Quantum Telepathy: Why Science Needs Weird Ideas to Advance
George Musser explains the central role of weirdness in physics, and shatters the dreams of those who hope humans can one day tap into psychic powers.
George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and the author of two books, Spooky Action at a Distance and The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. He is the recipient of the 2011 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award and the 2010 American Astronomical Society’s Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT from 2014 to 2015.
George Musser: The whole progress in physics is to start with our everyday experience and to analyze it and to look at it and to look for deviations from it. So the very nature of really all the natural sciences but certainly of physics is to really get away from our experience. So the things physics comes up with are just kind of are weird. They are going to be because that’s just how the world operates. That’s how physics makes sense of the world. Subatomic particles we can’t see them directly at least but we know they’re there. We actually do thought experiments about the things we do see and deduce their existence. So already even with just that limited example we have gone intra beyond our direct experience. And a hundred years ago or so people doubted the existence of atoms, let alone of subatomic particles. Nonlocality, spooky action at the distance is very much in that mold. It’s taken this yet further away from our experience. And therefore we expect it to be weird. It should be weird. That’s why physics is fun. If they were just reproducing the things we already knew I mean who really would care. It’s kind of fun because it’s taking us beyond our experience. It’s transcending our daily experience into this new realm that is weird.
And as other scientists have said you expect it. In fact if the theory isn’t weird you kind of doubt it because you might worry that your own biases are intruding into the theory and causing you to think the world is a certain way when you’re not listening to the way the world actually is. So weirdness is in a sense a test of theory. Now that said you can’t just sit here and kind of just daydream over a beer and come up with more and more weird things. They have to somehow connect back to what we do observe and that’s really the challenge of this whole field is well with subatomic particles how do they connect with what we do see. So they’re not just weirdness for weirdness sake. It’s weirdness in a way that actually relates ultimately back to what we see. And so it has to be with spooky action at a distance with nonlocality that ultimately we get locality back, the quality of space that governs our lives has to emerge. It has to come out of the nonlocality that seems to reside at the very fabric of the deepest levels of the universe.
One instinct you might have when you learn about these connections among different particles and different objects in the universe is aha, maybe that explains telepathy. Maybe that allows psychic powers. Maybe that bull that is apparat from Hogwarts into London or one of these things you would want to do. And unfortunately or actually I’ll come to in a sense fortunately that’s not really possible. It’s kind of unfortunate because you kind of would want those magical abilities. But it’s a case of you have to be careful what you wish for. So for example supposed I could sit on my couch and just by psychic action get the Mets to win the World Series. So wouldn’t we want that? But unfortunately all the other baseball teams would also have that psychic ability and we would have this huge babble of psychic wits taking place among the couch potatoes of the world. So the baseball game itself in that case would be irrelevant. In a more broad sense our very existence depends on space. We’re spatial creatures. We even have a certain little volume of space. We have a shape. We have very spatial properties. And if space didn’t exist we couldn’t exist. So we would kind of want the psychic powers but if we had them that would actually kind of undermine the very conditions of our own existence.
If you tell a physicist they’re weird, the correct response should be, "Why thank you." Science journalist and editor George Musser says this particular branch of science is supposed to engage the zany. One hundred years ago, people doubted the existence of atoms; the job of physics is to go beyond our everyday experience, to think of ‘what if’ ways to explain the world and prove them by relating the truly strange back to reality until one day, invisible things like atoms are a given.
Physics is fun precisely because it’s so weird, and the weirdness of it really is pivotal. "In fact if the theory isn’t weird, you kind of doubt it because you might worry that your own biases are intruding into the theory and causing you to think the world is a certain way when you’re not listening to the way the world actually is. So weirdness is in a sense a test of theory," Musser says. However there’s an important ‘but’ clinging onto this push for the strange, and that is that a theory can’t be weird just for weird’s sake. The ideas physicists propose have to connect back to what we observe in the world, which is what makes the field so challenging – can we be playful and creative and then rigorous enough to learn the truth about how subatomic particles work?
One of the most wonderfully weird ideas humans are fascinated by is psychic powers – telepathy, telekinesis. But the connections between different particles and objects in the universe don’t support these ideas and Musser states that they undermine the foundation of the spatial laws that our existence is built upon. So as much as we would love psychic ability, it undermines physics. Playfully imagining what those powers might be like, he warns it’s a ‘careful what you wish for’ scenario anyway. It would be great if only you had these powers; your team would always win the baseball! But assuming we’re all equals, each team would have a multitude of brains fighting each other for momentary control. The interference and mess caused by mass mental manipulation of physics would be catastrophic.
George Musser's most recent book is Spooky Action at a Distance:The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time--And What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything.
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>A psychiatric diagnosis can be more than an unkind ‘label’
A popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields.
Spinal cord injury breakthrough makes paralyzed mice walk again
Scientists regenerate damaged spinal cord nerve fibers with designer protein, helping paralyzed mice walk again.
- Researchers from Germany use a designer protein to treat spinal cord damage in mice.
- The procedure employs gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibers that carry signals to and from the brain.
- The scientists aim to eventually apply the technique to humans.
What is a spinal cord injury?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88b8d4e44e46b7d5fe49d1f3bca56078"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKtBC2Sg_Bg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Archaeologists identify contents of ancient Mayan drug containers
Scientists use new methods to discover what's inside drug containers used by ancient Mayan people.
- Archaeologists used new methods to identify contents of Mayan drug containers.
- They were able to discover a non-tobacco plant that was mixed in by the smoking Mayans.
- The approach promises to open up new frontiers in the knowledge of substances ancient people consumed.
PARME staff archaeologists excavating a burial site at the Tamanache site, Mérida, Yucatan.
