesn’t need to worry about that. A quantum egg could be entirely shattered and whole at the same time. This is quantum superposition… kind of….

Normally, real-world, people-stuff doesn’t work like quantum stuff. From our human perspective, an egg is cracked or it isn’t, there are no two ways about it. (Or in this case, there are only two ways about it.) Human perspectives are actually what I wanted to talk about. See how I led you seamlessly to this point? I know, I’m the best, but please hold your applause until the end.

I’d like to suggest that a single human perspective is at once entirely valuable and wholly valueless. Historically, all the cool stuff comes when we put our minds together to achieve feats that would be impossible alone; but without each individual useless mind, we wouldn’t have the useful collective whole. So, there you have it, the superposition of human value. Every individual perspective is useless by itself, but an indispensable piece of the whole. Hmm, that sounds a bit dark. Let me try something else…

Nicolas Cage!

Nicolas Cage is simultaneously an amazing actor and a god-awful one. Who’s to say? Alright, I guess I should come clean on this one, too. The Nic Cage paradox was ripped off from the hit television series that no one has ever heard of, Community. But really, you could pick any person or thing that people have differing opinions on. Heck, go back to Stephen King. Is he an amazing author, or just a kooky old guy? Here’s where superposition comes back in. If I think that Stephen King is an amazing author, and you think that he's a kooky old guy, then what does that mean, class? That’s right, he’s both. Simultaneously.

Now, some doubters might say, “Butbutbut Professor Dude-in-My-Head, just because someone thinks that something is a certain way, doesn’t mean it is that way.”

Well, I just so happen to have a counter-counterargument prepared, in case a hypothetical person came along and countered my initial argument. Which is as follows: if there’s no real way to determine whether anything is one way or another outside of each of our individual perceptions, then we must value each individual perception as an equal contributor to our shared perceived reality. Hmm, was that an English sentence? I’m not even sure. Sometimes words start to lose meaning and I find myself tumbling downward into an endless abyss of various shaped lines, dots, and squiggles that somehow are supposed to convey meaning to me.

…

Let me just walk over to the other end of the chalkboard and write “Probability Clouds”.

Probability Clouds

Like the previous topic, probability clouds are a phenomenon that happen to really small things, but not really to people-sized (or larger) things... I think. Basically, scientists are pretty smart, but also not that smart, so they don’t know exactly where an electron is when it’s orbiting an atom’s nucleus. They only know where it probably is, and where it almost certainly isn’t. Some areas might have an 80% chance of having an electron in it at any given moment, and another area might only have a 10% chance. Again, I’m not a scientist; I’m barely even a person.

Speaking of people (damn, I’m good), humans are functionally close to probability clouds, in my opinion. That’s the case (or so I claim), because our reality is larger than our bodies. For one thing, our senses extend our consciousness beyond our skin. On top of that, our juicy brains allow us to imagine and deduce things that our senses can’t reach, with varying degrees of accuracy of course. For example, if I’m sitting at my desk, I’m 90% sure what’s going on in that room. I can see, hear, smell, and feel what’s going on around me. I’m also usually around 80% sure what’s going on in the other rooms of my home, even if I’m not currently experiencing them. I’m less than 20% sure what’s going on in my neighbors’ homes; at least I know they’re not throwing a rager at the moment. I’m about 5% sure what’s happening in my city; people are eating, talking, sleeping, or pooping — but I doubt anyone is standing on their head singing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in E minor. Boom. Humans are just probability clouds.

Oh, look at that, we’re out of time. If you learned anything from today’s lesson, please consider finding a decent therapist. If you were left bewildered, out of sorts, or just annoyed, you can rest easy now — I’ll see myself out. And if it’s any consolation, at least you’re not stuck with me in your head all the time, like I am.