Flat Earth?  Flat Heads, more Like.

Quantum physics has recently become trendy amongst non-physicists, driven by the distorted view of Hollywood. The last couple of years has seen a slew of movies based on the Marvel character ‘Antman’ who has the ability, within a special suit, to shrink by dramatic proportions - actually, sub-atom sized as it turns out. While this might be entertaining, there is a growing number of people who start to have a distorted view of what the quantum world is because they think that this might actually be the case. Undoubtedly weird, the general consensus amongst scientists is despite what Marvel might try to convince us, the quantum world isn’t populated with very tiny people in their own universe.

Normally, physicists would shrug this off as simple light-hearted entertainment, and go about their day, but a number of studies and surveys point to the fact that a growing number of people are convinced of other nonsensical anti-physics notions. One of the largest of these, surpassed only by the belief that the moon-landings were faked, is that the Earth is flat. If people will disbelieve something that is so easily provable, then the existence of atom-sized people is going to go down a storm.

The problem with this is that as a greater number of people believe these things, the more it becomes accepted. And once the number of people who believe passes 50% it is, by definition, commonly-accepted knowledge. Once 51% of people are certain that a particular notion is right, then it becomes the norm, and anyone who doesn’t believe it is a crank. The tables get turned, and to the detriment of us all.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the number of flat-Earthers is nearing that number- a recent flat-Earth conference in the US was attended by the grand total of just 600 people - but it is thought that there are many more who are troubled by the notion of a spherical Earth. A 2022 survey of more than 8,000 American adults found that as many as one in six Americans are not certain the world is round, while a 2019 survey of more than 2,000 Brazilian adults found that 7% of people were ready to reject that concept. Worrying numbers indeed.

And the situation isn’t helped by the fact that some big names not only believe this, but are also ready to peddle it to anyone who cares to listen. the current list of planoterrestrialists - their own title - includes many sportspeople such as Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, Rapper B.o.B, basketballer Shaquille O'Neal, ‘celebrity’ person Tila Tequila (who is apparently quite mad), and basketballer (I see a thread forming here) Kyrie Irving. Then there’s TV hostess Sherri Shepherd, musician Thomas Dolby, Wrestler A.J. Styles, and Daredevil Mike Hughes. Hughes wanted to build his own rocket and fly it to prove the theory, but backed out of the operation when engineers noted that he would have to be insane to fly his half-designed contraption. He took that - and a lack of funding - to call a halt to the project, though his ire still burns like a urinary-tract infection.

The only way to counter this rising tide of nonsense - for that is what we must do - is to pile on the sensical arguments and show the proof. And so this becomes the issue with quantum physics. If we’re not careful, more people will latch onto the patently false idea that the quantum world is populated by micro-people, and then we start to approach the 50% mark. But since we can’t observe it, it becomes more difficult to convince those people that they are misguided. The physics works to the greater extent, though is still work in progress, but we also need to bring philosophy in to assist us with our ideas and descriptions.

Physics philosophy is a subset of what Newton is attributed stating as being "Natural Philosophy," which arose as an academic discipline in the twentieth century, driven by a thriving international community of philosophers, physicists, and scientists.
Despite its importance in modern physics, there is no agreement among physicists or philosophers of physics on what, if anything, the empirical success of quantum theory tells us about the physical world. We must make assumptions to a higher extent since we cannot directly see quantum states. As a result, a collection of philosophical concerns known as "the interpretation of quantum mechanics" emerges.

This phrase should not lead us to believe that we are dealing with an uninterpreted mathematical formalism with no link to the physical world. Rather, there is a common operational core that consists of recipes for computing probability of outcomes of experiments done on systems that have been exposed to specific state preparation methods. Different "interpretations" of quantum mechanics differ in terms of what, if anything, is added to the common core. Hidden-variables theories and collapse theories, two of the key approaches, involve the creation of physical theories distinct from normal quantum mechanics, making the term "interpretation" even more incorrect. Well, you asked.

