Abuse of Quantum mechanics

[Tosefos]

Im sure as many other are that the total misunderstanding of the wholeness of Quantum mechanics and its corrolarys applied to so called supernatural explanations as well as `proving` the effectiveness of crystal therapy etc is very dismaying.
All the serious works on QM by real scientists who comprehend exactly what it does and doesnt mean obviously show a total disregard for paranormalist claims. But never feel the need(and prehaps knowing that many readers are misguided new age types, `learning`) to state the limitations of QM being applied to the waitchcraft etc.
Than we get inundated with childishly weak and absurd spiritualists from every crevice of the ignorant tree crawling out flashing the gold Quantum card, and implying that science is now proving that all their nonsense is corrct. *shudder*
After much searching i have been unable to find a single article book or web site that intelligently and scientifically adress these suppernatural misuses of QM, id be very happy if anyone could give me a link to where i could find such information.
Thanks.

 

[Jeff Corey]

You'll have to ask Interesting (sic) Ian about that. He knows everything about it except for the equations part.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Twenty Real True Facts About Quantum Theory

But there's no point in anyone writing a whole book to debunk this stuff, because it relies, not on making subtle mistakes about quantum theory --- they don't know any quantum theory --- but on bare assertion: "Quantum theory proves that I'm right." The only reply required is to show 'em Schroedinger's wave equation and say: "So where, exactly, does this say that your favorite fantasy is true?"

 

[hammegk]

You should ask this guy ....

http://www.gyrons.net/page3.html

 

[Dr Adequate]

You'll have to ask Interesting (sic) Ian about that. He knows everything about it except for the equations part.

He's back!

And displaying the combination of drivelling stupidity and windy arrogance which is his trademark.

Let's immortalise his words on this thread.

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
This is wholly irrelevant. Physics doesn't tell us what the world is, it only describes it. I simply need to be familiar with the philosophy of science. How do you derive a material world from your maths? I know enough about QM to recognize that no coherent metaphysical hypothesis can be advanced which models unobserved reality. QM is the final nail in the coffin for materialism. Scientific realism -- that is that science depicts a literal state of affairs existing in abstraction from our consciousnesses and independent of our theories -- is untenable. Not just QM implies this, but also the underdetermination of theories and the incommensurability of theories. In addition there is a whole slew of phenomena which is indicative that consciousness is very special indeed, and certainly cannot be accommodated by any materialist metaphysic.

Now I understand that, like almost everyone on here, you're too stupid to understand this. My previous arguments with you makes this very clear to me. But your inability in this respect is not my problem. Your metaphysic is neither philosophically tenable, nor is it consistent with science itself. I suggest you deal with it.

Note the large amount of stuff he just makes up, and his assumption that he can make it up while remaining utterly ignorant of the content of quantum mechanics.

 

[Tosefos]

You'll have to ask Interesting (sic) Ian about that. He knows everything about it except for the equations part.

i was just about to message him, from the quote i guess hes `not playing with a full set` and would be of little help.
lol

Hopefully ill come across a some one who isnt pushing a ridiculous agenda who understand QM and is willing to give up his precious time to descend to their world and give some serious debunking(debunking i dont like to use, it implys some kind of credibility to their `theoroms`) answers

I wish there could be a week long conference where the best of the pseudo lot debates with real scientists with all their `proofs`and arguments and what these are based on.
It angers me that all their BS can only continue to exist because its always dark and fuzzy enough and kept by them at an arms lenght so that their lies can never be held up to scrutiny. They only have arrogant broad basically meaningless statements and have to pack up shop and move on to the next town the moment someone wants to know more.
It like the monster in the closet that most of us now dont beleive in, the seond u actually turn the light on and look in there u see it wasnt true, the retarded crew, prefer not to look in the closet and say, yes, but quantum mechanics proves there must be a monster in my closet, if i perceive there to be one isnt ther onea really, deal with it!.

ARgghhhh, i wouldnt mind but these people gobble up money and time and intellectual resources that could be used improving the real world.

Sorry about the rant

 

[drkitten]

Hopefully ill come across a some one who isnt pushing a ridiculous agenda who understand QM and is willing to give up his precious time to descend to their world and give some serious debunking(debunking i dont like to use, it implys some kind of credibility to their `theoroms`) answers

Unfortunately, there's precious little to debunk. It's as if I made a claim that the fact that addition commutes (that is to say, that x+y is the same as y+x) implies that I don't have to stop at a red light. Or that the law of conservation of energy says that if I line my hat with aluminum foil, it will keep the black helicopters away. Once you've gotten past the "um, no it doesn't," where do you go from there in your debunking?

