Chapter Six
Quantum Reality
What does science have faith in? What else should science have faith in?
Da Baa and the Pool Table
"You spend a lot of time at Da Baa, why?" Passant asked.
"It's comforting to be around ordinary people with wildly differing backgrounds. Yet we have fun together. Overtly, we joke and rib each other good-heartedly; covertly there is still racism, sexism and xenophobia. The former seems to heal the latter," Philbert replied.
"You do not play pool but you watch much of the time, why?"
"Oh, I guess some of it is just camaraderie with the guys. It's also intriguing to me how skilled one must be to play the game well," said Philbert.
"And that is exactly what we should talk about. There is a bigger issue here than you have realized. It is the conflict between reality and the beliefs that people hold without evidence. It is ubiquitous in human behaviors.
"How many excuses have you heard for playing badly?" Passant asked.
"Lots, humidity changes, temperature changes, noise, distractions, dirty balls, big balls/small balls, wrong stick, crutch use, and more," Philbert answered.
"And how many of those excuses are justified in reality?"
"Well, I guess all of them would have an effect, but I doubt that they are justified by good physics," Philbert answered.
"By the way, which of your buddies has big, dirty balls?" Passant asked with a leer in his voice.
"Haha, but seriously, what do you mean?"
"Imagine a shot where the object ball is three feet from a four inch pocket. The margin of error for the cue ball to hit the object ball is about the thickness of a dime if the cue ball is in line with object ball and the pocket.
The geometry is merciless.
"If it is a cut shot then that dime width shrinks to the point where it's an impossible shot to make. If the object ball is at an angle to the pocket then that pocket width shrinks to the point where it's also impossible to execute.
"So, most of successful pool play depends on hitting the ball in the right place. The better players have mastered hitting the ball in the right place so ancillary effects like tip profile and humidity do become important. The lesser players make it too complicated by considering the ancillary effects before mastering the basics.
The pool table is physics: rigid body mechanics, geometry and the conservation of momentum. The shots are executed by flimsy bags of water controlled by a skull full of fat (most of the human brain is fat so don't be offended when someone calls you a fathead).
The excuses that the guys use are beliefs, the physics is reality. The guys are playing their beliefs, not the table. Got it now?" Passant explained.
"Yes, but aren't you being a bit harsh? The guys are learning the subtleties in order to improve. Isn't that a good thing?" Philbert asked.
"Yep, it's a very human thing to strive to be better, but it's also a very human thing to think that you are better than you really are and that impedes growth.
Garrison Keillor described Lake Wobegon as a place "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average" which of course is impossible.
The Dunning-Kruger effect shows that beginners overestimate their competence, then lose confidence as they learn how much they don't know, before rising again with genuine expertise. Timmay is in phase one — enough knowledge to have a theory, not enough to know it's wrong.
Max at Da Baa believes that the vapor trails behind jets are actually the chemical trails of material distributed for nefarious purposes. He is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, he knows enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be logical. It is a simple fact that the composition of the atmosphere is tested with precision every day, all around the world. It would be impossible to conceal such a vast conspiracy. There are hundreds of chemicals in our air. We call it pollution and we know where it comes from: burning fossil fuels, dust stirred up by the winds, and volcanoes.
It is the battle that humans have waged since the beginning, ego versus humility, Old Wiring versus The Graces."
"You said that there is a 'bigger issue' here and I don't see it. The guys are practicing and learning to get better, what's the problem with that?" Philbert asked.
"You are not thinking, monkey boy. Bye bye," Passant ended abruptly, with the sound of a toilet flushing.
Philbert had learned that Passant's exits were invitations to think, not abandonments.
It was time for lunch anyhow, so Philbert walked down to the house with Bohr leading the way so that his master would not get lost.
Permanence, Causality, Locality
Philbert again had the feeling that Passant was about to disturb his concept of reality, so he farted around for a while, ate lunch, took a nap and played catch with Bohr, at Bohr's request.
He thought about telling the guys about the pool strategy conversation, but decided against it, he already got razzed for being the smarty-pants, know-it-all, book-smart guy. He had no idea where Passant was going to lead him when he returned to the shop.
"Did ya get where we're going yet?" Passant started.
"I have no idea."
"Well, numskull human, this is about permanence, causality, and locality.
Those pool balls are permanent in that they will not just disappear suddenly. They will stay where they are until struck.
The cue hitting the ball causes it to move. The momentum of the ball causes it to continue moving, that's causality — one event following inevitably from another.
Also the balls can only be in one place at a time, that's locality.
You would likely bet your life on those three principles as applied to a pool game, right?" Passant continued.
"Ok, I get it, you are talking quantum mechanics again," Philbert said.
