The New Woo is a whole lot of doo doo, and by this I mean the use of Quantum Mechanics by spiritualists in an attempt to tear down the distinction that the Enlightenment made which states that Rational decision making needs to superseded Religious decision making because Religions and spiritualism must insist on their truth at the exclusion of all others. It also distinguished that Religions can often base ideas, thoughts and prejudices on superstitions and magical type thinking with a willingness to deceive using pseudoscience. The New Woo is precisely that sort of thinking and in this case the distortion of Quantum Mechanics, QM, is used as an attempt to show proof of God or super consciousness, i.e. intelligent design vs evolution sort of thinking. It attempts to say that human observation is what brings material objects into existence. What it is really attempting to do is to set Religion as superior to the rational tenets of scientific investigation. In doing so, they distort the science of QM and misrepresent it. QM does take some effort to understand because its not a very intuitive science and difficult to grasp. Further, those spiritualists and religious people using it either dont bother to make the distinctions to understand it or are flat out using known logical fallacies to mislead and usurp power. (This was another issue that the enlightenment brought to light, that self-aggrandizement was generally, rather than exceptionally, the hidden scaffolding behind religions political interdependence and exercise of power by the few over the many. (Think Machiavelli.) Below is YouTube video, by ThePolyMath, it is a deconstruction of another YouTube video by InspiringPhilosophy which attempts to use QM to prove that science has finally undone itself by proving the existence of God or some ultimate consciousness. The ultimate consciousness being the only thing that exists and the universe is a mere thought generated by the/our consciousness alone. Its like taking Descartes I think therefore I am as a literal statement that Descartes had realized that his thinking had brought himself into existence--that is a perversion of the actual science and philosophy which underlies it. Descartes was just saying that since he was thinking about things, this led him to believe that he actually existed. (Insert a whole book, four years of college and graduate school here.) Now the ThePolyMaths video deconstruction of is a bit sloppy but InspiringPhilosophys video is riddled with fallacies and errors. Personally, I would be hard pressed to language them all, it could take me a year, but my point is not to correct ThePolyMaths video deconstruction and point out all those errors that ThePolyMaths video could have addressed but because ThePolyMaths video points out the most important fallacious errors in attempting to use science as a tool against science in a self-aggrandizing attempt to assert religion into a dominant position for control of wealth and political decision making. (Anyone who is antiquated with what the world was like before the Enlightenment should be somewhat acquainted with the abuses of power; the morass of war; the supremacist thinking; rampant racism and prejudices; over barring powers and the brutality of life and lack of consciousness it exhibited in its rampage to suppress the people and crush any form of democracy before the Enlightenment. You would also understand the long period of time it took for the world to reorder itself into a far less violent world with the abolition of slavery, some 200 plus years. Personally, I find the religious and spiritual use of QM to revert back to such barbaric thinking appalling. Talk about slippery slopes. And recent events like the Machiavellian tactics of the far-right/conservatives and the inflaming of sectarian wars, for fun and profit, is troubling. Im seeing these sort of fallacies about QM being used to support such nonsense. The point is that Schrodingers Cat is not some sort of proof that human consciousness is what makes matter come into being. Its a thought experiment and a metaphor to act as an Intuition pump to help scientists try to find a solution to a problem in the math in relationship to the instrument readings of the observed behavior of in a physical system at a sud-atomic level. The observer is not a human consciousness, its both a lie and a fallacy to say it is, anyone with the slightest amount understanding should comprehend that. The partials are to small and humans to be conscious of them, it is a device/machine/measuring-instrument that is doing the observing and there is nothing magical about it, its just a physics problem between the readings of the instruments and the representative math described as a metaphor or a thought problem to try and contemplate what is really happening with these particles. On the other hand its pretty amazing stuff and contemplating a solution to it can be mind boggling for someone with the IQ of Einstein and is fodder for all kinds of creative imaginings and possible solutions. In the hands of a manipulative religious leader its cannon fodder for charlatanism for certain. Its a New Woo! :D bit.ly/1wuwZwc
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:01:24 +0000
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