The problem is that quantum theory does not say what Ian and his imaginary friends think (and present) that it says. When one completely and totally misrepresent the contents of a theory, it's hard to "debunk."

 

[jj]

The problem is that quantum theory does not say what Ian and his imaginary friends think (and present) that it says. When one completely and totally misrepresent the contents of a theory, it's hard to "debunk."

This is often a difficulty with various kinds of misuse of science, it also happens, for instance, in the audio field, and a lot of the stuff is hard to debunk relative to the claims made about science because the claim is "xxx proves this", but there is no relationship to 'xxx' in the first place to even examine, except in the proof by blatant assertion.

Then, of course, the person making the blatant assertion says "so, what's wrong with my fantasy" (well, not in so many words, of course), when in fact there is so little relationship between what they imagine and the bit of science that they are quoting that it's hard to even start pointing out what's wrong.

It's like so many audiophile claims, many of which start out, give or take "since double-blind testing does not work for audio". When that's questioned, the asserter leaps back 4 steps to say "but nobody ever examined this tweak in a DBT, so we don't know if DBT works or not for this twest".

Sometimes it is worse, a variety of kooks on nutnoise (rec.audio.opinion, rec.audio.high-end) insist that there is "no evidence DBT's work on audiophile-grade equipment, because there are no experiments" (conveniently dismissing the experiments that do exist, and insisting that testing done with considerably more accurate and reliable pro equipment does not count, because it doesn't use the right kind of magic floobydust) that prove it does.

DBT's do show people able to hear within || of the actual, established physical limits (said limits established NOT via hearing tests, but via other electronic measurements that confirm theoretical calculations), but of course "that doesn't mean anything".

It's like "microdetails" that audiophiles always hear. +6dB SPL is the white noise (well, near-white) level at the eardrum DUE TO THE NOISE THAT THE ATMOSPHERE MAKES (it's made out of discrete molecules) +-1 dB or so, for instance. Now, since the ear is a frequency analyzer, you don't have that much energy in any one critical bandwidth (a part of the frequency scale roughly equal to one filter bandwidth on the cochlea), so you can hear below +6dB SPL quite a ways if you have unimpaired hearing and it's really quiet where you are. (The kind of quiet that doesn't exist in the real world much any more, and never did to the extent that most people assume.)

Sorry, I shouldn't hijack your rant, you've hit it right on, guys, there is so little connection between what people claim and the science that they claim it of that there is no simple way to even relate the science to the bunkum, let alone debunk it.

 

[delphi_ote]

He's back!

And displaying the combination of drivelling stupidity and windy arrogance which is his trademark.

Let's immortalise his words on this thread.
Note the large amount of stuff he just makes up, and his assumption that he can make it up while remaining utterly ignorant of the content of quantum mechanics.

Don't forget this excellent exchange:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1870790432

Me: What does it [quantum mechanics] imply about reality? And could you use a few equations in your explaination so I gain a more precise understanding?

Ian: I don't know any equations, and they are wholly irrelevant anyway. We are not talking about physics here, but rather the metaphysical implications of physics. QM implies idealism, that the physical world only exists by virtue of mind or minds.

 

[Rolfe]

After much searching i have been unable to find a single article book or web site that intelligently and scientifically adress these suppernatural misuses of QM, id be very happy if anyone could give me a link to where i could find such information.

No, but have you seen this paper - Weak Quantum Theory, complementarity and entanglement in physics and beyond? It's the original text on how to make woo-quantum sound scientific. When I was looking for that url I also found something about weak quantum theory and time which also looked spectactularly looney.

It's the woo answer to the obvious question "have you got the maths for that?", and really quite amusing. Particularly as regards Planck's constant.

Rolfe.

 

[delphi_ote]

*snip for space, but insert excellent rant here

Bravo, sir. You didn't hijack the thread at all. Your post put this quirky illogic into sharp relief.

 

[T'ai Chi]

What about someone like Josephson, who, I imagine, actually knows something about QM?

 

[drkitten]

What about someone like Josephson, who, I imagine, actually knows something about QM?