"Yes, and if you made that bet you would lose. At the tiny scale of quantum particles permanence, causality, locality and even time are flimsy.
At the scale of ordinary life it is absurd to think that a pool ball could be in more than one place at a time. It is absurd to think that a ball could suddenly disappear. It is absurd to think that a ball could suddenly change direction. But at a very small size, this is exactly how reality works. Your science guys call it 'wave-particle duality.'
The double-slit experiment has been done thousands of times in labs all around the world, and even in high school labs. The results never change," Passant's voice was scholarly, like the cadence of a nature documentary narrator.
"I'm not the only one to be bedazzled by the concept. Scientists and philosophers have debated its meaning for decades. What does it really mean though? There are no quantum effects at my scale, and it damned sure would not affect a pool game, so 'Wot, me worry?'" said Philbert, quoting Alfred E. Neuman.
The Wave Explanation
"Here is the problem, and why it is so disturbing for your physicists: Think of a wave in water. A wave is simply many water molecules pushing each other around in predictable ways. When the wave hits something, all of those molecules still exist, they just reflect around.
Not so with a quantum wave. This wave is made of particles too, pushing each other around in predictable ways. But when the wave hits something, the wave disappears and only one particle of it remains.
So where did the other particles go? It seems like Permanence is gone!
Did they really push each other around? It seems like Causality is gone!
How could one particle become many particles? It seems like Locality is gone.
So, there you go cupcake, your reality is broken, it's blown. It's a chimera,"
Passant said, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
"They call it 'wave-particle duality'. It should be called 'wave-particle mind-fuck,'" Philbert responded.
The Measurement Problem and Randomness
"It's even worse than that in two ways.
First, if you mess with the wave in any way, if you acquire any information about it, it becomes just a single particle and behaves like a single particle, just like a paint ball would. Physicists call this the 'measurement problem'.
Second is the randomness. A particle has a well defined probability of hitting in different places, but where it hits is random.
So there you have it. Permanence, Causality, and Locality, gone. The universe hides from us when we try to measure it. Then the universe confuses us with random behavior.
For a hundred years physicists have gone through all manner of intellectual gymnastics in attempts to explain these behaviors, without resolution. The common philosophy has been to "shut up and calculate."
It would be different if all of this was just a theory from some mad scientist, but this behavior has been experimentally verified many, many times. The basic experiments are simple and can be done by anyone.
So, Mr. Philbert, you have had the obsession with this concept for decades and your goal has been to explain it clearly enough that humans will accept the Many-Worlds theory, with its many timelines, as how reality works. It is interesting that you have been so obsessed, so inspired and so driven to this problem that you've spent half of your life ruminating over it. Divine inspiration or something else?
The Fen accepted what you call 'Many-Worlds' thousands of years ago. It was easier for us because we evolved in the quantum sized world.
Humans, and much of life on earth will not survive the next several decades without a radical change in the understanding of reality. The threats are obvious and many. You have nuclear weapons, you burn ridiculous quantities of fossil fuels, your biologists can make killer diseases, and your governments do not serve the interests of humanity.
Many-Worlds and The Graces are critical components of this change.
I just opened a file on your computer that may help with the Many-Worlds issue," Passant advised.
This is what Philbert saw:
First we need to understand how particles would behave. What would paint balls do?
Everyone could predict what would happen if we shot paint balls at a barrier with two slits in it. All of the balls that reach the screen would hit in anticipated places.
So how would waves in water behave?
When a wave travels across the water the water molecules push each other around to form peaks and valleys. Individual water molecules do not travel with the wave.
After going through the slits there are two waves. Where they meet they interfere with each other. Where the peaks meet they make a bigger peak. Where the valleys meet they make a deeper valley. Where a peak meets a valley they cancel each other out. Not surprising.
Now we need to understand how quantum 'particles' behave.
The source on the left emits one quantum sized particle at a time. Initially we know that one particle is emitted, and we can see where it hits on the screen. We can see that it appears to be a random location.
But what do we see after many particles hit the screen:
We see an interference pattern! This interference pattern is predicted by the math of two interfering waves. How can this be? We know that only one particle is emitted and one particle hits the screen each time but it behaves like a wave in between? This is wave-particle duality.
We cannot see a quantum wave, unlike a wave in water, but the math predicts perfectly what the probability is of where the particles will hit. It is a probability wave!
It's even weirder than that. If we make any effort to see the path of the particle, BOOM, it behaves again like a paintball!
The little orange square represents a detector to see if the 'particle' goes through that slit. This simple observation causes the return to paintball behavior.
"When put that way it makes reality seem rather squishy," said Philbert.
The Many-Worlds Interpretation
"Yes, it does. This, however, gets to the point of all of this. There is a solution to these problems, but it requires faith, something that your scientists are not comfortable with.
