Physics, Hindu Cosmology, God and New Age Inspiration

[GirlyMan]

Yeah, if that's thethread I remember I rebutted part of Lanza's nonsense (there was a lot of it...).


The main problem is this: Quantum mechanics is hard and we don't really understand what it "really" means. There are some physicists - thankfully a clear minority - who hold wacky views on it. Some of them think that consciousness causes the collapse of the wave-function. I'd say that generally - and Deepak Chopra is an excellent example of the following mindset - I think they're working backwards from a conclusion they want to be true: They want consciousness to be special in the world at a fundamental level, so they often close themselves off from criticism of this view, largely by projecting via the claim of a "physicalist dogma" against them.

I think the issue is the realization that the observer and the observed are inseparably intrinsically intertwined. The observed cannot be separated from the observer like by definition. Reality is just some sorta tenuous probabilistic shit floating around like some sorta hide and seek game until somebody peeks and then BAM! THERE IT IS!. But to paraphrase Feynman "So the fuck what? Shut up and calculate bitches." Metaphysical interpretations of this are ineffable, quixotic and masturbatory limited to hints from poets and prophets. (Some of them which are quite good.)

I just finished this course at coursera which was titled "Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will" but which should've been titled "An Information Theoretic Introduction to Quantum Physics" 'cause the only "free will" shit was 10 minutes describing Libet's experiment. Nonetheless, the course was very good. Who knew randomness was such complicated shit? These are the 2 slides I'm keeping from the course.