I tried to teach American physicist Sean Carroll about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality. He was too arrogantly stupid to pay attention and learn. Now, to celebrate his continuing befuddlement and breathe life into the infinite monkey theorem, Sean has written a new book.
Sean writes: “Scientists can use quantum mechanics with perfect confidence. We can set up a physical situation, and make predictions about what will happen next that are verified to spectacular accuracy. But it’s a black box.
“There are two problems. One is that quantum mechanics seems to require separate rules for how quantum objects behave when we’re not looking at them, and how they behave when they are being observed.
“The whole thing is preposterous. Why are observations special? Is consciousness somehow involved in the basic rules of reality?”
Here Sean hits bedrock but doesn’t know what to make of it. Nature exists as an entertainment platform for a unified field of Ĉonsciousness, from which individual consciousnesses are spawned. The probabilistic superpositioning which quanta supposedly have when not observed indicates that perception is necessary for actualization. Without consciousness applied, Nature does not exist. Quantum field theory provides a strong proof of energyism, the doctrine which explains reality and the manufacture of existence.
Sean continues: “The other problem is that we don’t agree on what it is that quantum theory actually describes. We describe a quantum in terms of a ‘wave function,’ which collects the superposition of all the possible measurement outcomes into a single mathematical object. But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected?”
Here Sean shows his sham premise. The false axiom is assuming that there is a physical reality. If perception (i.e., consciousness) is required for actualization, then physicality must be a ruse.
There are 3 theorized ontologies: dualism, matterism, and energyism. Dualism is how we experience the world. But dualism cannot be correct, as it cannot explain many known phenomena.
Matterism is what modern scientists wrongly assume: that physicality is the end of the line in understanding reality. Among many other indicators, quantum physics proves that matterism is wrong (and exemplifies energyism as correct); but then, as Sean aptly points out, physicists don’t understand quantum field theory precisely because they take matterism as a matter of faith.
Given energyism, actuality is ultimately comprised of symbols, some of which appear to form a physical world. The most advanced human mathematics, such as those used for quantum field theories, afford but a sketch of what is going on – close enough to make predictions which seem to pan out. The mathematics which compose Nature are of a much higher order, beyond our ken.
If you want to comprehend reality (approximately, of course), read Unraveling Reality. No one else has come as close to explaining all that is and why it is so.
French mathematician Émile Borel used the monkey metaphor in 1913 to posit what is known as the infinite monkey theorem: the silly idea that a monkey at a typewriter hitting keys at random for an infinite duration will almost surely type any text, such as the complete works of Will Shakespeare.
My attempt to enlighten Sean came with my sending him a complimentary copy of Unraveling Reality: Behind the Veil of Existence, which he never bothered to look at.
Source:
Sean Carroll, “Even physicists don’t understand quantum mechanics,” The New York Times (9 September 2019).