Credit: WSU
Ten things you may not know about anxiety
Cold hands and feet? Maybe it's your anxiety.
- When we feel anxious, the brain's fight or flight instinct kicks in, and the blood flow is redirected from your extremities towards the torso and vital organs.
- According to the CDC, 7.1% of children between the ages of 3-17 (approximately 4.4 million) have an anxiety diagnosis.
- Anxiety disorders will impact 31% of Americans at some point in their lives.
Here's what you may not know about anxiety...
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0ed8bd7fb8626babd10933f7ce630f96"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w4jiLIzTAa0?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p><strong>There's a fine line between stress and anxiety - and many people don't know what the difference is.</strong></p><p>Both stress and anxiety are <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-anxiety-difference" target="_blank">emotional responses</a>, but stress is typically caused by an external trigger and can be short-term (a looming deadline at work, for example). People under stress experience mental and physical symptoms such as irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, insomnia, and headache. </p><p>Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined as a persistent, excessive worry. Even in the absence of the thing that triggered it, anxiety lingers. It can lead to a nearly identical set of symptoms, which is why they are often confused. Feelings of anxiety then differ from an anxiety disorder - an anxiety disorder means your anxiety typically persists for months and negatively impacts your daily functioning. </p><p><strong>There are five major types of anxiety disorders:</strong></p><ol><li>Generalized anxiety (GAD) is characterized by chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry, and tension, even when there is little or nothing to provoke it. </li><li>Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (or obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). </li><li>Panic disorder is characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms such as chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, and/or abdominal distress. </li><li>Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is also an anxiety disorder, and it can develop after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include things like personal assaults, natural and/or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. </li><li>Social Anxiety Disorder (also known as 'social phobia') is characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations. </li></ol><p><strong>Anxiety disorders can impact 31 percent of Americans at some point in their life. </strong></p><p>According to the <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/stress-anxiety-difference" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American Psychological Association</a>, 19 percent of Americans over the age of 18 have had an anxiety disorder in the past year and 31 percent of Americans will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. </p><p><strong>Anxiety may be genetic. </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/is-anxiety-genetic#:~:text=Most%20researchers%20conclude%20that%20anxiety,and%20more%20research%20is%20needed." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to HealthLine</a>, anxiety may be genetic but can also be influenced by environmental factors. It's possible to have anxiety without it running in your family, however, there is speculated to be some genetic component that makes anxiety more prevalent in some individuals. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5573560/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Research</a> has indicated some link between genetics and anxiety, though much more research is required in this area. </p><p><strong>Anxiety often begins in childhood. </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html#:~:text=For%20children%20aged%203%2D17,also%20have%20depression%20(32.3%25).&text=For%20children%20aged%203%2D17%20years%20with%20behavior%20problems%2C%20more,also%20have%20depression%20(20.3%25)." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to the CDC</a>, 7.1 percent of children between the ages of 3-17 (approximately 4.4 million) have an anxiety diagnosis. Six in ten children (59.3 percent) between the ages of 3-17 have received anxiety therapy or treatment. </p><p><strong>Having an anxiety disorder can increase your risk of other physical health complications. </strong></p><p>According to research from <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/anxiety" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Harvard Medical School</a>, anxiety has been indicated in several chronic physical illnesses, including heart disease, chronic respiratory disorders, gastrointestinal conditions such as IBS, and more. </p><p><strong>Cold hands and feet? Anxiety may be the reason. </strong></p><p>If you're someone who constantly struggles with having cold hands or feet, it could be a result of your anxiety. When we feel anxious, the brain's <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response#:~:text=The%20autonomic%20nervous%20system%20has,can%20respond%20to%20perceived%20dangers." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fight or flight instinct</a> kicks in, and the blood flow is redirected from your extremities towards the torso and vital organs. </p><p><strong>Anxiety can be related to anger issues and memory loss. </strong></p><p>A lesser-known side effect of anxiety is <a href="https://discoverymood.com/blog/anxiety-and-anger/#:~:text=Anxiety%20is%20often%20connected%20with,which%20can%20lead%20to%20anger." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">anger</a>. When you feel powerless over a situation, expressing anger is a natural way to feel as though you have some kind of control. With chronic sufferers of anxiety, depression is the most common issue to develop, but anger is close behind. As <a href="https://discoverymood.com/blog/anxiety-and-anger/#:~:text=Anxiety%20is%20often%20connected%20with,which%20can%20lead%20to%20anger." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Discovery Mood</a> explains, "anxiety is often connected with overstimulation from a stressful environment or threat, combined with the perceived inability to deal with that threat. In contrast, anger is often tied to frustration. When anxiety is left unacknowledged or unexpressed, it can turn into frustration which then easily leads to anger." </p><p><strong>Anxiety can also cause memory problems. </strong></p><p>According to <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/in-depth/memory-loss/art-20046326#:~:text=Stress%2C%20anxiety%20or%20depression%20can,loss%20by%20interacting%20with%20medications." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mayo Clinic</a>, stress, anxiety, or depression can often cause forgetfulness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating. <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/anxiety-and-memory-1393133" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">VeryWellMind</a> explains further, "memories can be affected when you are under periods of stress or experience some sort of disturbance in mood. Having a significant anxiety disorder like GAD can create some of these problems routinely, leaving you operating below your normal level of memory functioning." </p><p><strong>Anxiety can even impact your sense of smell. </strong></p><p>People who struggle with anxiety may be more likely to label natural smells as bad smells, according to research published in the <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/39/15324" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Journal of Neuroscience</a>. When processing smells, typically it's only the olfactory system that is activated. However, in people with high anxiety levels, the emotional system can become intertwined with the olfactory system, which can slightly alter our perception of smells.</p>