I was intrigued to hear Jarvis Cocker & Jonny Wilkinson discussing quantum physics on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday. Cocker was the guest editor for the New Year's Eve edition and shares his interest in all things quantum with the England rugby player.
I'm all for a dash of Dada in Radio 4's smugness, but the quantum chat got my goat. We shouldn't be suckered by Schrodinger into mulling what an alive-dead cat means. That quantum/cheshire cat is a signpost (in the Zen finger pointing sense) - in fact, it's a two fingered sign, pointing to a bigger punchline than feline morbidity.
The question marks that quantum theory spews say that science has passed it's sell-by date. Both Schrödinger's cat and his cousin Wigner's friend show that consciousness is fundamental, yet after nearly a century the assertion is still that science will explain Mind 'soon' (the ontological equivalent of a pyramid selling scheme).
On the other finger, some of the measurable surrealism that quantum theory predicts pulls the plug on our prime assumptions. Take the Aspect experiment and the way it shows an instantaneous non-causal connection between two spatially separated particles. Once spatial separation is no longer fundamental, all bets are off.
So let's not marvel at the whacky predictions of quantum mechanics and those boffins who supposedly get it (believe me, they don't). The whole math-based materialistic roadshow is running out of steam, so if you want to be really rad it's time to recycle some alternatives.
Dan 1/1/09 (Laughing all the way to the Large Hadron Collider)
