What's all this about QM supporting psychics?

[Dustin Kesselberg]

I have heard about QM supporting Psychics from various places...What exactly are the paranormal believers saying about this? What is their argument as far as QM supporting psychcis being?

I know it deals with Non-locality if particles,when they appear to be in more than one place at once.

How does this support mind effecting matter and how does it support Psychics?

Also I hear about the this Membrain theory saying that everything isinterconnected,So that means instant transmission of information is possible which would support psychics?


Someone explain exactly what this is about.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Dustin
I have heard about QM supporting Psychics from various places...What exactly are the paranormal believers saying about this? What is their argument as far as QM supporting psychcis being?



In essence, their argument is : "psychics are confusing and mysterious. QM is confusing and mysterious. Therefore, QM supports psychics."

You may be wondering how anyone could take that nonsensical argument seriously. You are not the only one.

[IIRichard]

Originally posted by Dustin
I have heard about QM supporting Psychics from various places...What exactly are the paranormal believers saying about this? What is their argument as far as QM supporting psychcis being?

I know it deals with Non-locality if particles,when they appear to be in more than one place at once.

How does this support mind effecting matter and how does it support Psychics?

Also I hear about the this Membrain theory saying that everything isinterconnected,So that means instant transmission of information is possible which would support psychics?


Someone explain exactly what this is about.

I don't think we can explain the mind of these folks. They get to the part about non-locality in QM and stop reading.

They barely understand the implications of what they say, nevermind QM

[phildonnia]

Here's the basic reasoning, if you can call it that:

1. In order to determine the position of an electron, you have to smash photons into it. This will change the electron's momentum.

2. Therefore, observing an electron changes it;

3. So, since observing is something conscious beings do, consciousness affects matter,

4. Ergo, we can control the universe with our minds,

5. Thus, there is a physical basis for psychic phenomena,

6. And it obviously follows that any given claim of a psychic phenomenon is real.

---

Let me give an example:
Crashing my car into a light post will cause it to topple. Therefore, the act of driving poorly can cause changes to the environment. Since only conscious intelligent beings can drive, it is my consciousness and will that causes the light post to topple. I can basically cause massive destruction by purely excercising my mind. Like that dude in "X-men".

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Can someone explain about the particles being in numerous places at once?

[rppa]

Originally posted by Dustin
Can someone explain about the particles being in numerous places at once?

Your original posting asked about nonlocality, which is something different.

Quantum mechanics describes a particle with a wave function, which gives a certain probability to the particle being found anywhere in space. However, when the particle is measured (or interacts with something), it has a more definite position. This is the kind of thing called "collapse of the wave function".

Non-locality has to do with particles apparently interacting with each other faster than light. Two particles interact in the past, are allowed to separate, then you make a measurement on particle A which simultaneously collapses the wave function of particle B. Somehow your action at A has had a "spooky" effect on B. Einstein thought that nonlocality was impossible and this was one of his major objections to QM.

Experiments have shown that nonlocality is real, and that Einstein was incorrect.

[RussDill]

Originally posted by phildonnia
Here's the basic reasoning, if you can call it that:

1. In order to determine the position of an electron, you have to smash photons into it. This will change the electron's momentum.


Thats the classic view, it doesn't just change its momentum. It also collapses the wave function at some random point, depending on the probabilty distrubution. Not only that, but the slower the electron is moving, the larger the probability distrubution. If it only changed it's momentum, you could know how much the momentum changed by, and thereby, calculate exact positions.


2. Therefore, observing an electron changes it;


Ah, the most fundamental misunderstanding in QM. That an observer is the one collapsing the wave function in the double slit experiment. If you observe an electron going through a particular slit, you don't get the interference pattern. Lifegazer spouts this one like nothing else.

Truth is, any interaction with any particle will destroy the interference pattern.



3. So, since observing is something conscious beings do, consciousness affects matter,

4. Ergo, we can control the universe with our minds,

5. Thus, there is a physical basis for psychic phenomena,

6. And it obviously follows that any given claim of a psychic phenomenon is real.


Yup, this is how LG's thinking goes too.


Let me give an example:
Crashing my car into a light post will cause it to topple. Therefore, the act of driving poorly can cause changes to the environment. Since only conscious intelligent beings can drive, it is my consciousness and will that causes the light post to topple. I can basically cause massive destruction by purely excercising my mind. Like that dude in "X-men".

This is the true part about changing reality with our minds. The false part is, say, controlling the output of a random number generator.

[wollery]

Originally posted by phildonnia
Here's the basic reasoning, if you can call it that: I think that describing such reasoning as basic is pretty much spot on. :D

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Dustin
I have heard about QM supporting Psychics from various places...What exactly are the paranormal believers saying about this? What is their argument as far as QM supporting psychcis being?

I know it deals with Non-locality if particles,when they appear to be in more than one place at once.

How does this support mind effecting matter and how does it support Psychics?

Also I hear about the this Membrain theory saying that everything isinterconnected,So that means instant transmission of information is possible which would support psychics?


Someone explain exactly what this is about.

Particles being in several places at once may be a reference to the two-slit experiment in which a particle appears to go through two slits at the same time and influences itself. It's not in two or more places at once but all its possible paths through space have an interference effect with each other as if it got there by every possible route.

Also, there is a feature of quantum mechanics called "entanglement" -- which essentially just means "correlated" in this context -- in which distant particles may have matching properties if measured in a certain way. Entanglement is very, very common for particles in the universe.

Older interpretations of quantum mechanics make it seem like these properties don't match until one particle is measured and then they instantaneously appear in other particles that the measured particle is entangled with because of a purely mathematical shortcut older interpretations took as a physical effect called the "collapse of the wave function".

However, the modern interpretation of quantum mechanics has both removed this idea of a transfer of information to match the properties between entangled particles at long distance and also removed wave function collapse. Entanglement has some uniquely quantum features which make it difficult to understand but distant information transferral is not one of its features. Einstein was proven wrong not about instantaneous information transferral existing -- as it doesn't -- but about the "realism" of properties of particles.

Claimed psychics making statements about entanglement as "allowing instantaneous communication between all things due to the interconnectedness of particles throughout the universe" or similar are relying on older intepretations of quantum mechanics featuring ideas which the best specialists in the interpretation of quantum mechanics have recognized as problematic and have either clarified or removed.

Claimed psychics were also claiming that mind could influence matter by collapsing the wave function after being inspired to do so by some unwise comments by some of the pioneers of quantum mechanics but, as mentioned above, the collapse of the wave function is now known to be a purely mathematical shortcut and not a physical effect and so mind cannot be influencing matter when there is no matter involved. ;)

These older ideas still make it into pretty much all textbooks and popular books on physics, however. Problems in interpretation are a specialist topic and don't really matter in practical applications. They are also fiendishly difficult to understand and would take up too much time for their relative importance in most physics courses.

However, to answer your question, interpretation has advanced a lot in the last thirty years and claimed psychics now have no support for their ideas in the modern interpretation of quantum mechanics. Claimed psychics could get a foothold in older interpretations but that foothold is now gone. :)

[kalen]

QM terminology allows psychics to sound scientific without sounding too woo-woo-ish. It's kind of like the technobabble of Star Trek.

[T'ai Chi]

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/papers/bell.html

http://arxiv.org/html/physics/0312012

[Dr Adequate]

I knew this stuff would be useful someday.

Twenty Real True Facts About Quantum Theory. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49305)

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by Dr Adequate
I knew this stuff would be useful someday.

Twenty Real True Facts About Quantum Theory. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49305)

No offense intended, but what is your background in QM?