Clickbait Science

Happy Monday!!  Thanks for our Monday post, as always, goes to Stephen Hall.  Thanks, Stephen!!

Rather than a serious intellectual topic, I thought this day might be better suited to a light fluffy article for amusement, relaxation, and discussion.

I recently had the pleasure of watching this video, which forms the basis for the topic of the day:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CyN8rYdX6g

The essence, for those who are not interested in spending the time to watch the video is simply to examine the popular modern theory that we are all living in a computer simulation and nothing whatsoever is real.  This is based of course on a number of subatomic particle, or wave depending upon your point of view, physics experiments over the last couple hundred years.

Beginning with the original experiments on light propagating through two parallel apertures thus demonstrating that light, or more particularly photon, behaves like a wave in creating interference patterns.

Recreating the experiment with electrons, fired at the parallel apertures tended to show the surprising result that the single electron still behaved like a wave, creating interference patterns with itself.

Proceeding to experiments showing that the act of observing the photon, or electron, as it came through the aperture yielded the surprising result that the photon would then act as a particle and not a wave.  Much scientific theorizing sprang from this surprising result, in that the act of observing the photon actually changed its nature, how it behaved.

In more recent experiments, they demonstrated that even if the observation occurred after the photon had passed the aperture, but prior to its striking the receptor screen, the photon still appeared to behave like a particle.

From this, and with the more modern concepts and experience with computers, particularly graphic computer simulations, philosophizing physicists, or philosophers also train in physics, however you will, developed a theory that all of this could be explained if reality were merely a very complex computer simulation.

There is an old saying that if the only tool in your tool chest is a hammer, then every problem begins to look like a nail.  The video points out that at the time of some of these original experiments computers had not been invented, therefore the idea of reality being a computer simulation could never have occurred to scientists of the times.

There is equally the problem that computers being so pervasive in the present that not only was the conjecture that we are living in a simulation inevitable, but that the modern physicists naturally find it difficult to conceive of other possibilities.

However, as Bohr & Heisenberg pointed out the very act of what we call “observing”, at the sub-atomic level, necessarily involves transmitting energy which itself affects the sub-atomic particles.

This is, of course the basis for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that because our instruments project energy which is strong enough to affect the observed particle/wave that the very act of observing the quantum can change its nature.

This becomes further complicated in the nature of the quantum entanglement of particles which appear to not only have their spin or rotation set by the observation, but that such setting appears transmitted across vast distances at speeds faster than the speed of light, which has been theorized as the fastest possible speed.

It is this last part which appears to be most persuasive in convincing certain people that the computer simulation can explain how such information can be transmitted instantaneously across great distance.

The living in a simulation theory is certainly convenient, but it carries with it certain moral implications in addition to the scientific implications.

Any gamer who has observed the value place upon a computer character’s life will immediately see that the value of live becomes worthless if people are merely a computer program.

In a graduate level macro-economics class, a professor of mine dismissed certain values for the solution of equation because it could have led to a negative future expectation for society, and they simply did not like the implications of that outcome.

I found this to be rather intellectually dishonest to merely dismiss a possibility merely because the implications of that are unpleasant or distasteful.  Any true intellect must be willing to face unpleasant answers in order to maintain intellectual integrity and honesty.  Intellectual honesty is something I hold of highest value.

Thus, I find that I cannot so easily dismiss the theory that we are all living in a computer simulation, as it does coherently explain those anomalies mentioned in the video.

However, I am also reminded of Occam’s Razor:  “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” or more generally  “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.”

As I am sure every reader of this blog is well familiar with the concept of super-cooled liquids, and how they remain a liquid until acted upon by some outside vibration or contamination then instantly crystalize; it seems pretty simple to conceive of a photonic wave which acts in a similar fashion.  Or the concept of an oobleck at a subatomic level comes to mind as a good analogy.

That is a photon is a wave until it is acted upon by an outside force then instantly crystalizes into a solid subatomic particle.  Thus, it would not matter when then observation described in the video occurred, the observational energy simply provides the catalyst for the crystalization of the photonic wave.

As such, a wave form, being at a subatomic level is the essence of a big bang style singularity, thus sub-dimensional; so naturally the concept of being distance in space-time is irrelevant as the concept of spacial distances, naturally being dimensional, is inapplicable to such a photonic wave.

The photonic wave simply snaps into place sub-dimensionally, the distance of the whole universe being at that level no greater than the size of the universe at the big bang.  (Of course, I could understand how that would more easily lend itself mathematically to being considered supra-dimensional rather than sub-dimensional for the sake of mathematical simplicity.)

The real question, is why go for the Hollywood sensationalism of a Matrix universe rather than a simpler explanation when a simpler and easier explanation is readily to be had?  Pretty much the same reason that Bill Nye is considered a “science guy” or that “climate science” is considered a real science rather than a PC religion.

It is the same phenomena which made court wizards of alchemists in the middle ages.  There will always be a market for the sensationalist, the P. T. Barnums of the science world.  In short, political powers are always looking for the next big thing, the show stopper.

I am reminded of an acquaintance in graduate school who had at his time at MIT helped develop sensor equipment which they put to use in the school’s nuclear lab; of an equation which I created in high school just to calculate the number of hydrogen atoms in a hydrocarbon that a friend told me many years later he still used; or an anonymous man working on a friend’s father’s computer who may have developed the very first scrolling computer monitor software.

While everyone looks for the big, sensational, attention grabbing science theory, to be the next Edison inventing the light bulb; most advances are small, daily improvements and refinements which move society just a little bit forward.

Every time I see a sensational claim, in science or politics or elsewhere, my attention is distracted by the small improvements and the unremarked genius which abounds in a free society.  It is not the clickbait which interests me, but often the everyday and the seemingly mundane.  I’m kind of odd that way, but now I know you will pay more attention to those little improvements in life.