You might find useful, according to your own lights, the following excerpt from a book called Science and Nonbelief by Taner Edis. It’s from chapter 2. It’s the third paragraph in the section titled Quantum Mysticism.
“Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle has a reputation—outside of physical science—of being an oracular pronouncement about the impossibility of objectivity and the knower determining the state of the known and so forth. To a physicist, it only means that certain properties of a particle such as position and momentum are not simultaneously observable. There is nothing mysterious here, provided we do not attempt to think of microscopic particles as miniature billiard balls with states defined by exact positions and momenta. The quantum state is described by a wave function, and a wave cannot simultaneously occupy an exact position and have an exact momentum. That is all.”
The discourse you and I are having about this is important to me because when we embrace extraordinary claims without evidence, we’re doing so because of neglecting to think critically. Such neglect is maybe a form of escapism that results in us being less effective at meeting ecological challenges we face. I’m not judging you or others. I’m judging behaviors and situations that seem to be a part of a pattern among people seeking alternatives to the economic, social, and scientific status quo.
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