There are only four ways to make sense of wave-particle duality.
1) Everything in all of reality obeys the laws of nature, whether we know all of the laws or not. This is determinism, reality is a clockwork and there is no free will.
2) Quantum randomness chooses our path, not free will. Not a very satisfying solution is it?
3) What most of you humans believe, is that a creator God rules reality. But the origin of God then leads to a logical conundrum. He could be an alien overlord for all humans know.
4) Every timeline exists, they have always existed and exist forever. Life navigates between timelines through the choices it makes — not consciously, but through the mechanism of free will acting at the quantum level. This is what the Fen believe. This is the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In 1957 Dr. Hugh Everett III proposed this interpretation of quantum mechanics. Dr. Everett had the unique ability to think outside of the box. He did something radical: he took the mathematics completely literally and refused to add any special rule for the collapse of the mathematical wave function.
His theory has been called the Many-Worlds interpretation. It solves the problems eloquently without violating the laws of physics.
Dr. Everett proposed that our supposed wave is in reality a near infinite number of real particles that form the wave. They have paths that can be predicted accurately by the math. We humans can only experience one at a time. His insight was that they all continue to exist in other timelines.
The first problem solved is the measurement problem. Physicists have used the term "virtual particles" to describe the composition of the not-yet measured wave. Many-Worlds proposes that these are real particles and continue to exist after measurement.
They continue to exist in other timelines, not ours. Living beings can only experience one timeline at a time. When measured, the particle is committed to our timeline, and the "virtual particles" belong to other timelines, invisible to us," Passant's speech paused long enough for Philbert to object.
"Now wait a minute here, where the hell are all of these timelines, why can't we see them or even detect them?" Philbert said tersely.
"Don't get your panties in a bunch, dude.
It's because you are a blind, ignorant human suffering from the disease of hubris, not to put too fine a point on it. Once again, you are not thinking.
Bye bye," said Passant with the sound of a fire truck speeding by.
The Porch Epiphany
He sat down on the porch in the shade with Bohr. It was a nice day with fluffy clouds casting shadows occasionally which was somewhat hypnotic.
He sat for a while trying not to think. Bohr was a good distraction, he would not allow Philbert to ignore him for more than a minute at a time.
Suddenly a cloud blocked the sun and everything got darker. Philbert had the thought that these sun's rays had traveled 93 million miles only to be stopped just before he could see them.
"Oh shit, shit, shit, that's it. How much else of reality am I not seeing?" He remarked loudly causing Bohr to evacuate his lap. He ran back up to the shop and excitedly exclaimed:
"I am fucking blind. That quantum wave function isn't just in the double-slit experiment, it is everything, all of the timelines through all of time. Everything is waves and I can't see almost all of them."
"There you go champ, keep it going," Passant prompted.
"Well, for one I can't see most electromagnetic light waves, and I certainly cannot see a static magnetic field from a magnet. I can feel heat on my skin but I can't see it," Philbert said excitedly.
"Yes, yes, go on"
"I don't often look directly at a light bulb so most of that light never gets to my eye. The light waves that I see have been reflected off of something. Christ, there are waves all over the place!"
"Yep, buddy boy. Think about all of the radio signals shooting around you. You have no idea that they are there until your radio tunes to one of them. One field, millions of signals, just from humans.
You humans have only known about the electromagnetic fields for a couple of hundred years and you still don't know how they work at the quantum level. This is pure human hubris. You humans do not even know of all of the fields that do exist yet. You are wallowing in ignorance and calling it enlightenment.
'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.' — Albert Einstein
This is exactly why you find it so easy to dismiss the Many-Worlds interpretation. It deals with infinities and humans simply are not equipped to deal with infinities.
But let's continue with the rest of the quantum quandary solution:
The second problem solved is the randomness issue. Albert Einstein famously stated that 'God does not play dice with the universe.'
Everett's solution is eloquent. The randomness would go away if we could see all timelines at once.
In college, when you and your buddies got together drinking beer and smoking weed you did a goofy thing with your color TV. You taped a shirt cardboard over the screen and punched a few holes in it.
What you saw was random flashes of color resulting in exclamations of 'OOO AHH'. Psychedelic!"
"Yes, Yes, it is hilarious and humbling that we were too buzzed to see the significance of it," Philbert injected.
Passant continued:
"Hilarious too, that it has taken you decades to see the significance of it.
Press the 'punch holes' button to punch a new hole. Hold the button down to punch holes quickly. The image will become visible.
With just a few holes punched there was no way to tell what the underlying image was. Boys will be boys, so you punched more holes and it got even more psychedelic. There came a point where so many holes were punched that the underlying image could be seen. Boring!