But what does all that actually mean? how can we help understand quantum physics with the help of philosophy? Well, let’s find out. over the next few months, we’ll be looking at some of the currently accepted cross-overs and how they impact both us as a race, us as scientists, and the overall notion of quantum physics.

The goal of this channel is to try and get a little more sense back in the world, but also to delve into how physics and philosophy are mutually interchangeable in a bit more of a light-hearted way. Hopefully, we’ll all learn something too.

Thought Management – Non-Thinking for Losers!

The thing with writing for a living is that you notice little shifts in the business paradigm as new notions start to emerge and take hold.  One month clients are queuing up for Mind Mapping articles, the next it’s Team Auditing, or Ice Berg Thinking, or Management through drum beats or whatever principle some supposed Business Guru is telling you to use. Generally you need no qualification beyond sticking your nose in where it’s not really wanted to be a self-certified Business leader.  It helps if you have a colour printer so that you can make bogus certificates for others with less brain than you to fawn over, but if you can regularly state the bleedin’ obvious and make it sound like some new-fangled principle, those sporting less perception than you will lap it up on spades.  This month, everyone has jumped on the Thought Management train, and boy is that chuffing along at full throttle!

The principle is that you leave all non-project specific thoughts you may have at the meeting room door and focus only on the requirements in hand I.E the project.  So when Geoff from Design is telling you why his part of the project is going to be late (nb, it’s because his team’s rubbish and he has no control over them, in case you were wondering), you should listen to his every tortured metaphor with full attention, rather than hope that Melody is going to make that rather lovely grillé poitrine de perdrix avec du piment et sauce à l'orange that you enjoy so much for supper, or wonder if Geoff’s wife ever remarks on the excessive amount of nostril hair he chooses to sport.  So every thought must be filtered to remove anything that detracts from whatever it is that you are supposed to be thinking about.

Let’s just think about that for a moment……….can you imagine how hard it is not to think about all the other stuff ?  What’s for lunch, how yummy lunch was, does that new secretary in Sales take it up the a*se – you know, really thoughtful stuff.  Can you really imagine not having those thoughts anymore, and just spending you time focussing on the hairy tendrils spouting from Geoff’s ears and nostrils ?  Naaaa, me neither.

Thought Management is the kind of toss bought to you from the same minds that conjoured up Mind Mapping and One-Minute Management.  I had a One-Miniute Manager once – one minute he was a twat, and the next minute and oily arse.

 

 

 

Business trends have been around ever since it became apparent that management is actually pretty easy, and those in the job sought to make it seem more difficult than it is.  Since then, we have had all manner of business smoke and mirrors, with most of it designed by people who have never led in their lives and have no idea what team leadership really is.  Therefore, they concoct new fangled ideas which the effet manager laps up and regurgitates as fact.

The Peter Principle is alive and well in much of industry, and it uses notions such as Thought Management as its fodder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glue? I'd Rather Watch Paint Dry!!

Someone asked me the other day if I was watching Glue, the latest British by-the-numbers crime drama.  I replied ‘no’ curtly quickly moving the conversation on lest I damage their sensibilities with a diatribe about how formulaic and predictable television drama has become and putting them off me for life. Not that such a thing bothers me – I like to see people’s faces scrunch up when I enter a room, or hear that they have left the country to avoid me, but in this instance I was prepared to spare their feelings.  You see, TV schedulers seem to be under the impression that we are all obsessed with the antics of teenagers, and how they are some kind of social barometer for all of us. 

I can see why some might get caught up in the maelstrom and start believing it, having been spoon fed a diet of Beverly Hills 90210 (which has since dropped the Beverly Hills bit, as it sounded too grown up), Dawson’s Creek, Buffy, and countless Australian mental-fodder shows, all of which deign to show adolescents as righteous, upright citizens rather than the solvent sniffing, murderous, thieving scumbags that many are.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that all teenagers are like that, but a large majority are, and endless reruns of Gilmore Girls or Little House on the Prairie aren’t going to make them any better.