He's also very very careful to avoid making statements like "QM shows that xxxx," because he knows better than that.

Prof. Josephson knows better than anyone on this forum what QM does and does not imply. He is also a believer in telepathy. You don't think he would have already published the math if QM really did imply telepathy?

 

[apoger]

What about someone like Josephson, who, I imagine, actually knows something about QM?

Can Josephson use QM to provide evidence for something previously unknown?

 

[drkitten]

Can Josephson use QM to provide evidence for something previously unknown?

They're called "predictions," in that case. And, yes, QM has a very strong track record (exceptionally good, even by the normal standards of physical sciences) of being able to predict and describe previously unknkown phenomena

If Dr. Josephson were able to show me a set of equations that described how telepathy works, I would take the idea a lot more seriously. Unfortunately, he demonstrably can't.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Im sure as many other are that the total misunderstanding of the wholeness of Quantum mechanics and its corrolarys applied to so called supernatural explanations as well as `proving` the effectiveness of crystal therapy etc is very dismaying.
All the serious works on QM by real scientists who comprehend exactly what it does and doesnt mean obviously show a total disregard for paranormalist claims. But never feel the need(and prehaps knowing that many readers are misguided new age types, `learning`) to state the limitations of QM being applied to the waitchcraft etc.
Than we get inundated with childishly weak and absurd spiritualists from every crevice of the ignorant tree crawling out flashing the gold Quantum card, and implying that science is now proving that all their nonsense is corrct. *shudder*
After much searching i have been unable to find a single article book or web site that intelligently and scientifically adress these suppernatural misuses of QM, id be very happy if anyone could give me a link to where i could find such information.
Thanks.

Here is a webpage with loads of links on it. Extremely interesting links indeed.

 

[drkitten]

Re: Re: Abuse of Quantum mechanics

Here is a webpage with loads of links on it. Extremely interesting links indeed.

It would be more interesting if there were any evidence that the author actually had any knowledge of QM. Thank you for providing such a clear example of what Tosefos described as "the total misunderstanding of the wholeness of Quantum mechanics and its corrolarys applied to so called supernatural explanations."

 

[jj]

Re: Re: Abuse of Quantum mechanics

Here is a webpage with loads of links on it. Extremely interesting links indeed.

Ian, that site is exactly the kind of thing I was referring to earlier in this thread.

Please explain to me where the Schrodinger Wave Equation fits into this, other than by using the variable Psi?

Hint: It doens't.

Nature, at its basic level, is probabilistic. That doesn't require any kind of dualism, interactive or otherwise. I don't yet know of anything better than QCED, and I'm waiting for it to develop the necessary appurtinences to explain what's missing.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Re: Abuse of Quantum mechanics

It would be more interesting if there were any evidence that the author actually had any knowledge of QM. Thank you for providing such a clear example of what Tosefos described as "the total misunderstanding of the wholeness of Quantum mechanics and its corrolarys applied to so called supernatural explanations."

Read the papers! You can't have done already. If you do not think the famous physicist and quantum mechanics expert Henry Stapp knows what he's talking about, and you can judge this without having read any of the papers, then you're even more idiotic than I thought you were

Read the papers, tell me what you disagree with.

 

[vbloke]

well...

am I the only one who takes offence at the way QED is used to justify pretty much anything?

As far as I understand it, QED stops operating at anything above atomic levels, where Relativity steps in.

I know that M Theory (string theory) is attempting to reconcile the two into one coherent theory, but that's beside the point. If QED only operates at levels below the Planck length , how can it explain crystal healing, psi, predictions, ghosts, etc unless all these phenomena occured at a sub-atomic scale?

Besides, doesn't QED basically state that matter and energy have the properties of both particles and waves, it was created to explain the radiation of energy from a blackbody, the photoelectric effect, and the Bohr Theory , and now used to account for a wide range of physical phenomena, including the existence of discrete packets of energy and matter, the uncertainty principle, and the exclusion principle.

oh yes, and the final nail:
Quantum (kwŏn'təm)
n., pl. -ta (-tÉ™).
# Physics.

1. The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.
2. This amount of energy regarded as a unit.

so if woo science depends on QED as a source of explanation, then every woo claim should be verifiable by a simple measuring of electromagnetic radiation at a discrete wavelength. Easy to test. The equipment exists. All we need now is for someone to actually try.