You humans do not have a way to 'punch holes' to other timelines so you have no chance of seeing the underlying reality.
Free Will and Justifiable Faith
The third problem solved by Many-Worlds requires faith, justifiable faith, not blind faith. Justifiable faith is faith supported by internal consistency and absence of contradiction — even without direct proof. Blind faith requires ignoring evidence.
Science requires determinism. To understand how reality works we must have Permanence, Causality and Locality.
Humans have blind faith that some kind of God diddles around with reality. If we pray for rain or protection, God may diddle with reality to grant our wishes. So, is it God or is it an alien overlord diddling around with reality? Seems silly to us Fen and humans must take the same step to survive.
The Question then becomes 'how can we have free-will in a deterministic reality?' Determinism turns all of reality into a clockwork, no free-will.
Humans must evolve on your own, so we Fen will not answer The Question for you. But we can give you hints. These should be taken as justifiable beliefs:
— There are an infinite number of timelines.
— Each timeline is fixed from the beginning of time and extending forever.
— There are an infinite number of branches in the timelines.
— Everything that can exist, does exist in one timeline or another.
— Life has free-will. Life can choose a timeline at will. We will talk more about this later.
— Since the minimum time increment is the Planck Time constant, each timeline may be offset in time from the others.
If humans survive the Age of Hubris they will have found that these beliefs are more than merely justifiable beliefs," Passant finished with the added sound effect of a jet engine throttling up.
"Whew, that was one heck of an exhortation. I need a break to assimilate and percolate. A beer or two sounds heavenly as well," Philbert said.
Philbert had often thought that ringing in the ears was overflow of too many thoughts banging around in his head. When he flopped down for a nap his ears were ringing like Big Ben and an Indian wedding.
Timmay at Da Baa
Many nights at Da Baa were observer nights for Philbert. The distraction of listening to others was comforting to him. This was one of those nights. He was always surprised and entertained at how one individual could be a genius and a moron at the same time. Timmay was a perfect example of this.
Timmay lined up his shot with the confidence of a man who had just explained to everyone within earshot exactly why he had missed the last three.
The rails were cold, he said. The humidity was up. He believed it.
Philbert watched the object ball miss the pocket by two inches. The cue ball hit the object ball in the wrong place — temperature and humidity had nothing to do with it. The humidity was real, he'd give Timmay that, but the cue ball Timmay was shooting with hadn't been wiped down since the Clinton administration and the tip on his cue looked like something that had lost a fight with a paving stone. Those two things together could account for every missed shot Timmay had made since Philbert arrived.
He thought of something Passant had said to him that morning. Beliefs are comfortable, Philbert, because they don't require you to look at anything too closely. A belief about the temperature requires nothing of you — no change, no effort, no admission of fault. Knowledge is uncomfortable because it tends to point directly at the thing you'd rather not examine. It hurts to find out that you are wrong.
Timmay believed in cold rails the way some people believed in horoscopes — not because the evidence supported it, but because the alternative was to admit that the problem was the man holding the cue.
Jed was in the Da Baa often. Jed knew everything that there is to know about pool equipment, it had been his life since he was a young man. Jed could fix Timmay's cue tip. Philbert himself had advised Timmay about how little the rail rubber changes with temperature. Timmay stuck with his beliefs and his game suffered for it. No one person can be expert at everything. Many experts, with humility and cooperation, fit together like puzzle pieces. Unfounded beliefs don't mean shit.
The Age of Hubris
The next day the discussion continued in an unexpected way.
"You were frustrated with Timmay last night, why?" Passant asked.
"It's that Timmay has the natural skills that I don't have. He has a beautiful stroke, he sees the table well and his strategy is good but his game suffers because of the bone-headed beliefs he has. Yes, it's frustrating," Philbert replied tersely.
"It's the way of the world in The Age of Hubris, dear boy. I suspect that this is why it's so frustrating to you. It is the exact reason that humans are on the brink of extinction.
Still though, you believe that mutual assured destruction will prevent nuclear holocaust. You believe that your immediate comfort and convenience trumps the long-term survival of the species. The very experts that should be listened to are called "elitists" and 'book smart without common sense'," Passant said.
"Damn, you are a buzz kill," Philbert exclaimed.
"Yes I am, but there is hope."
Philbert's discouragement is understandable, but he will soon be reminded that humans are incredibly adaptable. Massive changes in human culture have occurred many times in history. Humans dropped idol worship for monotheism in just several generations. The Magna Carta changed how cultures view human rights. The Enlightenment put science above blind faith. The abolition of slavery, the shift from divine-right monarchy to democracy, the global acceptance of germ theory. These are all cultural changes.
All is not lost.