The one mould-breaker is the British offering, Hollyoaks which portrays life north of Liverpool in a realistic documentary kinda way rather than adding an overly sweet icing.  I have a kind of fascination with Hollyoaks – the only show on TV where everyone’s parents were only ten years old when they had their own kids and two generations occupy just 28 years age space.  I can actually believe this as I’m told that most people north of Watford (it’s a place in England) leaves school at 11 and immediately go on to have several snot-nosed offspring which they then abandon, only to return eighteen years later in the hope of forgivness, but only to become a thorn in their children’s side.  Actually I can imagine that last bit is not only true, but de rigour in Northern England, where barmaids eat their young.

And now we have teen drama infesting post-watershed time in the form of a whodunit set in idyllic countryside.  Personally, I couldn’t give a damn which one of the whiney, self-obsessed teenagers murder which other one, and the whole thing won’t impact on my life, but apparently the show has hit the rating, just proving that there are plenty around less discerning than me, so the networks are likely to be searching for more of this kind of dross to fill their allotted hours with, which is bad news for all of us.

Glue?  I really would rather be watching paint dry!

I think I'm Paranoid......

I have a new job, writing about conspiracy theories…..or do I?  Maybe it’s actually that I have been selected to do it by The Illuminati, that well known international group of world-domineers, who want to get me off the scene in case I ask too many awkward questions.  Perhaps the job was put up only on my version of the Freelance website- must be pretty easy to do with known IP addresses – so that I pick it up and not look too closely at the fact that the World is owned by The Illuminati……!  Perhaps I’m just paranoid.

In doing the job I obviously got to do a bit of research since I don’t know it all, despite what people may tell you, and do have to look stuff up sometimes.   Unfortunately, in a mental version of Pandora’s Box, I now cannot forget what I have seen, and it is indelibly burnt into my previously rational brain.  I now firmly believe that there are frozen Nazis hibernating in a secret base in Antarctica – a base actually owned by a race of humanoid lizards, no less – and that the American HAARP system is controlling our weather and enslaving us with plenty rainfall and hurricanes.  Furthermore, I am now convinced that the 2004 Tsunami was caused by a subterranean nuclear bomb test carried out by India, and that the Pearl Harbour attack was actually orchestrated by the US Government to ease America’s involvement in the Second World War. 

I have to say that none of the above actually sounds that convincing, though I was rather taken by the notion that the British Royal Family – who we all know are related to some kind of lizard monster thingy, possibly the same ones tending to frozen Third Reichers in Antarctica – murdered Princess Dianna in Paris to prevent renowned Muslim Dodi Fayad from marrying her and getting close to the core of the British Establishment.  It somehow just sounds credible…in fact, my science-trained brain can take it a step further and I can imagine Prince Philip himself actually at the wheel of the white Fiat Panda that apparently bounced a ton and a half of Mercedes Benz off the road and into a support structure in the Parisian Pont D'Alma tunnel. And then drove off unscathed.  It just makes sense and I even have a photo of it.

 

 

 

Of course the very nature of conspiracy theories is to make you paranoid and like a dose of Ebola – which was supposedly manufactured by the CIA as a means of population control – sweeping through a West African township; once they gain hold in your brain, it doesn’t take long for infection to be total.  A recent study has found the proposition that belief in conspiracies is usually the result of some deep rooted psychological malfunction within a person ignores the clear fact that over 50% of the American population believes in the Roswell conspiracy, and up to 20% in moon landing conspiracy. These are simply too big percentages to consider it to be a disorder.  Furthermore, there is no real cognitive difference between the belief that the U.S. government faked moon landing – which is apparently false - and that the government faked evidence of WMD in Iraq – which is apparently true.

Conspiracies reflect a rather deep distrust in information coming from the worlds governments and scientists, based on known examples of false information, such as WMD’s, and how these bodies of apparent authority failed to respond to it. And that doesn’t make me paranoid.